Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice. 
- Baruch Spinoza

 

Peace is a condition of the heart. It’s a state of mind, of tranquility, of calmness, and of centeredness.  It’s an understanding of the reciprocal nature of love, a presence,  a journey. It’s all of our aspirations. Peace is not a luxury or merely the absence of war, it’s a kind of grace  - which we’re all entitled to as people who are alive. Peace is an active presence of the capacity for a higher evolution of human awareness.

             - Congressman Dennis Kucinich

 

I'd kill for a Nobel Peace Prize. 
- Steven Wright

 

I do not want the peace which passeth understanding, I want the understanding which bringeth peace. 
- Helen Keller

 

When the power of love overcomes the love of power... the world will know peace. 
- Jimi Hendrix

 

The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us.  Black Elk


 

You don't make peace with friends. You make it with very unsavory enemies. 
- Yitzhak Rabin

 

It isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn’t enough to believe in it. One must work at it.”           - Eleanor Roosevelt

 

True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice. - Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

All we are saying is give peace a chance. 
- John Lennon



Peace comes from being able to contribute the best that we have, and all that we are, toward creating a world that supports everyone. But it is also securing the space for others to contribute the best that they have and all that they are.Hafsat Abiola



War is not the continuation of politics with different means, it is the greatest mass-crime perpetrated on the community of man.Alfred Adler



To all those who walk the path of human cooperation war must appear loathsome and inhuman.Alfred Adler



Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunters.African Proverb



Snowflakes, leaves, humans, plants, raindrops, stars, molecules, microscopic entities all come in communities. The singular cannot in reality exist.Paula Gunn Allen



How can one not speak about war, poverty, and inequality when people who suffer from these afflictions don't have a voice to speak?Isabel Allende




Bullets cannot be recalled. They cannot be uninvented. But they can be taken out of the gun.Martin Amis




There is no trust more sacred than the one the world holds with children. There is no duty more important than ensuring that their rights are respected, that their welfare is protected, that their lives are free from fear and want and that they grow up in peace.Kofi A. Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations



Peace begins when the hungry are fed.Anonymous



Peace is the work of justice indirectly, in so far as justice removes the obstacles to peace; but it is the work of charity (love) directly, since charity, according to its very notion, causes peace.Thomas Aquinas



Reconciliation should be accompanied by justice, otherwise it will not last. While we all hope for peace it shouldn't be peace at any cost but peace based on principle, on justice.Corazon Aquino



The best way of avenging thyself is not to become like the wrong-doer.Marcus Aurelius Antoninus



Peace is not the product of a victory or a command. It has no finishing line, no final deadline, no fixed definition of achievement. Peace is a never-ending process, the work of many decisions.Oscar Arias



Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.Isaac Asimov



We should take care, in inculcating patriotism into our boys and girls, that is a patriotism above the narrow sentiment which usually stops at one's country, and thus inspires jealousy and enmity in dealing with others... Our patriotism should be of the wider, nobler kind which recognises justice and reasonableness in the claims of others and which lead our country into comradeship with...the other nations of the world. The first step to this end is to develop peace and goodwill within our borders, by training our youth of both sexes to its practice as their habit of life, so that the jealousies of town against town, class against class and sect against sect no longer exist; and then to extend this good feeling beyond our frontiers towards our neighbours.Lord Baden-Powell


Youth is the first victim of war; the first fruit of peace.It takes 20 years or more of peace to make a man; it takes only 20 seconds of war to destroy him.King Baudouin I, King of Belgium



The problems of this world are so gigantic that some are paralysed by their own uncertainty. Courage and wisdom are needed to reach out above this sense of helplessness. Desire for vengeance against deeds of hatred offers no solution. An eye for an eye makes the world blind. If we wish to choose the other path, we will have to search for ways to break the spiral of animosity. To fight evil one must also recognize one's own responsibility. The values for which we stand must be expressed in the way we think of, and how we deal with, our fellow humans.- From the Christmas Message 2001 of HM Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands



The fragrance always remains in the hand that gives the rose.Heda Bejar



This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.Leonard Bernstein



The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.Steven Biko



To see the world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour.William Blake



When you're finally up on the moon, looking back at the earth, all these differences and nationalistic traits are pretty well going to blend and you're going to get a concept that maybe this is really one world and why the hell can't we learn to live together like decent people?Frank Borman



There is no time left for anything but to make peace work a dimension of our every waking activity.Elise Boulding



We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing that we know about living.General Omar Bradley


In separateness lies the world's great misery; in compassion lies the world's true strength.Buddha

 

Better than a thousand hollow words, Is one word that brings peace.Buddha

 

Your life and my life flow into each other as wave flows into wave, and unless there is peace and joy and freedom for you, there can be no real peace or joy or freedom for me. To see reality--not as we expect it to be but as it is--is to see that unless we live for each other and in and through each other, we do not really live very satisfactorily; that there can really be life only where there really is, in just this sense, love.(Carl) Frederick Buechner


Peace, to have meaning for many who have only known suffering in both peace and war, must be translated into bread or rice, shelter, health and education, as well as freedom and human dignity.Ralph Bunche


To suggest that war can prevent war is a base play on words and a despicable form of warmongering. The objective of any who sincerely believe in peace clearly must be to exhaust every honorable recourse in the effort to save the peace. The world has had ample evidence that war begets only conditions that beget further war.Ralph Bunche


There are no warlike people, just warlike leaders.Ralph Bunche


We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realize that we know where it lives, that it is inside ourselves.Albert Camus


We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children.Jimmy Carter


Until we have the courage to recognize cruelty for what it is--whether its victim is human or animal--we cannot expect things to be much better in this world... We cannot have peace among men whose hearts delight in killing any living creature. By every act that glorifies or even tolerates such moronic delight in killing we set back the progress of humanity.Rachel Carson



Looking for peace is like looking for a turtle with a mustache: You won't be able to find it. But when your heart is ready, peace will come looking for you.Ajahn Chah



We look forward to the time when the power to love will replace the love of power. Then will our world know the blessings of peace.William Ellery Channing


War is an invention of the human mind. The human mind can invent peace with justice.Norman Cousins



Nothing is more powerful than an individual acting out their conscience, thus helping bring the collective conscience to life.Norman Cousins



We know how to organize warfare, but do we know how to act when confronted with peace?Jacques-Yves Cousteau



The idea of absolute freedom is fiction. It's based on the idea of an independent self. But, in fact, there's no such thing. There's no self without other people. There's no self without sunlight. There's no self without dew. And water. And bees to pollinate the food we eat....So the idea of behaving in a way that doesn't acknowledge those reciprocal relationships is not really freedom, it's indulgence.Peter Coyote



We are, each of us angels with only one wing; and we can only fly by embracing one another.Luciano de Crescenzo



No one is so foolish as to prefer to peace, war, in which, instead of sons burying their fathers, fathers bury their sons.Croesus, King of Lydia, in Herodotus' The Persian Wars



Peace, in the sense of the absence of war, is of little value to someone who is dying of hunger or cold. It will not remove the pain of torture inflicted on a prisoner of conscience. It does not comfort those who have lost their loved ones in floods caused by senseless deforestation in a neighboring country. Peace can only last where human rights are respected, where the people are fed, and where individuals and nations are free.The Dalai Lama



Not only do . . . rulers keep many millions of men whose only trade is war, but these must be supported in worse than useless idleness by the labor of the poor. Still other millions are trained to war and are ever ready to answer to their master's call, to desert their homes and trades and offer up their lives to satisfy the vain ambitions of the ruler of the state. Millions more must give their strength and lives to build forts and ships, make guns and cannon and all the modern implements of war. Apart from any moral question of the right of man to slay his fellow man, all this great burden rests upon the poor. The vast expense of war comes from the production of the land and must serve to weaken and impair its industrial strength."Clarence Darrow, Resist Not Evil



We plant seeds that will flower as results in our lives, so best to remove the weeds of anger, avarice, envy and doubt, that peace and abundance may manifest for all.Dorothy Day



Young people say, What is the sense of our small effort? They cannot see that we must lay one brick at at time, take one step at a time; we can be responsible only for the one action in the present moment. But we can beg for an increase of love in our hearts that will vitalize and transform all our individual actions, and know that God will take them and multiply them, as Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes.Dorothy Day, 1963



We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.Dorothy Day, 1963



If you want to make peace, you don't talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.Moshe Dayan



The life of "peace" is both an inner journey toward a disarmed heart and a public journey toward a disarmed world. This difficult but beautiful journey gives infinite meaning and fulfillment to life itself because our lives become a gift for the whole human race. With peace as the beginning, middle, and end of life, life makes sense.John Dear



Very few people chose war. They chose selfishness and the result was war. Each of us, individually and nationally, must choose: total love or total war.Dave Dellinger



Nobody was born nonviolent. No one was born charitable. None of us comes to these things by nature but only by conversion. The first duty of the nonviolent community is helping its members work upon themselves and come to conversion.Lanza del Vasto



What is the revolution that we need? We need to dissolve the lie that some people have a right to think of other people as their property. And we need at last to form a circle that includes us all, in which all of us are seen as equal... We do not belong to the other, but our lives are linked; we belong in a circle of others.Barbara Deming



No man is an island entire of itself ... any man's death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.John Donne



Mankind will never win lasting peace so long as men use their full resources only in tasks of war. While we are yet at peace, let us mobilize the potentialities, particularly the moral and spiritual potentialities, which we usually reserve for war.John Foster Dulles, War or Peace 1950.



Those for whom peace is no more than a dream are asleep to the future.Jack DuVall



We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee.Marian Wright Edelman



We must be prepared to make heroic sacrifices for the cause of peace that we make ungrudgingly for the cause of war. There is no task that is more important or closer to my heart.Albert Einstein



Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.Ralph Waldo Emerson



Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969)



I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969)



Preventive war was an invention of Hitler. Frankly, I would not even listen to anyone seriously that came and talked about such a thing.Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969)



Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.Thomas Edison



While you are proclaiming peace with your lips, be careful to have it even more fully in your heart.St. Francis of Assisi



I hope...that mankind will at length, as they call themselves reasonable creatures, have reason and sense enough to settle their differences without cutting throats; for in my opinion there never was a good war, or a bad peace.Benjamin Franklin



You can bomb the world into pieces, but you can't bomb it into peace.Michael Franti



We are going to have to find ways of organizing ourselves cooperatively,sanely, scientifically, harmonically and in regenerative spontaneity with the rest of humanity around the earth.... We are not going to be able to operate our spaceship earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common.Buckminster Fuller



Either war is obsolete or men are.Buckminster Fuller



War is obsolete. We are not here to fight something or tear something down; We are here to be the example of what is possible. Any sane individual will tell you that violence is ... not the way...Buckminster Fuller



You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist.Indira Gandhi, 1971



Peace we want because there is another war to fight against poverty, disease and ignorance.Indira Gandhi, 1966



We must be the change we wish to see.Mahatma Gandhi



Whenever you are in doubt or when the self becomes too much with you, try the following experiment: Recall the face of the poorest and most helpless person you have ever seen and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be for any use to him or to her . . . Then you will find your doubts and your self melting away.Mohandas Gandhi



If you love peace, then hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed  but hate these things in yourself, not in another.Mohandas Gandhi



A peace that comes from fear and not from the heart is the opposite of peace.Gersonides



It is easier to lead men to combat, stirring up their passion, than to restrain them and direct them toward the patient labors of peace.Andre Gide



In the name of peace
They waged the wars
       ain't they got no shameNikki Giovanni, The Great Pax Whitie, 1979



We look forward to the time when the Power of Love will replace the Love of Power. Then will our world know the blessings of peace.Gladstone



Peace is a gift,
It is a gift we give to ourselves,
And then to each other.Richard Goode Founder, "2 Billion Voices for Peace" project, Australia



Women prevent the threads of life from being broken. The finest minds have always understood the peacemaking role of women.Mikhail Gorbachev



The first essential characteristics of nonviolent action is that it is creative.Hildegarde Goss-Mayr



The pursuit of peace and progress cannot end in a few years in either victory or defeat. The pursuit of peace and progress, with its trials and errors, its successes and setbacks, can never be relaxed and never abandoned.Dag Hammarskjold (1905-1961)Former UN General Secretary


If in our daily life we can smile, if we can be peaceful and happy, not only we, but everyone will profit from it. This is the most basic kind of peace work.Thich Nhat Hanh



Smiling is very important. If we are not able to smile, then the world will not have peace. It is not by going out for a demonstration against nuclear missiles that we can bring about peace. It is with our capacity of smiling, breathing, and being peace that we can make peace.Thich Nhat Hanh



The peace process we all aim for will not necessarily be a result of the mere signing of a treaty or agreement. It must become a matter of our everyday lives, so that peace settles and lasts and becomes supported by everybody. We therefore have to give peace all the required care and preserve it and promote it.King Hassan II of Morocco (1929-1999)



Genuine politics -- even politics worthy of the name -- the only politics I am willing to devote myself to -- is simply a matter of serving those around us: serving the community and serving those who will come after us. Its deepest roots are moral because it is a responsibility expressed through action, to and for the whole.Vaclav Havel



I'm not disturbing the peace. I'm disturbing the war.Ammon Hennacy, US Labor leader



Peace has its victories no less than war, but it doesn't have as many monuments to unveil.Kin Hubbard



The goal toward which all history tends is peace, not peace through the medium of war, not peace through a process of universal intimidation, not peace through a program of mutual impoverishment, not peace by any means that leaves the world too weak or too frightened to go on fighting, but peace pure and simple based on that will to peace which has animated the overwhelming majority of mankind through countless ages. This will to peace does not arise out of a cowardly desire to preserve one's life and property, but out of conviction that the fullest development of the highest powers of men can be achieved only in a world of peace.Robert Maynard Hutchins



It's a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than "try to be a little better."Aldous Huxley



We live in a world which is full of misery and ignorance, and the plain duty of each and all of us is to try to make the little corner he can influence somewhat less miserable and somewhat less ignorant than it was before he entered it.Thomas Huxley (1825-1895)



It is better to die on your feet than live on your knees.Dolores Ibarruri



A man may build himself a throne of bayonets, but he cannot sit on it.William Ralph Inge



It is in the shelter of each other that the people live.Irish Proverb



And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.Isaiah 2:4



The wolf shall also dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.Isaiah 11:6



Every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain: And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together; for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.Isaiah 40:4-5



The United States of America is still run by its citizens. The government works for us. Rank imperialism and warmongering are not American traditions or values. We do not need to dominate the world. We want and need to work with other nations. We want to find solutions other than killing people. Not in our name, not with our money, not with our children's blood.Molly Ivins



But the wisdom from above is pure, first of all; it is also peaceful, gentle and friendly; it is full of compassion and produces a harvest of good deals,; it is free from prejudice and hypocrisy.James 3:17



I am done with great things and big things, great institutions and big success, and I am for those tiny invisible molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, yet which if you give them time, will rend the hardest monuments of man's pride.William James



In morals, what begins in fear usually ends in wickedness; in religion, what begins in fear usually ends in fanaticism. Fear, either as a principle or a motive, is the beginning of all evil.Anna Jameson



It is reasonable that every one who asks justice should do justice.Thomas Jefferson



I pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of all the world and to the community for which it stands: one people loved into existence by God, breathing an indivisible air, warmed by a sun that shines on good and bad alike, kept alive by rain that falls on the just and unjust. I commit myself to spend my life for this world for liberty and justice for all. Amen.Mary Evelyn Jegen



If we cannot agree, let us at any rate agree to differ, but let us part as friends.Mohammad Ali Jinnah



In the twilight of life, God will not judge us on our earthly possessions and human success, but rather on how much we have loved.St. John of the Cross



The first casualty when war comes is truth.Senator Hiram Johnson, 1917



The solidarity which binds all men together as members of a common family makes it impossible for wealthy nations to look with indifference upon the hunger, misery and poverty of other nations whose citizens are unable to enjoy even elementary human rights. The nations of the world are becoming more and more dependent on one another and it will not be possible to preserve a lasting peace so long as glaring economic and social imbalances persist.Pope John XXIII, Pacem in Terris (Peace on Earth) 1963



All must realize that there is no hope of putting an end to the building up of armaments, nor of reducing the present stocks, nor, still less--and this is the main point--of abolishing them altogether, unless the process is complete and thorough and unless it proceeds from inner conviction: unless, that is, everyone sincerely cooperated to banish the fear and anxious expectation of war with which men are oppressed. If this is to come about, the fundamental principle on which our present peace depends must be replaced by another, which declares that the true and solid peace of nations consists not in equality of arms but in mutual trust alone. We believe that this can be brought to pass, and we consider that, since it concerns a matter not only demanded by right reason but also eminently desirable in itself, it will prove to be the source of many benefits.Pope John XXIII, Pacem in Terris (Peace on Earth) 1963



Sensitivity to the immense needs of humanity brings with it a spontaneous rejection of the arms race, which is incompatible with the all out struggle against hunger, sickness, under-development and illiteracy.Pope John Paul II



Our future on this planet, exposed as it is to nuclear annihilation, depends one one single factor: humanity must make a moral about-face.Pope John Paul II



If development is the new name for peace, war and preparations for war are the major enemy of the healthy development of peoples. If we take the common good of all humanity as our norm, instead of individual greed, peace would be possible.Pope John Paul II, Solicitudo Rei Socialis (On Social Concern) 1987



Condemning class struggle does not mean condemning every possible form of social conflict. Such conflicts inevitably arise and Christians must often take a position in the "struggle for social justice." What is condemned is "total war," which has no respect for the dignity of others (and consequently of oneself). It excludes reasonable compromise, does not pursue the common good but the good of a group, and sets out to destroy whatever stands in its way.Pope John Paul II, Centesimus Annus (The Hundredth Year) 1991



The obligation to earn one's bread presumes the right to do so. A society that denies this right cannot be justified, nor can it attain social peace.Pope John Paul II, Centesimus Annus (The Hundredth Year) 1991



The guns and the bombs, the rockets and the warships, are all symbols of human failure.Lyndon Johnson



A Rattlesnake, if Cornered will become so angry it will bite itself. That is exactly what the harboring of hate and resentment against others is -- a biting of oneself. We think we are harming others in holding these spites and hates, but the deeper harm is to ourselves.E. Stanley Jones



Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.Mother Jones



A spirit of harmony can only survive if each of us remembers, when bitterness and self-interest seem to prevail, that we share a common destiny.Barbara Jordan



If the society today allows wrongs to go unchallenged, the impression is created that those wrongs have the approval of the majority.Barbara Jordan



What the people want is very simple. They want an America as good as its promise.Barbara Jordan



Justice of right is always to take precedence over might.Barbara Jordan



We cannot seek or attain health, wealth, learning, justice or kindness in general. Action is always specific, concrete, individualized, unique.Benjamin Jowett



Respect for the rights of others means peace.Benito Jurez



The Holy Prophet Mohammed came into this world and taught us: 'That man is a Muslim who never hurts anyone by word or deed, but who works for the benefit and happiness of God's creatures. Belief in God is to love one's fellow men.'Abdul Ghaffar Khann



If we just worry about the big picture, we are powerless. So my secret is to start right away doing whatever little work I can do. I try to give joy to one person in the morning, and remove the suffering of one person in the afternoon. If you and your friends do not despise the small work, a million people will remove a lot of suffering. That is the secret. Start right now.Sister Chän Khöng



Mounting an expedition to actualize a Compassionate Commonwealth of all peoples...is the great spiritual challenge of our time.Sam Keen



Democracies die behind closed doors.Judge Damon J. Keith



Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of humans as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is not safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.Helen Keller



I am only one; but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something. I will not refuse to do the something I can do.Helen Keller



I do not want the peace which passeth understanding,
I want the understanding which bringeth peace.Helen Keller



The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight, but has no vision.Helen Keller



Don't agonize, organize.Florynce Kennedy



Freedom is like taking a bath: You got to keep doing it every day.Florynce Kennedy



Countermovements among racists and sexists and nazifiers are just as relentless as dirt on a coffee table. . . . Every housewife knows that if you don't sooner or later dust . . . the whole place will be dirty again.Florynce Kennedy



You've got to rattle your cage door. You've got to let them know that you're in there, and that you want out. Make noise. Cause trouble. You may not win right away, but you'll sure have a lot more fun.Florynce Kennedy



Compromise does not mean cowardice.John F. Kennedy



If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.John F. Kennedy



Aggressive conduct, if allowed to go unchecked and unchallenged, ultimately leads to war.John F. Kennedy



Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind...War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.John F. Kennedy



We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.John F. Kennedy



The evils of government are directly proportional to the tolerance of the people.Frank Kent



If peace . . . only had the music and pageantry of war, there'd be no wars.Sophie Kerr



The belief that we some day shall be able to prevent war is to me one with the belief in the possibility of making humanity really human.Ellen Key, 1916



Everything, everything in war is barbaric . . . But the worst barbarity of war is that it forces men collectively to commit acts against which individually they would revolt with their whole being.Ellen Key, 1916



A loving person lives in a loving world. A hostile person lives in a hostile world. Everyone you meet is your mirror.Ken Keyes, Jr., quoted in Catholic Digest, June 2000



Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men, for the nastiest of reasons, will somehow work for the benefit of us all.John Maynard Keynes



The Holy Prophet Mohammed came into this world and taught us: 'That man is a Muslim who never hurts anyone by word or deed, but who works for the benefit and happiness of God's creatures. Belief in God is to love one's fellow men.'Abdul Ghaffar Khan



The first question which the priest and the Levite asked [on the Jericho Road] was: If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?' But...the good Samaritan reversed the question: If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?'Martin Luther King



I'd like someone to mention the day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to give his life serving others. I'd like somebody to say that day, that Martin Luther King tried to love somebody. I want you to say that day, that I tried to be right on the war question. I want you to be able to say that day, that I did try to feed the hungry . . . I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity. Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice; say that I was a drum major for peace; I was a drum major for righteousness . . . I want to leave a committed life behind.Martin Luther King, Jr.



The ultimate measure of a person is not where one stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where one stands in times of challenge and controversy.Martin Luther King



The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.Martin Luther King



I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.Martin Luther King, Jr.



Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him.Martin Luther King, Jr.



Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.Martin Luther King, Jr.



Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.Martin Luther King, Jr.



One day we shall win freedom, but not only for ourselves. We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.Martin Luther King



If you succumb to the temptation of using violence in the struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and your chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos.Martin Luther King Jr.



I plan to stand by nonviolence, because I have found it to be a philosophy of life that regulates not only my dealings in the struggle for racial justice, but also my dealings with people, and with my own self.Martin Luther King Jr.



If you think you're too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito in the room.Anita Koddick



War is, at first, the hope that one will be better off; next, the expectation that the other fellow will be worse off; then, the satisfaction that he isn't any better off; and, finally, the surprise at everyone's being worse off.Karl Kraus (1874-1936)



Hitler and Mussolini were only the primary spokesmen for the attitude of domination and craving for power that are in the heart of almost everyone. Until the source is cleared, there will always be confusion and hate, wars and class antagonisms.J. Krishnamurti



If we could raise one generation with unconditional love, there would be no Hitlers. We need to teach the next generation of children from Day One that they are responsible for their lives. Mankind's greatest gift, also its greatest curse, is that we have free choice. We can make our choices built from love or from fear..Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross



When you least expect it, someone may actually listen to what you have to say.Maggie Kuhn



Power should not be concentrated in the hands of so few, and powerlessness in the hands of so many.Maggie Kuhn



True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it.Milan Kundera



Most people, no doubt, when they espouse human rights, make their own mental reservations about the proper application of the word "human."Suzanne LaFollette



There is nothing more innately human than the tendency to transmute what has become customary into what has been divinely ordained.Suzanne LaFollette



I hate it when they say, He gave his life for his country. They dont die for the honor and glory of their country. We kill them.Rear Admiral Gene R. LaRocque



The opposite of war is not peace, it's creation.Jonathan Larson



If it were proved to me that in making war, my ideal had a chance of being realized, I would still say "No" to war. For one does not create human society on mounds of corpses.Louis Lecoin, French pacifist leader



We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains.Ursula LeGuin



The power of the harasser, the abuser, the rapist depends above all on the silence of women.Ursula LeGuin



There are no right answers to wrong questions.Ursula LeGuin



The greatest religious problem today is how to be both a mystic and a militant; in other words how to combine the search for an expansion of inner awareness with effective social action, and how to feel one's true identity in both.Ursula LeGuin



Do your work as though you had a thousand years to live, & as if you were to die tomorrow.Mother Anna Lee, founder of the Shakers



What a cruel thing is war: to separate and destroy families and friends, and mar the purest joys and happiness God has granted us in this world; to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors, and to devastate the fair face of this beautiful world.Robert E. Lee, in a letter to his wife, 1864



We tend to defend vigorously things that in our deepest hearts we are not quite certain about. If we are certain of something we know, it doesn't need defending.Madeleine L'Engle



It's a good thing to have all the props pulled out from under us occasionally. It gives us some sense of what is rock under our feet, and what is sand.Madeleine L'Engle



War is as outmoded as cannibalism, chattel slavery, blood-feuds, and dueling, an insult to God and humanity...a daily crucifixion of Christ.Muriel Lester



God has made of one blood all nations under heaven. No man can suddenly become my enemy just because he happened to have been born on the other side of a river or a boundary line, and his government has issued an ultimatum against mine. Is it not time that we refused to fight?Muriel Lester



Is it progress if a cannibal uses a knife and fork?Stanislaw Lem



If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace.John Lennon



War is as outmoded as cannibalism, chattel slavery, blood-feuds, and dueling, an insult to God and humanity...a daily crucifixion of Christ.Muriel Lester



Peace as a positive condition of society, not merely as an interim between wars, is something so unknown that it casts no images on the mind's screen.Denise Levertov



Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.James Levin



Fondly do we hope, ferverently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away.Abraham Lincoln



I destroy my enemies when I make them my friends.Abraham Lincoln



You are not going to get peace with millions of armed men. The chariot of peace cannot advance over a road littered with cannon.David Lloyd



They talk about conscription as a democratic institution. Yes; so is a cemetery.Rep. Meyer London



If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.Longfellow



The master's tools will never destroy the master's house.Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider



The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them, and lessens the threat of their difference.Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider



When I care to be powerful -- to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider



Conflict is inevitable, but combat is optional.Max Lucado



Would that even today you knew the things that make for peace.Luke 19:42



Peace is more important than all justice; and peace was not made for the sake of justice, but justice for the sake of peace.Martin Luther (1483-1546)



When asked what he would do if he knew the world would end tomorrow, Martin Luther said, "I would plant a tree."Martin Luther



Freedom for supporters of the government only, for members of one party only  no matter how big its membership may be  is no freedom at all. Freedom is always freedom for the man who thinks differently.Rosa Luxemburg



The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions.Robert Lynd (1879-1949), Anglo-Irish essayist, journalist



By doing service, heart and mind are purified -- be convinced of this! To engage in service is a very powerful sadhana (spiritual discipline); do not become impatient. Rather serve your people with the utmost calm and have a kind word for everyone.Sri Anandamayee Ma



We can work together for a better world with men and women of goodwill, those who radiate the intrinsic goodness of humankind. To do so effectively, the world needs a global ethic with values which give meaning to life experiences and, more than religious institutions and dogmas, sustain the non-material dimension of humanity. Mankind's universal values of love, compassion, solidarity, caring and tolerance should form the basis for this global ethic which should permeate culture, politics, trade, religion and philosophy. It should also permeate the extended family of the United Nations.Wangari Maathai



The soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.Douglas MacArthur



Our country is now geared to an arms economy bred in an artificually induced psychosis of war hysteria and an incessant propaganda of fear.Douglas MacArthur



The maxim that people should not have a right till they are ready to exercise it properly, is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim.Macaulay



We shall never be able to effect physical disarmament until we have succeeded in effecting moral disarmament.J. Ramsay MacDonald



Jaw-jaw is better than war-war.Harold MacMillan



If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner.Nelson Mandela



It is clear that the way to heal society of its violence . . . and lack of love is to replace the pyramid of domination with the circle of equality and respect.Manitonquat



Accurst be he that first invented war.Christopher Marlowe (Tamburlaine)



If man does find the solution for world peace it will be the most revolutionary reversal of his record that we have ever known.General of the Army George C. Marshall, 1945



I am a soldier of Christ and it is not permissible for me to fight.St. Martin of Tours, 315-397



I went into the Army believing that if you want peace you must prepare for war. I now believe that if you prepare thoroughly for war you will get it.Sir John Frederick Maurice



All social life is essentially practical. All mysterious which lead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of the practice.Karl Marx



The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways: the point is to change it.Karl Marx



If we emphasize the life and works of our greatest contributors . . . people will come to realize that moral courage is bravery of the highest type, and America will be called the "Champion of Peace."Senator Spark Matsunaga



Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.Matthew 5:3



War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace.Thomas Mann



You can't lead anyone else further than you have gone yourself.Gene Mauch



The relationship between commitment and doubt is by no means an antagonistic one. Commitment is healthiest when it is not without doubt but in spite of doubt.Rollo May



Warmaking doesn't stop warmaking. If it did, our problems would have stopped millennia ago.Colman McCarthy



The earth is too small a star and we too brief a visitor upon it for anything to matter more than the struggle for peace.Colman McCarthy



I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.~George McGovern



There is absolutely no inevitability as long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening.Marshall McLuhan



Unforgiveness does a great deal more damage to the vessel in which it is stored than the object on which it is poured.S. I. McMillen



If you love the justice of Jesus Christ more than you fear human judgment then you will seek to do compassion. Compassion means that if I see my friend and my enemy in equal need, I shall help them both equally. Justice demands that we seek and find the stranger, the broken, the prisoner and comfort them and offer them our help. Here lies the holy compassion of God that causes the devils much distress.Mechtild of Magdeburg



War is wretched beyond description, and only a fool or a fraud could sentimentalize its cruel reality.Senator John McCain



Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world: Indeed it's the only thing that ever has.Margaret Mead



I do not believe in using women in combat, because females are too fierce.Margaret Mead



If one cannot state a matter clearly enough so that even an intelligent twelve-year-old can understand it, one should remain within the cloistered walls of the university and laboratory until one gets a better grasp of one's subject matter.Margaret Mead



Having two bathrooms ruined the capacity to co-operate. P ALIGN="RIGHT">Margaret Mead


It may be necessary temporarily to accept a lesser evil, but one must never label a necessary evil as good.Margaret Mead



Men are at war with each other because each man is at war with himself.Francis Meehan



The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.H. L. Mencken



I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.H. L. Mencken



The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.H. L. Mencken



I dream of giving birth to a child who will ask: "Mother, what was war?"Eve Merriam



Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice. It demands greater heroism than war. It demands greater fidelity to the truth and a much more perfect purity of conscience. The Christian fight for peace is not to be confused with defeatism.Thomas Merton



Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God's eyes. If only they could see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time, there would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed . . . I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other.Thomas Merton



The God of peace is never glorified by human violence.Thomas Merton



Many oppressors are also oppressed. Nonviolent confrontation is the only confrontation that allows us to respond realistically to such complexity.Jane Meyerding



No, the Lord has told us what is good. What he requires of us is this: to do what is just, to show constant love, and to live in humble fellowship with our God.Micah 6:8



Nonviolence doesn't always work -- but violence never does.Madge Michaels-Cyrus



If there is to be any peace it will come through being, not having.Henry Miller



To wage war, you need first of all money; second, you need money, and third, you also need money.Prince Montecuccoli



Establishing lasting peace is the work of education; all politics can do is keep us out of war.Maria Montessori



There never was a war that was not inward; I must fight till I have conquered in myself what causes war.Marianne Moore



Only she who attempts the absurd can achieve the impossible.Robin Morgan



Knowledge is power. Information is power. The secreting or hoarding of knowledge or information may be an act of tyranny camouflaged as humility.Robin Morgan



"Angry heart -- you have no chance against my prayers."Mary Moreno



There is a certain kind of peace that is not merely the absence of war. It is larger than that. The peace I am thinking of is not at the mercy of history's rule, nor is it a passive surrender to the status quo. The peace I am thinking of is the dance of an open mind when it engages another equally open one -- an activity that occurs most naturally, most often in the reading/writing world we live in. Accessible as it is, this particular kind of peace warrants vigilance.Toni Morrison, The Dancing Mind (1996)



If you're going to hold someone down you're going to have to hold on by the other end of the chain. You are confined by your own repression.Toni Morrison



War vies with magic in its efforts to get something for nothing...Lewis Mumford



We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.Edward R. Murrow



Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.John Muir



There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.A.J. Muste



We cannot have peace if we are only concerned with peace. War is not an accident. It is the logical outcome of a certain way of life. If we want to attack war, we have to attack that way of life.A. J. Muste



Aye, fight! But not your neighbor. Fight rather all the things that cause you and your neighbor to fight.Mikhail Naim



In war, there are no unwounded soldiers.~José Narosky



Peace is not a relationship of nations. It is a condition of mind brought about by a serenity of soul. Peace is not merely an absence of war. It is also a state of mind. Lasting peace can come only to peaceful people.Jawaharlal Nehru



Poetry is an act of peace. Peace goes into the making of a poet as flour goes into the making of bread.Pablo Neruda, Memoirs (Confieso Que He Vivido: Memorias) (1974)



"They first came for the Communists and I didn't speak up- because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews and I didn't speak up- because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists and I didn't speak up- because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn't speak up- because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me- and by that time no one was left to speak up.Pastor Martin Niemoeller



Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.Friedrich Nietzche



I stand at the altar of murdered men, and, while I live, I fight their cause.Florence Nightingale, 1856



The only way to make sure people you agree with can speak is to support the rights of people you don't agree with.Eleanor Holmes Norton



I have not been animated in my life to fight against race and sex discrimination simply because of my own identity. That would mean that one must be South African to fight apartheid, or a poor white in Appalachia to fight poverty, or Jewish to fight anti-Semitism. And I just reject that conception of how struggles should be waged.Eleanor Holmes Norton



Much violence is based on the illusion that life is a property to be defended and not to be shared.Henri Nouwen



When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.Henri Nouwen



There are questions of real power and then there are questions of phony authority. You have to break through the phony authority to begin to fight the real questions of power.Karen Nussbaum



There is nothing politically right that is morally wrong.Daniel O'Connell



The world cannot continue to wage war like physical giants and to seek peace like intellectual pygmiesBasil O'Connor



Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.George Orwell



In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.George Orwell



The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.George Orwell



Political language ... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.George Orwell



Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.George Orwell



Only when there are many people who are pools of peace, silence, understanding, will war disappear.Osho (1931-1990)



An army of principles can penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot.Thomas Paine



The more we sweat in peace the less we bleed in war.Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit



When you put your hand to the plow, you can't put it down until you get to the end of the row.Alice Paul



If you want peace, work for justice.Pope Paul VI



Peace is not merely the absence of war. Nor can it be reduced solely to the maintenance of a balance of power between enemies. Nor is it brought about by dictatorship. Instead, it is rightly and appropriately called "an enterprise of justice" (Is. 32:7). Peace results from that harmony built into human society by its divine founder, and actualized by men as they thirst after ever greater justice.Pope Paul VI, Gaudium et Spes, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Second Vatican Council, 1965



Peace must be born of mutual trust between nations rather than imposed on them through fear of one another's weapons. Hence everyone must labor to put an end at last to the arms race, and to make a true beginning of disarmament, not indeed a unilateral disarmament, but one proceeding at an equal pace according to agreement, and backed up by authentic and workable safeguards. ... The problems of peace and disarmament have already been the subject of extensive, strenuous, and relentless examination. Together with international meeting dealing with these problems, such studies should be regarded as the first steps toward solving these serious questions. They should be promoted with even greater urgency in the hope that they will yield practical results in the future.Pope Paul VI, Gaudium et Spes, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Second Vatican Council, 1965

Excessive economic, social and cultural inequalities among peoples arouse tensions and conflicts, and are a danger to peace.
Pope Paul VI, Populorum Progresio (On the Development of Peoples) 1967



To wage war on misery and to struggle against injustice is to promote, along with improved conditions, the human and spiritual progress of all men, and therefore the common good of humanity. Peace cannot be limited to a mere absence of war, the result of an ever precarious balance of forces. No, peace is something that is built up day after day, in the pursuit of an order intended by God, which implies a more perfect form of justice among men.Pope Paul VI, Populorum Progresio (On the Development of Peoples) 1967



We must have research for peace ... It would embrace the outstanding problems of morality. The time has come for man's intellect, his scientific method, to win over the immoral brutality and irrationality of war and militarism ... Now we are forced to eliminate from the world forever this vestige of prehistoric barbarism, this curse to the human race.Linus Pauling



When you find peace within yourself, you become the kind of person who can live at peace with others.Peace Pilgrim



Tradition is the living faith of dead people to which we must add our chapter while we have the gift of life. Traditionalism is the dead faith of living people who fear that if anything changes, the whole enterprise will crumble.Jaroslav Pelikan



A good end sanctify evil means; not must we ever do evil, that good might come of it. We are ready to retaliate, rather than forgive or gain by love and information . . . Force may subdue, but love gains. And one that forgives first wins the laurel.William Penn



Right is right, even if everyone is against it, and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it.William Penn



Let all bear in mind that a society is judged not so much by the standards attained by its more affluent and privileged members as by the quality of life which it is able to assure for its weakest members.H.E. Javier Perez de Cuellar, Secretary General of the United Nations



Five enemies of peace inhabit with us--avarice, ambition, envy, anger, and pride; if these were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace.Petrarch



All we ask, God, is to be safe from the rain, just warm enough in winter to watch the snow with a smile, have enough to eat so that our hunger will not turn us to angry beasts, and sanity enough to make justice that will not kill our love of life.Joseph Pinatauro



Forge thy tongue on an anvil of truth and what flies up, though it be but a spark, will have light.Pindar



Peace with a club in hand is war.Portuguese Proverb



If you oppress poor people, you insult the God who makes them; but kindness shown to the poor is an act of worship.Proverbs 14:31



With each dawn, fill us with your love that we may sing and rejoice all our days. Give us joy to balance our affliction, for the times when we know misfortune.Psalm 90:14-17



Do you want long life and happiness? Strive for peace with all your heart.Psalm 34:12,14



Truly you have formed my inmost being; you knit me in my mother's womb. I give you thanks that I am fearfully, wonderfully made; wonderful are your works.Psalm 13:9



One more such victory and we are undone.Pyrrhus of Epirus



For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.Pythagoras



In India when we meet and part we often say, "Namaste," which means: I honor the place in you where the entire universe resides; I honor the place in you where the entire universe resides; I honor the place in you of love, of light, of truth, of peace. I honor the place within you where if you are in that place in you and I am in that place in me, there is only one of us.. "Namaste."Ram Dass



You can no more win a war than win an earthquake.Jeanette Rankin



What one decides to do in crisis depends on one's philosophy of life, and that philosophy cannot be changed by an incident. If one hasn't any philosophy in crises, others make the decision.Jeanette Rankin



You take people as far as they will go, not as far as you would like them to go.Jeanette Rankin



There can be no compromise with war; it cannot be reformed or controlled; cannot be disciplined into decency or codified into common sense; for war is the slaughter of human beings, temporarily regarded as enemies, on as large a scale as possible.Jeanette Rankin, 1929



In History, stagnant waters, whether they be the stagnant waters of custom or those of despotism, harbour no life; life is dependent on the ripples created by a few eccentric individuals. In homage to that life & vitality, the community has to brave certain perils and must countenance a measure of heresy. One must live dangerously if one wants to live at all.Herbert Read



History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.Ronald Reagan



Peace is not absence of conflict, it is the ability to handle conflict by peaceful means.Ronald Reagan



...no mother would ever willingly sacrifice her sons for territorial gain, for economic advantage, for ideology.Ronald Reagan



A people free to choose will always choose peace.Bernice Johnson Reagon



There is nowhere you can go and only be with people who are like you. Give it up.Bernice Johnson Reagon



We are tethered to our kind, and may as well join hands in the struggle.Agnes Repplier



A world of vested interests is not a world which welcomes the disruptive force of candor.Agnes Repplier



If you are trying to transform a brutalized society into one where people can live in dignity and hope, you begin with the empowering of the most powerless. You build from the ground up.Adrienne Rich



When nothing seems to help, I go look at a stonecutter hammering away at a rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundredth blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it but all that had gone before.Jacob Riis



I hate those men who would send into war youth to fight and die for them; the pride and cowardice of those old men, making their wars that boys must die.Mary Roberts Rinehart



Bless your persecutors; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Have the same attitude toward all. Put away ambitious thoughts and associate with those who are lowly. Do not be wise in your own estimation. Never repay injury with injury. See that your conduct is honorable in the eyes of all. If possible, live peacefully with everyone. Beloved, do not avenge yourselves; leave that to God's wrath, for it is written, "Vengeance is mine; I will repay," says the Lord. But "If your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; by doing this you will heap burning coals upon their heads." Do not be conquered by evil but conquer evil with good.Romans 12:14-21



The Bible has a very meaningful expression: The Spirit makes all things new. We are those who grow old, and we want everything done to our aged standards. The Spirit is never old; the Spirit is always young.Oscar Romero

Peace is not the product of terror or fear.
Peace is not the silence of cemeteries.
Peace is not the silent result of violent repression.
Peace is the generous, tranquil contribution of all to the good of all.
Peace is dynamism. Peace is generosity.
It is right and it is duty.

Oscar Romero



For it isn't enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must work at it.Eleanor Roosevelt



Hate and force cannot be in just a part of the world without having an effect on the rest of it.Eleanor Roosevelt



What is to give light must endure the burning.Eleanor Roosevelt



When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?Eleanor Roosevelt



Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official...Theodore Roosevelt



It is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else.Theodore Roosevelt



Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. One who believes himself the master of others is nonetheless a greater slave than they.Jean Jaques Rousseau



It's odd how those who dismiss the peace movement as utopian, don't hesitate to proffer the most absurdly dreamy reasons for going to war: to stamp out terrorism, install democracy, eliminate fascism, and most entertainingly, to "rid the world of evil-doers.Arundhati Roy



Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people's brains and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead.Arundhati Roy



If you are religious, then remember that this bomb is Man's challenge to God. It's worded quite simply: We have the power to destroy everything that You have created. If you're not religious, then look at it this way. This world of ours is 460,000,000 years old. It could end in an afternoon.Arundhati Roy



The universe is made up of stories, not atoms.Muriel Rukeyser



You may either win your peace or buy it: win it, by resistance to evil; buy it, by compromise with evil.John Ruskin



The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.Bertrand Russell



The governors of the world believe, and have always believed, that virtue can only be taught by teaching falsehood, and that any man who knew the truth would be wicked. I disbelieve this, absolutely and entirely. I believe that love of truth is the basis of all real virtue, and that virtues based upon lies can only do harm.Bertrand Russell



War does not determine who is right - only who is leftBertrand Russell



One must care about a world one will never see.Bertrand Russell, 20th-century British mathematician and philosopher



We need, in every community, a group of angelic troublemakers.Bayard Rustin



God does not require us to achieve any of the good tasks that humanity must pursue. What God requires of us is that we not stop trying.Bayard Rustin



If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.Antoine de Saint-Exupery



You know you've achieved perfection in design, not when you have nothing more to add, but when you have nothing more to take away.Antoine de Saint-Exupery



It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.Antoine de Saint-Exupery



Someday they'll give a war and nobody will come.Carl Sandburg



When the rich make war, it's the poor that die.Jean-Paul Sartre



A merely fallen enemy may rise again, but the reconciled one is truly vanquished.Johann Christoph Schiller



When men talk about defense, they always claim to be protecting women and children, but they never ask the women and children what they think.Pat Schroeder, American politician and feminist



You can't wring your hands and roll up your sleeves at the same time.Pat Schroeder, American politician and feminist



The Pledge of Allegiance says "...with liberty and justice for all." What part of "all" don't you understand?Pat Schroeder, American politician and feminist



You measure a government by how few people need help.Pat Schroeder, American politician and feminist



Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction.E. F. Schumacher



Until he extends the circle of compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace.Albert Schweitzer



God grant me the courage to change the things I can, the patience to accept the things I can't, and the wisdom to know the difference.The Serenity Prayer



There are weapons that are simply thoughts. For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy.Rod Serling



To kill a man is not to defend a doctrine, but to kill a man.Michael Servetus



In this war  as in others  I am less interested in honoring the dead than in preventing the dead.Butler Shaffer



If all the Churches of Europe closed their doors until the drums ceased rolling they would act as a most powerful reminder that though the glory of war is a famous and ancient glory, it is not the final glory of God.George Bernard Shaw



Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their kind. It is the deed that teaches not the name we give it.George Bernard Shaw



Cruelty must be whitewashed by a moral excuse, and pretense of reluctance.George Bernard Shaw



You see things; and you say, "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say, "Why not?"George Bernard Shaw



Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder.Percy Bysshe Shelley



War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight, the lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade.Percy Bysshe Shelley



It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood...War is hell.General William Tecumseh Sherman



Instead of tug o' war, let's play hug o' war.Shel Silverstein



Since we are to be conformed to the image of Christ, how can we then fight our enemies with the sword? ... Spears and swords of iron we leave to those who, alas, consider human blood and swine's blood of well-nigh equal value ...Menno Simons, 1539 A.D



Moral cowardice that keeps us from speaking our minds is as dangerous to this country as irresponsible talk. The right way is not always the popular and easy way. Standing for right when it is unpopular is a true test of moral character.Margaret Chase Smith



All wars are fought for money.Socrates



Anyone who has proclaimed violence his method inexorably must choose lying as his principle.Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn



A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn



Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice.Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn



Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence.Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn



War-making is one of the few activities that people are not supposed to view realistically; that is, with an eye to expense and practical outcome. In all-out war, expenditure is all-out, unprudent - war being defined as an emergency in which no sacrifice is excessive.Susan Sontag



Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.Baruch Spinoza



The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls.Elizabeth Cady Stanton



The happiest people I have known have been those who gave themselves no concern about their own souls, but did their uttermost to mitigate the miseries of others.Elizabeth Cady Stanton



A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular.Adlai Stevenson



There is so much good in the worst of us,
and so much bad in the best of us, 
that it behooves all of us 
not to talk about the rest of us.Robert Louis Stevenson



Past the seeker as he prayed came the crippled and the beggar and the beaten. And seeing them...he cried, "Great God, how is it that a loving creator can see such things and yet do nothing about them?"...God said, "I did do something. I made you."Sufi Teaching



To fight and conquer in all our battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.Sun Tzu



Fear less, hope more,
Whine less, breathe more,
Talk less, say more,
Hate less, love more,
And all good things are yours.Swedish proverb



It is folly to punish your neighbor by fire when you live next door.Publius Syrus



A bad peace is even worse than war.Tactitus



They make a desert and call it peace.Tactitus



To save one life, it is as if you had saved the world.Talmud



It is not your obligation to complete your work, but you are not at liberty to quit.Talmud




We first fought...in the name of religion, then Communism, and now in the name of drugs and terrorism. Our excuses for global domination always change.Serj Tankian




Sacredness of human life! The world has never believed it! It has been with life that we settled our quarrels, won wives, gold and land, defended ideas, imposed religions. We have held that a death toll was a necessary part of every human achievement, whether sport, war or industry. A moment's rage over the horror of it, and we have sunk into indifference.Ida Tarbell




There is no man more dangerous, in a position of power, than he who refuses to accept as a working truth the idea that all a man does should make for rightness and soundness, that even the fixing of a tariff rate must be moral.Ida Tarbell




The first and most imperative necessity in war is money, for money means everything else -- men, guns, ammunition.Ida Tarbell




There is nothing more agreeable in life than to make peace with the establishment and nothing more corrupting.Alan John Percivale Taylor




All works of love are works of peace.Mother Teresa



I don't do great things. I do small things with great love.Mother Teresa



I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts, then there is no hurt, but only more love.Mother Teresa



We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.Mother Teresa



Do not wait for leaders. Do it alone, person to person.Mother Teresa



I do not pray for success. I ask for faithfulness.Mother Teresa



Let us not be satisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough, money can be got, but they need your hearts to love them. So, spread your love everywhere you go.Mother Teresa



If you judge people, you have no time to love them.Mother Teresa



The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love. The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty - it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There's a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God.Mother Teresa



When we yield to discouragement it is usually because we give too much thought to the past and to the future.St. Therese of Lisieux



Let us not be justices of the peace, but angels of peace.St. Therese of Lisieux



Peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of creative alternatives for responding to conflict -- alternatives to passive or aggressive responses, alternatives to violence.Dorothy Thompson



They have not wanted Peace at all; they have wanted to be spared war -- as though the absence of war was the same as peace.Dorothy Thompson



Peace has to be created, in order to be maintained. It is the product of Faith, Strength, Energy, Will, Sympathy, Justice, Imagination, and the triumph of principle. It will never be achieved by passivity and quietism.Dorothy Thompson



Courage, it would seem, is nothing less than the power to overcome danger, misfortune, fear, injustice, while continuing to affirm inwardly that life with all its sorrows is good; that everything is meaningful even if in a sense beyond our understanding; and that there is always tomorrow.Dorothy Thompson



Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live.Dorothy Thompson



The most destructive element in the human mind is fear. Fear creates aggressiveness.Dorothy Thompson



Fear grows in darkness; if you think there's a bogeyman around, turn on the light.Dorothy Thompson



Peace is the happy natural state of man; war is corruption and disgrace.James Thompson



What good is a house, if you haven't got a decent planet to put it on?Henry David Thoreau

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root."Henry David Thoreau, Walden



Thaw with her gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer. The one melts, the other breaks into pieces.Henry David Thoreau



Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.Henry David Thoreau



During times of war, hatred becomes quite respectable, even though it has to masquerade under the guise of patriotism.Howard Thurman



The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.Alvin Toffler



Why does man have reason if he can only be influenced by violence?Leo Tolstoy



The law of violence is not a law, but a simple fact which can only be a law when it does not meet with protest and opposition. It is like the cold, darkness and weight, which people had to put up with until recently when warmth, illumination and leverage were discovered....Leo Tolstoy



All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what the do not want to do.Leo Tolstoy



Men are so accustomed to maintaining external order by violence that they cannot conceive of life being possible without violence.Leo Tolstoy



The greater the state, the more wrong and cruel its patriotism, and the greater is the sum of suffering upon which its power is founded.Leo Tolstoy



Violence produces only something resembling justice, but it distances people from the possibility of living justly, without violence.Leo Tolstoy



The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat.Lily Tomlin



All who affirm the use of violence admit it is only a means to achieve justice and peace. But peace and justice are nonviolence...the final end of history. Those who abandon nonviolence have no sense of history. Rathy they are bypassing history, freezing history, betraying history.André Trocmé



We shall never be able to remove suspicion and fear as potential causes of war until communication is permitted to flow, free and open, across international boundaries.Harry S Truman



War is the unfolding of miscalculations.Barbara Tuchman



If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.Archbishop Desmond Tutu



Always do right--this will gratify some and astonish the rest.Mark Twain



Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.Mark Twain



Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed.UNESCO Charter



The poor cannot be convinced that God is neutral . . .Author Unknown



Watch Well over your seed-things and children
Speak wisely to them, our new children!
Henceforth they shall be your first speakers
And the peacemaking shields of your people.Author Unknown

To preserve peace, we need weapons of smaller and men of larger caliber.
Author Unknown



Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.Sir Peter Ustinov



People who fight fire with fire usually end up with ashes.Abigail Van Buren



World peace is us....We are each walking agents of the vision of peace we carry inside us.Kathleen Vande Kieft



Respectful dialogue, in the interest of searching for more complete truth, is considerably more productive than arguing for the purity of position.Gerard Vanderhaar



We challenge the culture of violence when we ourselves act in the certainty that violence is no longer acceptable, that it's tired and outdated no matter how many cling to it in the stubborn belief that it still works and that it's still valid.Gerard Vanderhaar



The story of the human race is characterized by efforts to get along much more than by violent disputes, although it's the latter that make the history books. Violence is actually exceptional. The human race has survived because of cooperation, not aggression.Gerard Vanderhaar



Peace is an environment where conflicts are resolved without violence, where people are free, not exploited, living so they can grow to their full potential.Gerard Vanderhaar



The arms race can kill, though the weapons themselves may never be used...by their cost alone, armaments kill the poor by causing them to starve.Vatican statement to the U.N., 1976



The soul of our country needs to be awakened . . .When leaders act contrary to conscience, we must act contrary to leaders.Veterans Fast for Life



It is only by feeling your love that the poor will forgive you for the gifts of bread.St. Vincent de Paul



Wars are not acts of God. They are caused by man, by man-made institutions, by the way in which man has organized his society. What man has made, man can change.Frederick Moore Vinson, Speech at Arlington National Cemetery (Memorial Day, 1945)



Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.Voltaire



All murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.Voltaire



To the wicked, everything serves as pretext.Voltaire



[T]he essence of so-called war prosperity: it enriches some by what it takes from others. It is not rising wealth but a shifting of wealth and income.Ludwig von Mises



War prosperity is like the prosperity that an earthquake or a plague brings.Ludwig von Mises



Activism pays the rent on being alive and being here on the planet.Alice Walker



It just seems clear to me that as long as we are all here, it's pretty clear that the struggle is to share the planet, rather than divide it.Alice Walker



The most important question in the world is, 'Why is the child crying?'Alice Walker



The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.Alice Walker



How sad now never to see men holding hands, while everywhere one looks they are holding guns.Alice Walker



What the mind doesn't understand, it worships or fears.Alice Walker



Nobody is as powerful as we make them out to be.Alice Walker



I think we have to own the fears that we have of each other, and then, in some practical way, some daily way, figure out how to see people differently than the way we were brought up to.Alice Walker



War will stop when we no longer praise it, or give it any attention at all. Peace will come wherever it is sincerely invited.Alice Walker

Anyone can love peace, but Jesus didn't say, "Blessed are the peace-lovers." He says peacemakers. He is referring to a life vocation, not a hobby on the sidelines of life.
Jim Wallis



They say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.Andy Warhol



Don't ever let them pull you down so low as to hate them. (also cited as: I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.)Booker T. Washington



Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all.George Washington



If we work in marble, it will perish; if we work upon brass, time will efface it; if we rear temples, they will crumble into dust; but if we work upon immortal minds and instill into them just principles, we are then engraving upon tablets which no time will efface, but will brighten and brighten to all eternity.Daniel Webster



Simone Weil


Obvious and inexorable oppression that cannot be overcome does not give rise to revolt but to submission.Simone Weil



Liberty, taking the word in its concrete sense, consists in the ability to choose.Simone Weil



I swore never to be silent whenever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.Elie Weisel



What is man?
Hope turned to dust.
No.
What is man?
Dust turned to hope.Elie Weisel



In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had five hundred years of democracy and peace and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.Orson Welles



A time will come when a politician who has willfully made war and promoted international dissension will be as sure of the dock and much surer of the noose than a private homicide. It is not reasonable that those who gamble with men's lives should not stake their own.H.G. Wells



Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as ever you can.John Wesley



When I have money, I get rid of it quickly, lest it find a way into my heart.John Wesley



Did St. Francis really preach to the birds? Whatever for? If he really liked birds he would have done better to preach to the cats.Rebecca West



War is fear cloaked in courage.General William Westmoreland



I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is; I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.Rebecca West



The time not to become a father is eighteen years before a war.~E. B. White



Peace hath higher tests of manhood than battle ever knew.John Greenleaf Whittier



The dark night is over and dawn has begun. Rise, hope of the ages, arise like the sun! All speech, flow to music; all hearts, beat as one.John Greenleaf Whittier



Always forgive your enemies. Nothing annoys them more.Oscar Wilde



A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.Oscar Wilde



Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our Light, not our Darkness, that most frightens us.Marianne Williamson



When an idea reaches critical mass there is no stopping the shift its presence will induce.Marianne Williamson



Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love. The real miracle is the love that inspires them. In this sense everything that comes from love is a miracle.Marianne Williamson



I know that you cannot hate other people without hating yourself.Oprah Winfrey



In 1989, thirteen nations comprising 1,695,000 people experienced nonviolent revolutions that succeeded beyond anyone's wildest expectations . . . If we add all the countries touched by major nonviolent actions in our century (the Philippines, South Africa . . . the independence movement in India . . .) the figure reaches 3,337,400,000, a staggering 65% of humanity! All this in the teeth of the assertion, endlessly repeated, that nonviolence doesn't work in the 'real' world.Walter Wink



You can stand tall without standing on someone. You can be a victor without having victims.Harriet Woods



We can best help you to prevent war not by repeating your words and following your methods but by finding new words and creating new methods.Virginia Woolf



May we look upon our treasure, the furniture of our houses, and our garments, and try to discover whether the seeds of war have nourishment in these our possessions.John Woolman (1774)



You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.Malcolm X




There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.Howard Zinn

Taking the first footstep with a good thought, the second with a good word, and the third with a good deed, I entered paradise. Zoroaster