Ubuntu Quotes

"‘The one story includes us all. We are, everyone, cousins to one another. Every being is intimately present to and immediately influencing every other being. We see quite clearly that what happens to the non-humans happens to the humans. What happens to the outer world happens to the inner world. If the outer world is diminished in its grandeur then the emotional, imaginative, intellectual and spiritual life of the human is diminished or extinguished....we might become impoverished in all that makes us human.”

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Thomas Berry - The Great Work

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"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.....Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love....Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality."

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

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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.  

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Black Elk


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"A human being is part of the whole, called by us "universe," limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest -   a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a prison, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons close to us.”“Our task must be to free ourselves from our prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all humanity and the whole  of nature in its beauty."   

     

Albert Einstein, Nobel Laureate Physicist

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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
 

 

I celebrate myself, and what I assume you shall assume. For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

 

Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass 

 

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.

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HM Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands



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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



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

                                         

Buddha

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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


 

We all have that basic common thread, that basic common denomination….That’s the whole idea is to get them to start to touch that common thread. Allow them to get to that level and understand each other. 

 

Philmer Bluehouse, Director Navajo Peacemaker Courts

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There's no separation between self and other, and everything is interconnected. Once you are aware of that you are no longer caught in the idea that you are a separate entity.

 

Thich Nhat Hanh

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We live in an interconnected world,  in an interconnected time,  and we need holistic solutions.

         

Naomi Klein

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 When we discover the Buddha that we are, we discover that everything and everyone is Buddha.  We discover that everything is awake and everyone is awake.  Everything is equally precious and whole and good….we discover the kinship with all beings. We experience ourselves as being separate from the whole.  This separateness becomes like a prison for us, a prison that restricts us to our personal hopes and fears and to caring only for the people nearest to us.           

      

Pema Chondron 

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Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.

 

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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"Thy fate is the common fate of all…

 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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