Great Quotations

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

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.
Mother Teresa

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

There was never a good war or a bad peace.
Benjamin Franklin

Imagine all the people
Living life in peace.
You may say I'm a dreamer,
But I'm not the only one.
I hope someday you'll join us,
And the world will be as one.
John Lennon

I greet you all in the name of peace, democracy and freedom for all! I stand here before you not as a prophet but as a humble servant of you, the people. Your tireless and heroic sacrifices have made it possible for me to be here today. I therefore place the remaining years of my life in your hands.
Nelson Mandela
Speech upon release from prison.

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

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.
Bible
Luke 2. 14

I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.
Mahatma Gandhi

War would end if the dead could return.
Stanley Baldwin

And so happy Christmas
For black and for white
For yellow and red ones
Let's stop all the fight.
John Lennon

If the human race wishes to have a prolonged and indefinite period of material prosperity, they have only got to behave in a peaceful and helpful way toward one another.
Winston Churchill

If we wish to create a lasting peace we must begin with the children.
Mahatma Gandhi

I prefer the most unfair peace to the most righteous war.
Cicero

War is cruelty and you cannot refine it.
Gen. William T. Sherman

Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.
Ernest Hemingway

The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.
George Orwell

Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won.
Duke Of Wellington

More than an end to war, we want an end to the beginning of all wars -- yes, an end to this brutal, inhuman and thoroughly impractical method of settling the differences between governments.
Franklin D. Roosevelt

Peace will not come out of a clash of arms but out of justice lived and done by unarmed nations in the face of odds.
Mahatma Gandhi

Peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous.
George Bernard Shaw

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 s*xes 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.
Robert Baden-Powell

I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend.
Abraham Lincoln

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.
William Butler Yeats
The Lake Isle of Innisfree

If we are to teach real peace in this world, and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with the children.
Mahatma Gandhi

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

War makes good history but peace is poor reading.
Thomas Hardy

I would say that I'm a nonviolent soldier. In place of weapons of violence, you have to use your mind, your heart, your sense of humor, every faculty available to you...because no one has the right to take the life of another human being.
Joan Baez

How good bad music and bad reasons sound when we march against an enemy.
Nietzsche

When women have a voice in national and international affairs, wars will cease forever.
Augusta Stowe-Gullen

At the approach of danger there are always two voices that speak with equal force in the heart of man: one very reasonably tells the man to consider the nature of the danger and the means of avoiding it; the other even more reasonable says that it is too painful and harassing to think of the danger, since it is not a man's power to provide for everything and escape from the general march of events'; and that it is therefore better to turn aside from the painful subject till it has come, and to think of what is pleasant. in solitude a man generally yields to the first voice; in society to the second.
Leo Tolstoy
War and Peace

If humanity is to progress, Gandhi is inescapable. he lived, thought, and acted, inspired by the vision of humanity evolving toward a world of peace and harmony. We may ignore him at our own risk.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

The principle of nonviolent resistance seeks to reconcile the truths of two opposites - acquiescence and violence - while avoiding the extremes and immoralities of both. The nonviolent resister agress with the person who acquisces that one should not be physically agressive toward his opponent; but he balances the equation by agreeing with the person of violence that evil must be resisted. He avoids the nonresistance of the former and the violent resistance of the latter. With nonviolent resistance, no invidual or group need to submit to any wrong, nor need anyone resort to violence in order to right a wrong.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

The nonviolent approach does not immediately change the heart of the oppressor. It first does something to the hearts and souls of those committed to it. It gives them new self-respect; it calls up resources of strength and courage that they did not know they had. Finally it reaches the opponent and so stirs his conscience that reconciliation becomes a reality.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

One of the most persistent ambiguities that we face is that everybody talks about peace as a goal. However, it does not take sharpest-eyed sophistication to discern that while everbody talks about peace, peace has become practically nobodys' business among the power-wielders. Many men cry Peace! Peace! but they refuse to do the things that make for peace.
Martin Luther King,Jr.

Can one have love? If we could, love would need to be a thing, a substance that one can have, own, possess. The truth is, there is no such thing aslove.Love is an abstraction, perhaps a goddess or an alien being, although nobody has ever seen this goddess. In reality, there exists only the act of loving. To love is a productive activity. It implies caring for, knowing, responding, affirming, enjoying: the person, the tree, the painting, the idea. It means bringing tolife, increasing his/her/its aliveness. It is a process, self-renewing and self increasing. from To Have or to Be?
Erich Fromm

Non-cooperation with evil is a sacred duty.
Mahatma Gandhi

In the secret of my heart I am in perpetual quarrel with God that He should allow such things [as the war] to go on. My non-violence seems almost impotent. But the answer comes at the end of the daily quarrel that neither God nor non-violence is impotent. Impotence is in men. I must try on without losing faith even though I may break in the attempt.
Mahatma Gandhi

Peace be with you.
The Bible
Genesis 43. 23

Whether humanity will consciously follow the law of love, I do not know. But that need not disturb me. The law will work just as the law of gravitation works, whether we accept it or not. The person who discovered the law of love was a far greater scientist than any of our modern scientists. Only our explorations have not gone far enough and so it is not possible for everyone to see all its workings.
Mahatma Gandhi

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

We can all do our share to redeem the world in spite of all absurdities and all frustrations and all disappointments.
Abraham Heshel

We frail humans are at one time capable of the greatest good and, at the same time, capable of the greatest evil. Change will only come about when each of us takes up the daily struggle ourselves to be more forgiving, compassionate, loving, and above all joyful in the knowledge that, by some miracle of grace, we can change as those around us can change too.
Maíread Corrigan-Maguire
Nobel Peace Prize winner and co-founder of the Community of Peace People in Northern Ireland.

Laws and conditions that tend to debase human personality - a God-given force - be they brought by the State or individuals, must be relentlessly opposed in the spirit of defiance shown by St. Peter when he said to the rulers of his day: 'Shall we obey God or man?'
Albert Luthuli

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

All ideologies end up killing people. If you separate love from nonviolence you turn nonviolence into an ideology, a gimmick. Structures that are not inhabited by justice and love have no liberating or reconciling force, and are never sources of life.
Jean Goss

Generally speaking, the first nonviolent act is not fasting, but dialogue. The other side, the adversary, is recognized as a person, he is taken out of his anonymity and exists in his own right, for what he really is, a person. To engage someone in dialogue is to recognize him, have faith in him. At every step in the nonviolent struggle, at every level we try tirelessly to establish a dialogue, or reestablish it if it has broken down. When I say 'the other side,' that could be a group of persons or a government.
Hildegard Goos-Mayr

The essence of nonviolence is love. Out of love and the willingness to act selflessly, strategies, tactics, and techniques for a nonviolent struggle arise naturally. Nonviolence is not a dogma; it is a process.
Thich Nhat Hanh

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

Nothing could be worse than the fear that one had given up too soon and left one unexpended effort which might have saved the world.
Jane Addams

Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.
Thomas A. Kempis

We know the truth, not only by the reason, but by the heart.
Blaise Pascal
Pensées

We, the peoples of the United Nations, determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal right of men and women and of nations large and small....And for these ends to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbors...have resolved to combine our efforts to accomplish these aims.
Preamble, Charter of the United Nations.

In peace sons bury fathers, but war violates the order of nature, and fathers bury sons.
Herodotus