Famous Quotes & Sayings

Linus Pauling

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.

Linda Chavez

We have created not a Brave New World, but a vulgar marketplace, where human attributes come with a price tag.

Leo Tolstoy

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

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 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

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

Pema Chodron

Rather than becoming more relaxed, you start pulling down the shades and locking the door. When you do go out, you find the experience more and more unsettling and disagreeable. You become touchier, more fearful, more irritable than ever. The more you try to get it your way, the less you feel at home.

Rabindranath Tagore

At the immortal touch of thy hands my little heart loses its limits in joy and gives birth to utterance ineffable.

Joseph Goebbels

Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.

Israel has been extremely aggressive, they have continued with their settlement policies, they have continued demolitions, they have continued with their occupation policies which entail a humiliation of Palestinians, which makes the (peace) process difficult.

Elizabeth Gilbert

This was not my moment to be seeking romance and (as day follows night) to further complicate my already knotty life. This was my moment to look for the kind of healing and peace that can only come from solitude.

Elizabeth Gilbert

Imagine that the universe is a great spinning engine. You want to stay near the core of the thing - right in the hub of the wheel - not out at the edges where all the wild whirling takes place, where you can get frayed and crazy. The hub of calmness - that's your heart. That's where God lives within you. So stop looking for answers in the world. Just keep coming back to that center and you'll always find peace.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

We will never be enlightened unless we realize and own what our capacity, from the best of the best to the worst of the worst because then we have more empathy, more compassion, more sympathy for others who do things that are hurtful and harmful and we see, given certain situations, I'm capable of that myself. So, I'm less judgmental.

Eknath Easwaran

When someone at peace and free from hurry enters a room, that person has a calming effect on everyone present.

John Conyers

A day of peace and sharing can lead to greater understanding and cooperation among political parties, faith groups, and people of different races and economic class.

John Bunyan

If we have not quiet in our minds, outward comfort will do no more for us than a golden slipper on a gouty foot.

Joan Baez

I have been true to the principles of nonviolence, developing a stronger and stronger aversion to the ideologies of both the far right and the far left and a deeper sense of rage and sorrow over the suffering they continue to produce all over the world.

Joan Baez

The only thing that's been a worse flop than the organization of nonviolence has been the organization of violence.

Joan Baez

That's all nonviolence is - organized love.

Mao Zedong

The commanders and fighters of the entire Chinese People's Liberation Army absolutely must not relax in the least their will to fight; any thinking that relaxes the will to fight and belittles the enemy is wrong.

Mao Zedong

War is the highest form of struggle for resolving contradictions, when they have developed to a certain stage, between classes, nations, states, or political groups, and it has existed ever since the emergence of private property and of classes.

Mao Zedong

Revolutionary war is an antitoxin that not only eliminates the enemy's poison but also purges us of our own filth. Every just, revolutionary war is endowed with tremendous power and can transform many things or clear the way for their transformation. The Sino-Japanese war will transform both China and Japan; provided China perseveres in the War of Resistance and in the united front, the old Japan will surely be transformed into a new Japan and the old China into a new China, and people and everything else in both China and Japan will be transformed during and after the war.

Mao Zedong

Without armed struggle neither the proletariat, nor the people, nor the Communist Party would have any standing at all in China and it would be impossible for the revolution to triumph. In these years [the eighteen years since the founding of the Party] the development, consolidation and bolshevization of our Party have proceeded in the midst of revolutionary wars; without armed struggle the Communist Party would assuredly not be what it is today. Comrades throughout the Party must never forget this experience for which we have paid in blood.

Mao Zedong

We desire peace. However, if imperialism insists on fighting a war, we will have no alternative but to take the firm resolution to fight to the finish before going ahead with our construction. If you are afraid of war day in day out, what will you do if war eventually comes? First, I said that the East Wind is prevailing over the West Wind and war will not break out, and now I have added these explanations about the situation in case war should break out. Both possibilities have thus been taken into account.

Mao Zedong

Revolutions and revolutionary wars are inevitable in class society, and without them it is impossible to accomplish any leap in social development and to overthrow the reactionary ruling classes and therefore impossible for the people to win political power.

Mao Zedong

The world is progressing, the future is bright and no one can change this general trend of history. We should carry on constant propaganda among the people on the facts of world progress and the bright future ahead so that they will build their confidence in victory.

Madeleine L'Engle

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.

John Gay

Breathe soft, ye winds! ye waves, in silence sleep!

John F. Kennedy

[War] can no longer be of concern to great powers alone.

John F. Kennedy

But wherever we are, we must all, in our daily lives, live up to the age-old faith that peace and freedom walk together. In too many of our cities today, the peace is not secure because freedom is incomplete." (John F. Kennedy, June 10, 1963, American University speech)

John F. Kennedy

And is not peace, in the last analysis, basically a matter of human rights -- the right to live out our lives without fear of devastation – the right to breathe air as nature provided it -- the right of future generations to a healthy existence?" (John F. Kennedy, June 10, 1963, American University speech)

John F. Kennedy

To those peoples in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required - not because the Communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right. If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

John F. Kennedy

The mere absence of war is not peace.