Peace and Justice Quotations
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the portrait for biographical information;
click the name for a source of the quotation
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[About Pres. Obama saying "I screwed up" because he appointed two people with tax problems:] "That's your screw-up? I don't know if you remember, but the last guy broke the world." |
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[About calling Obama's policies "socialist":] "Clearly the McCain campaign is targeting its most important voter: Joe the McCarthy." |
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"Al Qaeda is losing? But they're our key ally in never having to explain what our government is doing!" |
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"You may not know it, but at the far end of despair, there is a white clearing where one is almost happy.
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"Ever since I've been three years old I've been saying we worship the Prince of Peace. We don't worship the prince of pre-emptive war." |
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"Earlier in the week, President Bush quietly sneaked into Iraq.
Well, here's an idea — why don't we quietly sneak out of Iraq?" |
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"The view that criminals are 'wicked' and 'deserve' punishment is not one which a rational morality can support. ... Obviously, ... we cannot allow people to kill each other whenever they feel an impulse to do so. ... We should treat the criminal as we treat a man suffering from plague. Each is a public danger, each must have his liberty curtailed until he has ceased to be a danger. But the man suffering from plague is an object of sympathy and commiseration, whereas the criminal is an object of execration. This is quite irrational. And it is because of this difference of attitude that our prisons are so much less successful in curing criminal tendencies than our hospitals are in curing disease." |
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"If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich." |
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"There is nothing that war has ever achieved that we could not better achieve
without it." |
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"If you don't like the way to the world is, you change it.
You have an obligation to change it. You just do it one step at a time." |
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"The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience.
Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
We know more about war than we do about peace, more about
killing than we do about living." |
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"President Bush nominated Condoleeza Rice as his new Secretary of State, saying she would be 'America's face to the world'
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"Only when the last tree is cut; only when the last river is polluted;
only when the last fish is caught: Only then will they realize that
you cannot eat money." |
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"When a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and purity of its heart." |
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"War is as outmoded as cannibalism, chattel slavery, blood-feuds, and dueling, an insult to God and humanity. ..." — Muriel Lester |
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"He who fights against monsters should see to it that he does not become a monster in the process.
And when you stare persistently into an abyss, the abyss also stares into you." — Friedrich Nietzsche |
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"In forgiving, people are not asked to
forget. On the contrary, it is important to remember, so that we should
not let such atrocities happen again. Forgiveness does not mean condoning
what has been done. It means taking what happened seriously and not minimizing
it; drawing out the sting in the memory that threatens to poison our entire
existence. It involves trying to understand the perpetrators and so have
empathy, to try to stand in their shoes and appreciate the sort of pressures
and influences that might have conditioned them. Forgiving means abandoning
your right to pay back the perpetrator in his own coin, but it is a loss
that liberates the victim." — Desmond Tutu |
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"If you want to make peace, you don't talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies."
— Moshe Dayan |
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Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts, Whether your baptism be that of water or of tears Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, Our husbands shall not come to us reeking of carnage, For caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country Will be too tender of those of another country To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with Our own. It says, "Disarm, Disarm!" The sword of murder is not the balance of justice! Blood does not wipe out dishonor Nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war. Let women now leave all that may be left of home For a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means Whereby the great human family can live in peace, Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, But of God. In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask That a general congress of women without limit of nationality May be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient And at the earliest period consistent with its objects To promote the alliance of the different nationalities, The amicable settlement of international questions. The great and general interests of peace. — Julia Ward Howe, Mothers' Day 1870 |
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"The 'control of nature' is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the
Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man." |
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"We
will be a better country when each religious group can trust its members
to obey the dictates of their own religious faith without assistance
from the legal structure of their country." |
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"In this age of wonders no one will say that a thing or idea is
worthless because it is new. To say it is impossible because it is difficult,
is again not in consonance with the spirit of this age. Things undreamt
of are daily being seen, the impossible is ever becoming possible. We
are constantly being astonished these days at the amazing discoveries
in the field of violence. But I maintain that far more undreamt of and
seemingly impossible discoveries will be made in the field of nonviolence." |
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"Classless, crass and deplorable ... Our nation's children, parents and citizens deserve better." |
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"Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show
up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch
and work: You don't give up." |
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"When evil is allowed to compete with good, evil has an emotional populist appeal that wins out
unless good men and women stand as a vanguard against abuse." |
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"If it's natural to kill, how come men have to go into training to learn how?" |
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"You may write me down in history / With your bitter, twisted
lies, / You may trod me in the very dirt / But still, like dust, I'll
rise. ... Just like moons and like suns, / With the certainty of tides,
/ Just like hopes springing high, / Still I'll rise." |
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"Making dissent commonplace in this country makes this country
a healthier, safer place." |
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"Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent,
hardworking, honest Americans. It's the other lousy two percent that
get all the publicity. But then, we elected them." |
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"In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against
being fooled by false slogans, as 'right-to-work.' It provides no 'rights'
and no 'works.' Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom
of collective bargaining.
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"Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence." |
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"Money is human happiness in the abstract: He, then, who is no
longer capable of enjoying human happiness in the concrete devotes his
heart entirely to money." |
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"Not to believe in the possibility of permanent peace is to disbelieve
the godliness of human nature. Methods hitherto adopted have failed
because rock-bottom sincerity on the part of those who have striven
has been lacking." |
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"Rightful
liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn
around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits
of the law,' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so
when it violates the rights of the individual." |
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"President Bush is asking Congress for 80 billion dollars to re-build
Iraq. And when you make out that check, remember there are two L's in
Halliburton." |
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"I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the
good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent." |
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"The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of
war." |
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"It is not the fact of liberty but the way in which liberty is
exercised that ultimately determines whether liberty itself survives."
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"There are no warlike people, just warlike leaders." |
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"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens
can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."
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"Either man is obsolete or war is. War is the ultimate tool of
politics. Political leaders look out only for their own side. Politicians
are always realistically maneuvering for the next election. They are
obsolete as fundamental problem-solvers." |
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"You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake."
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"One day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant
goal we seek, but that it is a means by which we arrive at that goal.
We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means." |
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"Women have been trained to speak softly and carry a lipstick.
Those days are over." |
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"War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong;
and multiplies, instead of indemnifying, losses." |
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"Chance has never yet satisfied the hope of a suffering people.
Action, self-reliance, the vision of self and the future have been the
only means by which the oppressed have seen and realized the light of
their own freedom." |
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"When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world
will know peace." |
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"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." |
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"The power to dream / to rule, to wrestle the world from fools: |
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"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." |
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"Courage is the price that Life exacts for granting peace." |
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"National injustice is the surest road to national downfall." |
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"In the long run there is no more liberating, no more exhilarating
experience than to determine one's position, state it bravely, and then
act boldly." |
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"Don't be a marshmallow. Walk the street with us into history.
Get off the sidewalk. Stop being vegetables. Work for justice." |
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"Hatred ever kills, love never dies |
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"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." |
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"Through life's trials and hardships we arise beautiful and
free." |
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"Our level of consciousness and our spiritual beliefs are evidenced
in how we treat each other and our environment, and the extent to which
we feel responsible for the well-being and sustainability of our planet." |
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"We have it in our power to begin the world over again." |
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"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." |
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"No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels.
Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty
of patriots." |
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"Resistance to tyrany is man's highest ideal." |
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"Rise like Lions after slumber / In unvanquishable
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"No government power can be abused long. Mankind will
not bear it. ... There is a remedy in human nature against tyranny, that
will keep us safe under every form of government." — Samuel Johnson, circa 1772 [ posted 15 May 2003 ] |
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"When a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice,
I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and purity of its heart."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1824 [ posted 13 May 2003 ] |