Inner Peace
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.
Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it stands than to anything on which it is poured.
Anonymous
A crust eaten in peace is better than a banquet partaken in anxiety.
Aesop
If you scramble about in search of inner peace, you will lose your inner peace.
Lao Tzu
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.
William E. Gladstone
Peace in Society
I destroy my enemies when I make them my friends.
Abraham Lincoln
Nonviolence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man.
Mohandas Gandhi
The point of nonviolence is to build a floor, a strong new floor, beneath which we can no longer sink. A platform which stands a few feet above napalm, torture, exploitation, poison gas, A and H bombs, the works. Give man a decent place to stand.
Joan Baez
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken away from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.
Viktor Frankl
An eye for an eye ends up making the whole world blind.
Mohandas Gandhi
In separation lies the world’s great misery; in compassion lies the world’s true strength.
Buddha
The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.
Hannah Arendt
When evil is allowed to compete with good, evil has an emotive appeal that wins out unless good men and women stand as a vanguard against abuse.
Hannah Arendt
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.
Compassion is not religious business, it is human business, it is not a luxury, it is essential for our own peace and mental stability, it is essential for human survival.
The XIV Dalai Lama
We cannot change the past, but we can change our attitude toward it. Uproot guilt and plant forgiveness. Tear out arrogance and seed humility. Exchange love for hate—thereby making the present comfortable and the future promising.
Maya Angel
Bullets cannot be recalled. They cannot be uninvented. But they can be taken out of the gun.
Martin Amis
It takes 20 years or more of peace to make a man; it takes only 20 seconds to destroy him.
King Baudouin I of Belgium
Conflict is inevitable, but combat optional.
Max Lucado
The soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.
Douglas MacArthur
Unconditional war can no longer lead to unconditional victory. It can no longer serve to settle disputes. It can no longer be of concern to great powers alone. For a nuclear disaster, spread by winds and waters and fear, could well engulf the great and the small, the rich and the poor, the committed and the uncommitted alike. Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy
The real differences around the world today are not between Jews and Arabs; Protestants and Catholics; Muslims, Croats, and Serbs. The real differences are between those who embrace peace and those who would destroy it; between those who look to the future and those who cling to the past; between those who open their arms and those who are determined to clench their fists.
Bill Clinton
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
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught up in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
War does not determine who is right—only who is left.
Bertrand Russell
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 people are fed, and where individuals and nations are free.
The XIV Dalai Lama
You can’t separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.
Malcolm X
We will not build a peaceful world by following a negative path. It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it. We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war but on the positive affirmation of peace. We must see that peace represents a sweeter music, a cosmic melody, that is far superior to the discords of war. Somehow we must transform the dynamics of the world power struggle from the negative nuclear arms race, which no one can win, to a positive contest to harness humanity’s creative genius for the purpose of making peace and prosperity a reality for all the nations of the world. In short, we must shift the arms race into a peace race.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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 Vandehaar
If there is to be peace in the world,
There must be peace in the nations,
If there is to be peace in the nations,
There must be peace in the cities.
If there is to be peace in the cities,
There must be peace between neighbors.
If there is to be peace between neighbors,
There must be peace in the home.
If there is to be peace in the home,
There must be peace in the heart.
Lao Tzu (570-490 B.C.)
The earth is but one country and mankind its citizens.
Baha’ullah
This is the way of peace: Overcome evil with good, falsehood with truth, and hatred with love.
Peace Pilgrim
All works of love are works of peace.
Mother Tereza
Lead me from death to life, from falsehood to truth;
Lead me from despair to hope, from fear to trust;
Lead me from hate to love, from war to peace;
Let peace fill our heart, our world, our universe.
Satish Kumar, “Prayer for Peace” (ex-Jain monk)
We have flown the air like birds and swum the sea like fishes, but have yet to learn the simple act of walking the earth as brothers.
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.
Peace and Animals
Human beings, indeed all sentient beings, have the right to pursue happiness and live in peace and freedom.
The XIV Dalai Lama
True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. Makind’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
Until he extends the circle of compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace.
Albert Schweitzer
Putting Peace into Effect
Better than a thousand hollow words, is one word that brings peace.
Buddha
Peace is not the product of a victory or 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 Hammerstein II
When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end they always fall—think of it, ALWAYS!
Mohandas Gandhi
Action is the antidote to despair.
Joan Baez
We must be the change we wish to see.
Mohandas Gandhi
To know what is right and not to do it is the worst cowardice.
Confucius
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, Jr.
[I]t isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn’t enough to believe in it. One must work for it.
Eleanor Roosevelt
The greatest danger to our future is apathy.
Jane Goodall
When you least expect it, someone may actually listen to what you have to say.
Maggie Kuhn
Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.
Mohandas Gandhi
If you think you’re too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito in the room.
Anita Koddick
One must care about a world we will never see.
Bertrand Russell
A note on the sexist language in some of these quotations: this problem occurs in many statements written before sexism in language came under extensive scrutiny, and so the quotations are reproduced, with the understanding that the authors probably intended to refer to females as well as to males. We should not favour sexist language in our own writings, but perhaps we should also not censor or rewrite significant historical thoughts that are guilty of conforming to the linguistic conventions of their times.
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