SCHOLAR ISLAND

"Shall I not inform you of a better act than fasting, alms, and prayers? Making peace between one another: enmity and malice tear up heavenly rewards by the roots."

                Muhammed (Sayings of Muhammed)

"Such subtle covenants shall be made

Till peace itself is war in masquerade."

Dryden

THERE IS A HEROISM THAT ACCRUES TO THOSE WHO KNOW HOW TO STAND DOWN.

"Mankind will never see an end of trouble until....lovers of Wisdom come to hold political power, or the holders of power....become lovers of Wisdom."

-Plato

"Lies and lethargies police the world

In its periods of peace. What pain taught

Is soon forgotten; we celebrate

What ought to happen as if it were done,

Are blinded by our boasts. Then back they come,

The fears that we fear."

-W.H. Auden    The Age of Anxiety

"People who hope to push the fight for the abolition of war to a successful conclusion must bring to their task the same qualities which won the fight for the abolition of slavery: moral conviction, patience, objectivity, and willingness to compromise. Those who fought against slavery two hundred years ago made a historic compromise which opened the way to their victory; they decided to concentrate their efforts upon the prohibition of the slave trade and to leave the total abolition of slavery to their successors in another generation. They saw that the slave trade was a more glaring evil than slavery itself and more vulnerable to political attack. They were able to mobilize against the slave trade a coalition of moral and economic interests which could not at that time have been brought together in the cause of total abolition. There is a lesson here for the peace movements of total abolition. There is a lesson here for the peace movements of today. The ultimate aim of peace movements is the total abolition of war. All war is evil, but the use of nuclear weapons is a more glaring evil, and the abolition of nuclear weapons is a more practical political objective than the abolition of war. Modern pacifists, like the Quakers of the eighteenth century, would be well advised to attack the more vulnerable evil first. After we have succeeded in abolishing nuclear weapons, the abolition of war may become a feasible objective for later generations, but from here it is out of sight. "

Freeman Dyson

-The Scientist As Rebel

-

"The outstanding feature of our time is insecurity. Epochs of this character-witness the Reformation and the French Revolution-have always been unfavorable to reason and tolerance; they have therefore been epochs in which dictatorship has its opportunity. And men always feel insecure when their privileges are challenged. They are not prepared to accept the invasion of their wonted routines. They seek to make their private claims universal rights; and those who provide them with the means of enforcing their claims are regarded as their saviors. The limits of men's faith in a reason which disturbs their established expectations are more narrow than they care to admit. Yet such disturbance always comes in an age of economic contraction. Whenever, historically, the economic forces of society cannot contain themselves within the political forms-as, once more, in the Reformation and the French Revolution-we have moved into an epoch of war and revolution."

-Harold J. Laski  "The Challenge of Our Times," Autumn 1939

"The world will never have lasting peace so long as men reserve for war the finest human qualities. Peace, no less than war, requires idealism and self-sacrifice and a righteous and dynamic faith."

-John Foster Dulles

The ONLY Way to Peace

   "Picture a hall of religions where all nations and races assemble together worshiping God in wisdom and perception even as Jesus did. Behold, in the hall of salvation, Krishna, Rama, Vyasa, Buddha, Christ, Zoroaster, Mohammed, Shankara, Chaitanya, Babaji, Lahiri Mahassya, Sri Yukteswarji, Saint Francis, and liberated saints of all religions, feeling God in the same way as unending, eternal, ever-new joy.

   Behold the earth as a big house, where the family of all nations recognizes God as the Father, and all races as His children. Behold the world as a kingdom centrally heated by the sun, lighted by the same moon, decorated by the same stars, sustained by the same air and sunshine, the same food and water. Behold all human bodies similarly sensitive to pain and gunshot wounds. Listen to the language of one thought behind all human tongues; behold the same human peculiarities.

   Now, seeing all the above things, would you like to preach the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of all nations-a universal religion, universal method of contacting god, universal auxiliary language, and inter-national understanding-or would you prefer the doctrine of race hatred. Nordic supremacy complex, Aryan egotism, dictatorships....industrial selfishness....concentration of all national wealth on armaments...unbalanced division of wealth giving birth to national greed and wars....isms of religion,  dividing Protestants and Catholics though they are followers of the same Christ? Modern war, which is so evil-so much more unimaginably inhuman and cruel than all other past wars-and which is super-advanced in the art of murder and tortured lingering death, has caused many thousands of parentless children crying for food amid the rain of bombs and choking gases and shrapnel stabbing shells..."

Paramahansa Yogananda

"Passive resistance is an all-sided sword; it can be used anyhow; it blesses him who uses it and him against whom it is used  without drawing a drop of blood; it produces far-reaching results. It never rusts and cannot be stolen. Competition between passive resisters does not exhaust them. The sword of passive resistance does not require a scabbard and one cannot be forcibly dispossessed of it."

-Mahatma Gandhi

"We have to study aggression and posturing. It's like a magic trick, if you see somebody do a magic trick you've wowed by it. If you understand how the trick is done, it's suddenly not so potent. It's the same way with aggression. You've got to study it, you have to experience it, and then when it actually happens it no longer astounds you. you are able to deal with it calmly."

-Lt Colonel Dave Grossman

"If we are to build for lasting peace, we must abandon the nineteenth-century conception that the road to peace lies through a nicely poised balance of power. Again and again cold experience has taught us that no peace dependent upon a balance of power lasts. If we would build upon twentieth-century reality, we must throw the balance of power theory out of the window."

-Francis B. Sayre

"Birth control, family planning and population limitation are most important in any effort to bring real peace into the world."

-margaret Sanger

"Peace is not a relationship of Nations. It is a condition of mind brought about by a serenity of soul. Lasting peace can come only to peaceful people."

-Horace E. De Lisser

"Anything that encourages the growth of emotional ties between men must operate against war."

-Sigmund Freud

"If (another) war is to be prevented, there must be a clearly expressed willingness to go to war for certain ends, but not for any others. These ends should be resistance to aggression anywhere and against anyone, and as soon as possible this purpose should receive its appropriate organization in an international government. Wars will cease when, and only when, it becomes evident beyond reasonable doubt that in any war the aggressor will be defeated."

-Bertrand Russell "The Future of Pacifism," Winter 1943-44

"Were half the power that fills the world with

   terror,

Were half the wealth bestowed on camps

   and courts,

Given to redeem the human mind from error

There were no need of arsenals or forts."

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"We are frequently told that we must sympathize with Israel because of the suffering of the Jews in Europe at the hands of the Nazis. I see in this suggestion no reason to perpetuate any suffering. What Israel is doing today can not be condoned; and to invoke the horrors of the past is to justify those of the present is gross hypocrisy. Not only does Israel condemn a vast number of refugees to misery; not only are many Arabs under occupation condemned to military rule; but also Israel condemns the Arab nations, only recently emerging from colonial status, to continuing impoverishment as military demands take precedence over national development."

-Lord Bertrand Russell's   Last Reflections on the Middle East. As his final message Bertrand Russell addressed the delegation at the International Conference of Parliamentarians in the Middle East Crisis, meeting in Cairo on Feb 2, 1979....

"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."

-British Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone

"Peace is not the elimination of the causes of war. Rather it is a mastery of great human forces and the creation of an environment in which human aims may be pursued constructively."

-James H. Case, jr.

"True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice."

-Martin Luther King Jr.

"Make peace with yourself, and heaven and earth will make peace with you. Endeavor to enter your own inner cell, and you will see the heavens; because the one and the other are one and the same, and when you enter one you see the two."

-St. Isaak of Syria

AN ETHICAL WAY TO END THE WAR IN IRAQ

The New York Times ,Thursday, May 17, 2007

Generosity Beats Domination as a Strategy for Homeland Security

1. THE WAR IS WRONG; REPENTANCE IS NECESSARY

The remedy for wrong-doing begins not only with the act of changing the path (stop funding war) but also with apology and repentance (in the Biblical sense repentance, conveys a return to one's highest self after one has gone astray and betrayed one's highest values). Therefore, we ask that our elected representatives go before the U.N. and acknowledge that it was wrong for the U.S. to invade Iraq, that hundreds of thousands of innocent people have been killed and wounded in the chain of events that our invasion precipitated. The war has also created over two million refugees. For the suffering and deaths that have come from this Invasion, we, the American people, must ask forgiveness since we overwhelmingly supported this great wrong when it began in 2003 and allowed it to continue. The scripture declares:

If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and forgive their sin, and will heal their land. (Chronicles 7:14 KJV)

It is not a sign of weakness to confess wrong-doing. We believe that it is only the spiritually strong who are able to do this. Such a confession will go far to restore the stature of America as a truly moral nation. And in repenting on behalf of all Americans, including those who are not religious. The president (or Congress) should acknowledge that this entire society has mistakenly adhered to the view that safety and security can be achieved through domination or control of others, but that a better path to safety and security is to treat others with generosity, kindness and genuine concern for their well being.

We urge the Congress to pass a resolution rejecting the strategy of domination and embracing the strategy of generosity, and calling upon the world's peoples to forgive our society for the destructive path it has followed. It should then convey this appeal for forgiveness on behalf of the American people to the peoples of the world.......

Network of Spiritual Progressives    When Jesus said "Love your enemies," we think he probably meant: Don't kill them.

full text at www.tikkun.org/iraqpeace

"God help our darkened and desecrated country and teach it to make its peace with the world and with itself."

-Thomas Mann

"In this so-called civilized world, children are physically, sexually and/or emotionally abused; they are the leaders of our future. When children are raised in such a hostile and violent environment, how can we hope for a harmonious future for all the people of this world?"

-Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

"What is Man, that he can give so much for war, so little for peace?"

John Masters (British Officer and author)

"Everywhere immense sums are deployed for war; everywhere are vast arsenals of arms and provisions worth thousands of millions of duros....If these enormous efforts were directed in favor of the arts of peace, how much happier would mankind be! Ah! Now is the time that underwater navigation and aerial navigation should arrive and equalize the forces of nations and bring an end to war, enthroning democracy every-where. If the insanity of war is real, how could universal peace not be possible!"

-Monturiol  (inventor of the submarine)

"Railroads and electric telegraphs will harmonize language, weights, measures, and currency....They will destroy ancient hatreds between nations and secure the supremacy of universal peace, sweeping away class antagonism....They will give rise to the harmony needed between the different classes within society."

-Cerda

"The telegraph binds together by a vital cord all the nations of the earth....it is impossible that old prejudices and hostilities should longer exist, while such an instrument has been created for an exchange of thought betweeen all the nations of the earth."

1858 The New Englander

"One wonders what a national policy of giving food to the hungry, medical care to the ill, agricultural aid and business capital to the poor would do in making for peace as compared to exporting munitions and armaments to the small and larger countries"

-Jack Willcuts  (Quaker)

"Our sages say: "Seek peace in your own place, " You cannot find peace anywhere save in your own self. In the psalm we read: "There is no peace in my bones because of my sin." When a man has made peace within himself, he will be able to make peace in the world."

Rabbi Bunam

"The problem basically is theological and involves a spiritual recrudence, an improvement of human character that will synchronize with our almost matchless advances in science, art, literature and all material and cultural developments of the past two thousand years. It must be of the spirit if we are to save the flesh."

General Douglas MacArthur

"We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom."

-Dwight D. Eisenhower

"Some people think it's a miracle to walk on water. I think it is a miracle to walk on the earth in peace."

-Thich Nhat Hahn

"The images of peace are ephemeral. The language of peace is subtle. The reasons for peace, the definitions of peace, the very idea of peace have to be invented again and again.....In a time of destruction, create something. A poem. A parade. A community. A school. A vow. A moral principle. One peaceful moment."

-Maxine Hong Kingston

The Fifth Book of Peace

"World peace means a peace of bread, The first word in a war is spoken by the guns-but the last word has always been spoken by bread...."

Herbert Hoover (May 1943)

"They have not wanted "Peace" at all; they have wanted to be spared war-as though the absence of war was the same thing as peace."

Dorothy Thompson

"With all my heart I believe that the world's present system of sovereign nations can lead only to barbarism, war and inhumanity, and that only world law can assure progress towards a civilized peaceful community."

Albert Einstein

"Half a century ago, in July 1955, Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein issued an extraordinary appeal to the people of the world, asking them "to set aside" the strong feelings they have about many issues and to consider themselves "only as members of a biological species which has had a remarkable history, and whose disappearance none of can desire." The choice facing the world is "stark and dreadful and inescapable: shall we put an end to the human race; of shall mankind renounce war?"

Noam Chomsky

Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy

"All the powerful governments of the world in the earnest hope that they may agree to allow their citizens to survive. We are speaking not as members of this or that nation, continent or creed, but as human beings, members of the species man, whose continued existence is in doubt.....Shall we choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? We appeal, as human beings , to human beings; Remember your humanity and forget the rest."

Albert Einstein & Bertrand Russell

"The future of both peace and civilization depend upon understanding and cooperation among the political, spiritual and intellectual leaders of the world's major civilizations."

-Huntington

The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order

"As nations are torn apart and restructured, as instabilities and threats of war erupt, we shall be called upon to invent wholly new political forms or' containers' to bring a semblance of order to the world-a world in which the nation-state has become, for many purposes, a dangerous anachronism."

-Alvin Toffler

The Third Wave

"If another war is to be prevented, there must be a clearly expressed willingness to go to war for certain ends, but not for any others. These ends should be resistance to aggression anywhere and against anyone, and as soon as possible this purpose should receive its appropriate organization in an international government. Wars will cease when, and only when, it becomes evident beyond reasonable doubt that in any war the aggressor will be defeated."

-Bertrand Russell    "The Future of Pacifism," Winter 1943-4

"What we demand is nothing peculiar to ourselves. It is that the world be made fit and safe to live in, and particularly that it be made safe for every peace-loving nation which, like our own, wishes to live its own life, determine its own institutions, be assured of justice and fair dealing by the other peoples of the world as against force and selfish aggression. For our own part, we see very clearly that unless justice be done to others it will not be done to us. The program of the world's peace, therefore, is our program."

Woodrow Wilson

"Peace is indeed the absence of war, but it is more than that. It is more than the temporary armed tranquility of the status quo. Like good health, it is indefinable, appreciated most when it is lost. But as the object of men’s hopes in every age, it implies a trust in brotherhood, a chance to live creatively, free from want and fear."

Carly Mydams & Shelley Mydans

The Violent Peace

"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

"Abolition of war is no longer an ethical question to be pondered solely by learned philosophers and ecclesiastics, but a hard core one for decision of the masses whose survival is the issue. Many will tell you with mockery and ridicule that the abolition of war can only be a dream…..that is the vague imaginings of a visionary. But we must go on or we will go under! We must have new thoughts, new ideas, new concepts. We must break out of the straitjacket of the past. We must have sufficient imaginations and courage to translate the universal wish for peace-which is rapidly become a universal necessity-into actuality."

Douglas MacArthur (General , USA)

"As man faces the truth and begins to appreciate that all humanity, ney all creation, is one, the problem of wars will commence to disappear."

Meher Baba

"The only alternative to war and its suffering is seen to be to stop hating and to love, to stop wanting and to give, to stop dominating and to serve."

Meher Baba

"I would have lots of fights if I had another feller to fight ‘em for me. But since I got to do my own fightin’, I try not to make trouble. Same with everybody. Make ‘em do their own fightin’"—and you do away with fightin’."

Woody Guthrie

"Gurdjieff, when once asked if wars could be stopped, said: Yes. But man must change himself so that certain vibrations do not make him violent. Wars are not caused by Man. The sources are extra-terrestrial-such as two planets crossing each other and causing a tension, a certain vibration. Mechanical mankind translates this vibration into violent emotions and so war results. If man became more conscious, he might, instead, receive energy in the form of increased consciousness from these vibrations."

Nicoll’s Commentaries (Vol 4p1238)

"There is no more suicidal doctrine than what has prevailed in my lifetime the notion that no one has a right to interfere with the internal affairs of another country….how small would have been the cost in lives and property and every kind of cultural value, if Mussolini had been nipped in the bud long before he played the part of the ape that opened the cage for the tiger Hitler.:

Bernard Berenson

"Say no to peace if what

they mean by peace

is the quiet misery

of hunger

the frozen stillness

of fear

the silence of

broken spirits

the unborn hopes

of the oppressed

Tell them that peace

Is the shouting of

Children at play

The babble of tongues

Set free

The thunder of

Dancing feet

And a father’s voice singing."

Brian Wren

"Well, this is what we must overcome first of all. Our poisoned hearts must be cured. And the most difficult battle to be won against the enemy in the future must be fought within ourselves, with an exceptional effort that will transform our appetite for hatred into a desire for justice."

Albert Camus

"It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if gives it no thought, not to give practically his support."

-Henry David Thoreau

"If men understood each other, they will become as it were one race, one people, one household, one School of God….and then there will be universal Peace over the whole world, hatred and the causes of hatred will be done away, and all dissension between men. For there will be no grounds for dissenting when men have the same Truths clearly presented to their eyes."

Jon Amos Comenius

The Way of Light (1668)

"World peace involves the private renunciation of war on the part of the immense majority, but along with this, it involves an unavowed readiness to submit to being the booty of others who do not renounce it."

Oswald Spengler

"Peace through arms, Peace through disarmament. Through strong defense. Condemnations, Economic sanctions. Prayer. All the notions have been embraced and scorned."

Leonard A. Cole

Eleventh Plague

   "Why should there always be this internecine and implacable warfare between us?" said the Wolves to the Sheep. "Those evil-disposed Dogs have much to answer for. They always bark whenever we approach you, and attack us before we have done any harm. If you would only dismiss them from your heels, there might soon be treaties of peace and of reconciliation between us." The Sheep, poor silly creatures! were easily beguiled, and dismissed the Dogs. The Wolves destroyed the flock at their own pleasure."

Aesop

    "The Wolves thus addressed the Sheep-dogs: "Why should you, who are like us in so many things, not be entirely of one mind with us, and live with us as brothers should? We differ from you in one point only. We live in freedom, but you bow down to, and slave for, men; who, in return for your services, flog you with whips, and put collars on your necks. They make you also guard their sheep, and while they eat the mutton throw only the bones to you. If you will be persuaded by us, you will give us the sheep, and we will enjoy them in common, till we all are surfeited." The Dogs listened favorably to these proposals, and entering the den of the Wolves, they were set upon and torn to pieces."

Aesop

"The creation of an authoritative all-powerful world order is the ultimate end towards which we must strive. Unless some effective world super-government can be set up and brought quickly into action, the prospects for peace and human progress are dark and doubtful."

Winston Churchill

"The world is so interdependent, much more interdependent than ever before. National peace, national security and national progress depend primarily on international peace, international security, and the development of international resources."

U Thant

"Peace is that state in which fear of any kind is unknown. But Joy is a positive thing; in Joy….something goes out from oneself to the universe, a warm, possessive effluence of love. There may be Peace without Joy, and Joy without Peace, but the two combined make happiness."

Lord Tweedsmuir

"Almost all of us long for peace and freedom; but very few of us have much enthusiasm for the thoughts, feelings, and actions that make for peace and freedom."

Aldous Huxley

"You want peace. There is no one who does not want peace. Yet there is something else in you that wants the drama, wants the conflict. You may not be able to feel it at this moment. You may have to wait for a situation or even just a thought that triggers a reaction in you: someone accusing you of this or that, no acknowledging you, encroaching on your territory, questioning the way you do things, an argument about money....Can you then feel the enormous surge of force moving through you, the fear, perhaps being masked by anger or hostility? Can you hear your own voice becoming harsh or shrill, or louder and a few octaves lower? Can you be aware of your mind racing to defend its position, justify, attack, blame? In other words, can you awaken at that moment of unconsciousness? Can you feel that there is something in you that is at war, something that feels threatened and wants to survive at all cost, that needs the drama in order to assert its identity as the victorious character within that theatrical production? Can you feel there is something in you that would rather be right than at peace?"
-Eckhart Tolle

A New Earth

"It takes two to make peace."

John F. Kennedy

"Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace."

Albert Schweitzer

"To the main road there is only one hope: we must return to the main road from which we have wandered. We must substitute for propaganda the power of understanding the truth that is really true; for the patriotism current today, the noble kind of patriotism which aims at ends that are worthy of the whole of mankind; for idolized nationalisms, a humanity with a common civilization; for the condition into which we have plunged, a restored faith in the civilized man; for the preoccupation with the problems of living, a concern with the processes and ideals of true civilizations; for a mentality stripped of all true spirituality, a faith in the possibility of progress."

Albert Schweitzer

The grim fact is that we prepare for war like precocious giants and for peace like retarded pygmies."

Lester B. Pearson

"Five great enemies to peace inhabit with us: viz. avarice, ambition, envy, anger, and pride. If those enemies were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace."

Petrarch

Peace is not the normal state on this planet-only 300 years of peace in recorded History.

Russia has been at war 46 of every 100 years.

England 56 of every 100 years and Spain even more

Not 1 year of peace this century…(One professor calculates 23 days of peace in the 20^th century)

"A generation that hates war will not bring peace. A generation that loves peace will bring peace."

"Mr. Chairman, the Peace Academy is an idea whose time has come at last. Personally, I believe that there is a need for training the best and brightest Americans in the processes of peace and conflict resolution. We take many of our most intelligent High School graduates and send them to military academies to learn the art of waging war. Why can’t we make it possible for them to learn how to wage peace? To those who say we can’t afford to have an Academy of Peace—even a modest one as proposed by the commission—I would respond that we can’t afford not to have one. For if there is one thing that I know, is that wars are started in the hearts and minds of men, and if we want to prevent future wars we can only do it by promoting peace in the hearts and minds of men. I strongly urge the Subcommittee to give favorable consideration to S.1889."

U.S. Senator Spark Matsunaga

(S 1889 is a bill to establish the U.S. Academy of Peace. This idea has surfaced many times since the beginning of our country. During the last 50 years, more than 140 bills have been introduced in Congress calling for the establishment of such an agency ….We now have a silly little organization calling it self the Academy of Peace….) aa

"How beautiful upon the mountains,

How beautiful upon the downs,

How beautiful in the village post-office

On the pavements of towns-

How beautiful in the huge print of newspapers,

Beautiful while telegraph wires hum,

While telephone bells wildly jingle,

The news that peace has come-

That peace has come at last-

That all wars cease.

How beautiful upon the mountains are the footsteps of the messengers of peace!"

Alice Duer Miller

The while Cliffs

"Non-violence is a powerful and just weapon. It is a weapon unique in history, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals."

Martin Luther King Jr.

"If five percent of the people worked for peace, peace would prevail."

Albert Einstein

"Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love."

Martin Luther King Jr

"I have an implicit faith that mankind can only be saved through non-violence, which is the central teaching of the Bible, as I have understood the bible."

Mahatma Gandhi

"The absolute pacifist is a bad citizen; times come when force must be used to uphold right, justice, and ideals."

Alfred North Whitehead

"In my humble opinion, non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good. But in the past, non-co-operation has been deliberately expressed in violence to the evildoer. I am endeavoring to show to my countrymen that violent non-cooperation only multiples evil and that as evil can only be sustained by violence. Withdrawal of support of evil requires complete abstention from violence. Non-violence implies voluntary submission to the penalty for non-cooperation with evil."

Mahatma Gandhi

"Between violence and cowardly flight I can only prefer violence to cowardice."

Mahatma Gandhi

"The humanitarian and pacifist idea will perhaps be excellent on the day when the man superior to all others will have conquered and subjugated the world, in such a way that he becomes the sole master of the earth, First then, battle; and afterwards, perhaps , pacifism."

Adolf Hitler

"Pacifism is simply undisguised cowardice."

Adolf Hitler

"A pacifist is as surely a traitor to his country and to humanity as is the most brutal wrongdoer."

Theodore Roosevelt

   "Pacifism as a political cause has suffered from the fact that its greatest leaders have been men of genius. People of outstanding genius, transcending the beliefs and loyalties of the tribe in which they happen to be born, tend naturally toward pacifism. Unfortunately, people of genius do not usually make good politicians. Gandhi was one of the rare exceptions. Genius and the art of political compromise do not sit easily together. Except for Gandhi, the great historic figures of pacifism have been prophets rather than politicians. Jesus in Judea, Tolstoy in Russia, Einstein in Germany, each in turn has set for mankind a higher standard than political movements can follow."

-Freeman Dyson

the Scientist As Rebel

"No pacifists or communists are going to govern this country. If they try it there will be seven million men like you rise up and strangle them. Pacifists? Hell, I’m a pacifist, but I always have a club behind my back."

General Smedley Butler  USMC  (NYT Aug 21,1931)

"I would like you (the British) to lay down the arms you have as being useless for saving you or humanity, you will invite Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini to take what they want of the countries you call your possessions….If those gentlemen choose to occupy your homes, you will vacate them. If they do not give you free passage but, you will allow yourselves, man, woman and child to be slaughtered, but you will refuse to owe allegiance to them."

Gandhi (open letter, Non-Violence in Peace & War 1942)

"Non-violence is a flop. The only bigger flop is violence."

Joan Baez

"Make yourself into a sheep, and you’ll meet a wolf nearby."

Russian proverb

"Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn him the other also."

Matthew  New Testament

"The peace of the man who has forsworn the use of the bullet seems to me not quite peace, but a canting impotence."

Emerson

"One ought not to return injustice, nor do evil to anybody in the world, no matter what one may have suffered from the."

Socrates in Plato’s Crito (4^th century B.C.)\

Elihu Burritt (1810-1879), one of the most remarkable Americans of the nineteenth century. He founded the first secular pacifist organization to rally workers and farmers to fight against war. His League of Universal Brotherhood, created in 1847 during the Mexican War, was also the first secular peace group to organize internationally.

   Burritt, born in poverty, the son of a cobbler, had an unquenchable thirst for learning and for helping humanity. Denied schooling, he was apprenticed as a boy to the village blacksmith and made smithing his lifelong trade. With no one's help he acquired a working knowledge of some forty languages. If reaching out to other peoples is a path to peace. none was better equipped for it than the many-tongued Burritt. His great intelligence and strength of character enabled him to master many fields of knowledge. While still a young man, he gave ardent support to a wide range of humanitarian causes. He never stopped thinking of himself as an artisan and devoted himself to whatever would benefit the working class. He continued to work at the forge long after he had won fame as "the Learned Black-smith."

Milton Meltzer

Ain't Gonna Study War No More

"Believing all war to be inconsistent with the spirit of Christianity, and destructive to the best interests of mankind. I do hereby pledge myself never to enlist or enter into any army or navy, or to yield any voluntary support or sanction in the preparation for or prosecution of any war, by whomsoever, for whatsoever proposed, declared, or waged. And I do hereby associate myself with all persons, of whatever country, condition, or color, who have signed, or shall hereafter sign this pledge, in a "League of Universal Brotherhood"; whose object shall be to employ all legitimate and moral means for the abolition of all war and all spirit, and all the manifestation of war, through out the world; for the abolition of all restrictions upon international correspondence and friendly intercourse, and of whatever else tends to make enemies of nations, or prevents their fusion into one peaceful brotherhood; for the abolition of all institutions and customs which do not recognize the image of God and a human brother in every man of whatever clime, color, or condition of humanity."

Elihuu Burritt, the "Learned Blacksmith," pioneered many techniques-the peace pledge, mass demonstrations, strikes-to rally people of America and abroad against any kind of war.

Pacifists who refuse to investigate the economic causes of war make common cause with gun sellers."

Ezra Pound

"Wars are usually inaugurated by the upper and governing classes for the purpose of personal or national ambition, preferment or pride, and the mutilation, torture and death of men from the lower and laboring classes is less an object of consideration that the money which is required for their equipment and support as soldiers"

Universal Peace Union  founded in 1866 by Alfred Love

That was then

"there is a small, highly organized group of radicals....who are determined to destroy what they call "the system"

-Billy Graham after meeting with J. Edgar Hoover during the Vietnam War

This is Now

THE DOVES OF YESTERYEAR FLY OFF TO A DIFFERENT WAR….New York Times, Sun ,April 18,1999…."In the fall of 1968, Bill Clinton was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford, critical of the Vietnam War….Tony Blair was also in the anti-war group….

"By the expenditure of all the resources of the commonwealth in military preparations against each other, by the devastations occasioned by war, and still more by the necessity of holding themselves continually in readiness for it, the full development of the capacities of mankind are undoubtedly retarded in their progress; but, on the other hand, the very evils which thus arise, compel men to find out means against them. A law of equilibrium is thus discovered for the regulation of the really wholesome antagonisms of contiguous States as it springs up out of their freedom; and a united power, giving emphasis to this law, is constituted, whereby there is introduced a universal condition of public security among the nations."

Kant

Taken from Why War Ideology, Theory & History by Keith L. Nelson & Spencer C. Olin Jr.

Book :The Adventures of the Good Soldier Svejk (Schweik) by Jaroslav Hasek *

"He is a universal species-a good-natured, kind-hearted, naïve-but-cunning little man who confounds confusion by following verbatim the letter of the law, reducing bureaucrats, politicians and militarists to absurdity by taking them seriously. He wants to do everything right and always does everything wrong, He is forever in trouble but nothing perturbs his philosophical state of mine. Deep down in his heart he knows he is a good citizen who really does the right thing though others may not agree."

Josep Weshsberg

Prague the Mystical City

"When a soldier begins to think, he is no longer a soldier but a nuisance, a damned civilian."

Schweik

"Everybody may make a mistake, and the more he thinks about something, the more mistakes he makes."

Schweik

(Schweik may even be commanding a nuclear submarine nowadays)

"Humanity is people like you and me. When you tell me it isn’t ready for peace, it means that you yourself first of all are not ready to choose peace, because its ways displease you. But in refusing to decide for peace, you vote totally for it. Everything depends on each one of us . And we are at the point where it is becoming difficult to conceal it. Our alibis no longer deceive anyone but ourselves."

Denis de Rougemont

The Last Trump

"On that future day when our satellite vessels are circling Earth; when men manning an orbital station can view our planet against the star-studded blackness of infinity as but a planet among planets; on that day, I say, fratricidal war will be banished from the star on which we live….humanity will then be prepared to enter the second phase of its long, hitherto only Tellurian history-the cosmic age."

Werner Von Braun

"Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice."

Baruch Spinoza

"Let the officers and directors of our armament factories, our gun builders and munitions makers and shipbuilders all be conscripted-to get $30 a month, the same wage as the lads in the trenches. Give capital thirty days to think it over and you will learn by that time there will be no war. That will stop the racket-that, and nothing else."

General Smedley Butler USMC (1934)

(see WAR IS A RACKET)

"Most people think of peace as a state of Nothing Bad Happening, or nothing much happening. Yet if Peace is to overtake us and make us the gift of serenity and well-being, it will have to be the state of something good happening."

E.B. White

"Peace hath higher tests of manhood/than battle ever knew."

John Greenleaf Whittier

"The Hero" (1853)

"My aunt once said the world would never find peace until men fell at their women’s feet and asked for forgiveness."

Jack Kerouac

On the Road

"If there is any peace it will come through being, not having."

Henry Miller

The Wisdom of the Heart

"Peace demands more, not less, from a people. Peace lacks the clarity of purpose and the cadence of war. War is scripted: peace is improvisation."

Richard M. Nixon

"We want to get rid of the militarist not simply because he hurts and kills, but because he is an intolerable thick-voiced blockhead who stand hectoring and blustering in our way to achievement."

H.G. Wells

The Outline of History

"As new ideas do battle, like a play of forces, with the old for the minds of men and of women, we need some new names to go with them. John Somerville has already proposed ‘Omnicide’ (all-killing) as the label to succeed mere genocide when applied to nuclear war. I suggest that its opposite, the love of life, be called "amorvitae’ and that we rally to its banner, as we in fact did in marching up Fifth Avenue now to Central Park. We are marching into all the corridors of power on behalf of the powerless. We are marching for our abused planet. We are marching through the synapses of your mind. Can you hear us?"

‘All we are saying is

Give Peace a chance.

While we still have that chance."

James George

"There always comes a moment when people give up struggling and tearing each other apart, willing at last to like each other for what they are. it's the kingdom of heaven."

Albert Camus

   "Recognize the ego for what it is: a collective dysfunction, the insanity of the human mind. When you recognize it for what it is, you no longer misperceive it as somebody's identity. Once you see the ego for what it  is, it becomes much easier to remain nonreactive toward it. You don't take it personally anymore. There is no complaining, blaming, accusing, or making wrong. Nobody is wrong, It is the ego in someone, that's all. Compassion arises when you recognize that all are suffering from the same sickness of the mind, some more acutely than others. You do not fuel the drama anymore that is part of all egoic relationships. What is its fuel? Reactivity. The ego thrives on it."

-Eckhart Tolle

A New Earth

"Genuine Peace must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts. It must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation. For peace is a process-a way of solving problems."

John F. Kennedy

"Since it has become the fashion for everyone to present to the public a sure cure of world war, we hereby offer our never-fail plan for ending wars of all kinds.

1. Put all of the kings, presidents, and congressmen who advocate war, state and city officials who are in favor of war, in the front ranks of the military forces. Along with them, put all the editors who advocate war, and all the preachers who pray for war.

2. If a referendum on the question of war or peace be put before the people, draft for military service all who vote for war, and exempt all who are opposed to war. Those who want war should do their own.

3. Confiscate for military use, all the property of those who vote for war, or engage in battle.

4. Pay no wages or salaries to any soldier, sailor, or officer."

Queen Silver (teenage radical in her Magazine QSM..Shortly before WWI)

"World peace involves the private renunciation of war on the part of the immense majority, but along with this, it involves and unavowed readiness to submit to being the booty of others who do not renounce it. It begins with the state-destroying wish for universal reconciliation, and it ends in nobody moving a finger so long as misfortune touches only his neighbor."

Oswald Spengler

The Decline of the West

  Dialogue and Peace by Martin Buber

"Hearkening to the human voice, where it speaks forth unfalsified, and replying to it, this above all is what is needed today. The busy noise of the hour must no longer drown out the Vox Humana, the essence of the human which has become a voice. This voice must not only be listened to, it must be answered and led out of lonely monologue into the awakening dialogue of the peoples. Peoples must engage in talk with one another through their truly human men if the great peace is to appear and the devastated life of the earth renew itself.

   The great peace is something essentially different from the absence of war. 

   There is an early mural in the town hall of Siena in which the civic names are assembled. Worthy and conscious of their worth, the women sit, except one in their midst who towers above the est. This woman is marked not by dignity but rather by composed majesty. Three letters announce her name: Pax. She represents the great peace I have in mind. This peace does not signify that what men call war no longer exists now that it holds sway-that means too little to enable one to understand this serenity. Something new exists, now really exists, greater and mightier than war. Human passions flow into war as the waters into the sea, and war disposes of them as it likes. But these passions must enter into the great peace as ore into the fire that melts and transforms it. Peoples will then build with one another. 

   The Sienese painter had glimpsed this majestic peace in his dream alone. He did not acquire the vision from historical reality, for it has never appeared there. What in history has been called peace has never, in fact, been aught other than an anxious or an illusory blissful pause between wars. But the womanly genius of the painter's dream is no mistress of interruptions but the queen of new and greater deeds. 

   May we, then, cherish the hope that the countenance which remained unknown to all previous history will shine forth on our late generation, apparently sunk irretrievably in disaster? Are we not accustomed to describe the world situation in which we have lived since the end of the Second World War no longer even as peace, but as the "cold" phase of a world war declared in permanence? In a situation which no longer even seeks to preserve the appearance of peace, is it not illusory enthusiasm to speak of a great peace, which has never existed, being with reach?

   It is the depth of our crisis that allows us to hope for this. Ours is not the historically familiar malady in the life of peoples which can eventuate in a comfortable recovery. Primal forces are now being summoned to take an active part in an unrepeatable decision between extinction and rebirth. War has not produced this crisis; it is, rather, the crisis of man which has brought forth the total war and the unreal peace which followed.

   War has always had an adversary who hardly ever comes forward as such but does his work in the stillness. This adversary is speech, fulfilled speech, the speech of genuine conversation in which men understand one another and come to a mutual understanding. Already in primitive warfare fighting begins where men are no longer able to discuss with one another the subjects under dispute or submit them to mediation, but flee from speech with one another and in the speechlessness of slaughter seek what they suppose to be a decision, a judgment of God. War soon conquers speech and enslaves it in the service of its battle-cries. But where speech, be it ever so shy, moves from camp to camp, war is already called in question. Its cannons easily drown out the word: but when the word has become entirely soundless, and on this side and on that soundlessly bears into the hearts of men the intelligence that no human conflict can really be resolved through killing, not even through mass killing, then the human word has already begun to silence the cannonade.

   But it is just the relation of man to speech and to conversation that the crisis characteristic of our age has in particular tended to shatter. The man in crisis will no longer entrust his cause to conversation because its presupposition-trust- is lacking. This is the reason why the cold war which today goes by the name of peace has been able to overcome mankind. In every earlier period of peace the living word passed between man and man, time after time drawing the poison from the antagonism of interests and convictions so that these antagonisms did not degenerate into the absurdity of "no farther," into the madness of "men-wage-war". This living word of human dialogue that from time to time makes its flights until the madness smothers it, now seems to have become lifeless in the midst of the nonwar. The debates between statesmen conveyed to us by their radio no longer have anything in common with human conversation, the diplomats do not address one another but the faceless public. Even the congresses and conferences which convene in the name of mutual understanding lack the substance which alone can elevate the deliberations to genuine talk: candor and directness in address and answer. What is concentrated, then is only the universal condition in which men are no longer willing or no longer able to speak directly to their fellows. They are not able to speak directly because they no longer trust one another, and everybody knows that the other no longer trusts him. If anyone in the hubbub of contradictory talk happens to pause and take stock, he discovers that in his relations to others hardly anything persists that deserves to be called trust. 

   And yet this must be said again and again, it is just the depth of the crisis that empowers us to hope. Let us dare to grasp the situation with that great realism that surveys all the definable realities of public life, of which, indeed, public life appears to be composed, but is also aware of what is most real of all, albeit moving secretly in the depths-the latent healing and salvation the face of impending ruin. The power of turning that radically changes the situation, never reveals itself outside of crisis. This power begins to function when one, gripped by despair, instead of allowing himself to be submerged, calls forth his primal powers and accomplishes with them the turning of his very existence. It happens in this way both in the life  of the person and in that of the race. In its depths the crisis demands naked decision, no mere fluctuations between getting worse and getting better, but a decision between the decomposition and the renewal of the tissue.

   The crisis of man which has become apparent in our day announces itself most clearly as a crisis of trust, if we may employ, thus intensified, a concept of economics. You ask, trust in whom? But the question already contains a limitation not admissible here. It is simply trust that is increasingly lost to men or our time. And the crisis of speech is bound up with loss of trust in the closest possible fashion, for I can only speak to someone in the true sense of the term if I expect him to accept my word as genuine. Therefore, the fact that it is so difficult for present-day man to pray (note well: not to hold it to be true that there is a God, but to address Him) and the fact that it is so difficult for him to carry on a genuine talk with his fellowmen, are elements of a single set of facts. This lack of trust in Being, this incapacity for unreserved intercourse with the other, points to an innermost sickness of the sense of existence. One symptom of this sickness, and the most acute of all, is the one from which I have begun: that a genuine word cannot arise between the camps.

   Can such an illness be healed? I believe it can be. And it is out of this, my belief, that I speak to you. I have no proof for this belief. No belief can be proved; otherwise it would not be what is is, a great venture. Instead of offering proof, I appeal to that potential belief of each of my hearers which enables him to believe.

I there be a cure, where can the healing action start? Where must that existential turning begin which the healing powers, the powers of salvation in the ground of the crisis, await?

   That peoples can no longer carry on authentic dialogue with one another is not only the most acute symptom of the pathology of our time, it is also that which most urgently makes a demand of us. I believe, despite all, that the peoples in this hour can enter into dialogue, into a genuine dialogue with one another. In a genuine dialogue each of the partners, even when he stands in opposition to the other, heeds, affirms, and confirms his opponent as an existing other. Only so can conflict certainly not be eliminated from the world, but be humanly arbitrated and led toward its overcoming.

   To the  task of initiating this conversation those are inevitably called who carry on today within each people the battle against the antihuman. Those who build the great unknown front across mankind shall make it known by speaking unreservedly with one another, not overlooking what divides them but determine to bear this division in common.

   In opposition to them stands the element that profits from the divisions between the peoples, the contra-human in men, the sub-human, the enemy of man's will to become a true humanity.

   The name Satan means in Hebrew the hinderer. That is the correct designation for the anti-human in individuals in in the human race. Let us not allow this Satanic element in men to hinder us from realizing man! Let us release speech from its ban! Let us dare, despite all to trust!"

                                              Martin Buber(1952)

"....One afternoon I retold the remarkable and still pertinent episode about Mentor, one of my favorite characters from Greek mythology. As Homer rhapsodizes, when Odysseus sailed for Troy he left behind his uncle, Mentor, to care for his baby boy, Telemachus. Homer vividly describes how wise it was for a warrior to have the presence of mind to leave behind a trusted teacher with his son so the boy would have strong and soulful guidance until he returned from the wars. Ever since, Mentor's name has signified the wisdom of elders. For it was he and the goddess Athena who guided young Telemachus until the return of his father twenty years later. Even Telemachus' name signals something profoundly symbolic about the role of "mentoring," for its Greek roots, teleo-machia, means "the end of fighting" . One of the universal functions of a mentor is to take the war out of young men."

Phil Cousineau

Coincidence or Destiny?

   "It is now possible to defend pacifism by an appeal to biology which was formerly thought to align itself with militarism. The theory that higher species evolved in the course of evolution through a process of savage competition by which the strong overcame and eliminated the weak has been superseded by the view that co-operation plays a greater part than competition. Those species which are most sensitive to the needs of others and are most adaptable to changes in environment because of greater sensitivity to a wider range of existence are most likely to survive. According to Whitehead, "Any physical object which by its influence deteriorates its environment, commits suicide. This is true among nations as among animal organisms. The militaristic empires such as Assyria and Rome, where the old soldier was most admired, have had comparatively short careers; the some-what more pacific cultures, such as those of China and India, where the scholar or the holy man was most admired, have continued since the dawn of civilization. The two recent world wars have shown that those nations which are the least militaristic have the greatest power of survival."

Howard H. Brinton

Friends for 350 years

"We might as well have been throwing cream pies."

-Kurt Vonnegut, estimating the net effect of the antiwar movement on the course of the Vietnam War

"....Forgotten is the paradoxical fact that the foremost Pashtun leader in the struggle against British rule was a dedicated pacifist, Abdul Ghaffar Khan, once famous as the "frontier Gandhi." His followers, nicknamed the Red Shirts, had first to swear, "I shall never use violence. I shall not retaliate or take revenge, and shall forgive anyone who indulges in oppression and excesses against me." For upwards of two decades Ghaffar Khan and his Khudai Khidmatgar ('Servants of God") fought alongside Mahatma Gandhi and the Congress Party for a united, democratic and secular India. Nearly everybody who has looked into this history has been fascinated, moved and astonished. Mukilika Banerjee first heard of the Red Shirts in the 1990s while a graduate student in New Delhi. Impressed and curious, she settled on the frontier, learned Pushto, and managed to interview seventy surviving ex-Servants of God for her study, The Pathan Unarmed. She found that Ghaffar Khan's pacifism derived from his concept of Jihad, or holy war: "Nonviolent civil disobedience offered the chance of martyrdom in its purest form, since putting one's life conspicuously in one's enemy's hands was itself the key act, and death incurred in the process was not a defeat or a strategy: rather the act of witness to an enemy's injustice....In his recruiting speeches, therefore, (Ghaffar Khan) was offering to each and every Pathan not the mere possibility of death, but rather the opportunity of glorious sacrifice and martyrdom."

Karl E. Meyer

The Dust of Empire: The Race for Mastery in the Asian Heartland

"....In The Bacchae, Euripides posed a basic incompatibility between the warrior-king Pentheus and Dionysus, who is described as a "lover of Peace." Arthur Evans, in his book on Dionysus, argues that he is the antiwar god, citing among other things the fourth-century BCE Greek philosopher Diodorus's praise of Dionysus for founding festivals "everywhere" and "in general resolving the conflicts of nations and states, and in place of domestic strife and war....laying the grounds for concord and great peace. Dionysus could be violent, but not in a warrior's way. At their first encounter, Pentheus taunts Dionysus for his effeminacy: "Those long curls of yours show that you're no wrestler."

-Barbara Ehrenreich

Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy

"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 rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom, and for these ends to practice tolerance and life together in peace with one another as good neighbors and to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security, and to ensure by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest, and to employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples, have resolved to combine our efforts to accomplish our efforts to accomplish these aims. Accordingly our respective governments do hereby establish an international organization to be know as the United Nations."
San Francisco 1945

"International Law? I better call my lawyer."

President George W. Bush

"It is....essential that as the classic direct strategies for preserving the integrity of nations, the threat of attack or retaliation, lose their reality with the development of weapons which can destroy civilizations, and as the older defensive strategies have become totally out-moded by technical innovations, we should pay increasing attention to the indirect strategies for preserving our societies from domination or external rule. For it may be that in concepts like the non-violent defense of countries lies the key to the preservation of society in a world order that contains so many explosive new forms of power, physical, psychological and economic, that firearms will become too dangerous to use."

-Alastair Buchan (former Director of the Institute for Strategic Studies)

"The development of ne political philosophies and new insights into individual and group psychology, international systems of education, and the perfection of supra-national organizations are essential elements in the pursuit of peace; but the safety of mankind is too precariously balanced to allow us the luxury of long-term thinking and planning with the need for urgent action. The political revolution must begin soon if, as Pandit Nehru believed, the human spirit is to prevail over the nuclear weapon. The first signs that the revolution has begun will be the acceptance by the great powers of the risks-political and military-without which the most modest steps in arms control and disarmament are impossible."

-Lord Chalfon  (Britain's Minister of State for Disarmament  Encounter October 1966

   "The year 2007 marked Rumi's eight hundredth birthday and was declared "The Year of Rumi" by international cultural organization. An apostle of love, Rumi taught an Islam of the kind praised, also in 2007, by a special study of the RAND Corporation, Building Moderate Muslim Networks. The RAND document proposed a global alliance between the democracies and moderate Muslims, comparable to the cold war effort by Western governments that supported anti-Communist liberals and social democrats through central Asia to Southeast Asia could encircle and challenge radical Islam based in the core of Arab countries and Iran."

Stephen Schwartz

The Other Islam

"Does Sufism represent a path to global harmony today? It would be unseemly to make exaggerated claims for a metaphysical tradition that so persistently calls for modesty in the life of believers. And given that this chronicle has included many incidents of brutality against Sufis, it cannot be said the Sufi way is an easy one. for readers accustomed to the transcendent image of the Sufi gardens, lush with mystical pleasures, my account may seem dissonant and dismaying. The image of Hallaj-a martyr for the freedom of imagination-should remain alive in the heart of every Sufi. Currently, Sufism and moderate Islam in general appear as if hanged on an executioner's gibbet, awaiting further torture and final execution, scorned from all sides.
-Stephen Schwartz

The Other Islam

"Too many of us think (that peace) is impossible. Too many think it is unreal. But that is a dangerous, defeatist belief. it leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable, that mankind is doomed, that we are gripped by forces we cannot control. We need not accept that view. Our problems are manmade; therefore, they can be solved by man. and man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man's reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable, and we believe they can do it again. I am not referring to the absolute, infinite concept of universal peace and goodwill of which some fantasies and fanatics dream. I do not deny the value of hopes and dreams, but we merely invite discouragement and incredulity by making that our only and immediate goal.

   Let us focus instead on a more practical, more attainable peace, based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions-on a series of concrete actions and effective agreements which are in the interest of all concerned. There is no single, simple key to this peace; no grand or magic formula to be adopted by one or two powers. Genuine peace must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts. it must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation. For peace is a process-a way of solving problems."

-President John F. Kennedy  (speech at American University in June 1963)

"Monarchs ought to put to death the authors and instigators of war, as their sworn enemies and as dangers to their states."

-Elizabeth I Queen of England

   "If the capacity for disobedience constituted the beginning of human history, obedience might cause the end of human history. I am not speaking symbolically or poetically."

Erich Fromm

Beyond the Chains of Illusion

"In the tragic situation which confronts humanity, we feel that scientists should assemble in conference to appraise the perils that have arisen as a result of the development of weapons of mass destruction.....We are speaking on this occasion not as members of this or that nation, continent or creed, but as human beings, members of the species of man whose continued existence is still in doubt."

--Lord Bertrand Russell-Einstein manifesto (Read to a news conference in London in July 1955

"With both sides of this divided world in possession of unbelievably destructive weapons, mankind approaches a state where mutual annihilation becomes a possibility. No other fact of today's world equals this in importance. It colours everything we say, plan or do."

-President Eisenhower  1960 State of the Union message to Congress

"Social scientists particularly have to deal with questions in situations in which any sensible person would throw up his hands and go home. We can't afford to throw up our hands and go home, because there isn't any place to go! We have to face up to the problems of civil defense, we have to face up to the problems of arms control and disarmament. We have to build weapons which are fearful to think about while we negotiate with people whom we rally do not understand about issues which involve the continuation of the world as we know it."

-Adam Yarnmolisnsky (Robert McNamara's Special Assistant in the Defense Department

"O people. We created you equal from the union of a pair, male and female, and We made your races and tribes to GET TO BE ACQUAINTED and cooperate with each other."  Qur'an (49:13)
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Book: "The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History" by Phillip Bobbitt

OPPOSING WAR CRIMES COURT A DARK MOMENT FOR THE U.S by Holger Jensen….international editor of the Rocky Mountain News….Denver,Co

Book: "The Future of Peace" by Scott A. Hunt

Book: "Rising Up and Rising Down" by William Vollmann (3,298 pp)

Book: "Between Eden and Armageddon: The Future of World Religions, Violence, and Peacemaking" by Marc Gopin

Book: "Walking In The Way of Peace: Quaker Pacifism in the Seventeenth Century" by Meredith Baldwin Weddle

Book: "Cultures of Peace: The Hidden Side of History" by Elise Boulding

Book: "Unarmed Forces: The Transnational Movement to End the Cold War" by Matthew Evangelista

Book:  "Speak Up for Just War or Pacifism" by Paul Ramsey

Book: " The Giving and Taking of Life: Essay Ethical" by James Tunstead Burtchaell

Book: "Seeking Peace" by Johann Cristoph Arnold

Book: "The Art of Forgiveness, Loving kindness, and Peace" by Jack Kornfield

Book: "Hell, Healing, and Resistance: Veterans Speak" 

Book: "Unarmed Forces: The Trans-National Movement to End the Cold War" by Matthew Evangelista

Book: "The Better Angels of Our Nature" by steven Pinker

Book: "The Power of the People: Active Nonviolence in the United States" by Robert Cooney & Helen Michalowski

Book: "The Long Loneliness" by Dorothy Day

Book: "The Pacifist Conscience" by Peter Mayer

Book: "Toward a Warless World: The Travail of the American Peace Movement, 1857-1914)

Book: "Ain't Gonna Study War No More" by Milton Meltzer

www.peacefulearth.com