Biblio | Beyond Intractability

Always forgive your enemies. Nothing annoys them more.

- Oscar Wilde

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experiences of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired and success achieved.

- Helen Keller

The impersonal hand of government can never replace the helping hand of a neighbor.

- Hubert H. Humphrey

I resolve to speak ill of no man whatever, not even in a matter of truth; but rather by some means excuse the faults I hear charged upon others, and upon proper occasions speak all the good I know of everybody.

- Benjamin Franklin

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

I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of nuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

The longer we listen to one another -- with real attention -- the more commonality we will find in all our lives. That is, if we are careful to exchange with one another life stories and not simply opinions.

- Barbara Deming

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

- Albert Einstein

We do not inherit the earth from our fathers. We borrow it from our children.

- David Bower

Peace is not the product of a victory or a 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 Arias

If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

War is, at first, the hope that one will be better off; next, the expectation that the other fellow will be worse off; then, the satisfaction that he isn't any better off; and, finally, the surprise at everyone's being worse off.

- Karl Kraus

War is a cowardly escape from the problems of peace.

- Thomas Mann

When the water starts boiling it is foolish to turn off the heat.

- Nelson Mandela

The infusion of a sense of righteousness into the common urge to bash things around has always proved to be a powerful stimulus to action.

- Kenneth Boulding