Biblio | Beyond Intractability

The first thing to be disrupted by our commitment to nonviolence will be not the system but our own lives.

- James Douglass

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

Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Beneath the rule of men entirely great, the pen is mightier than the sword.

- Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

When we yield to discouragement it is usually because we give too much thought to the past and to the future.

- Therese of Lisieux

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

- Abraham Lincoln

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

We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing that we know about living.

- General Omar Bradley

He took over anger to intimidate subordinates, and in time anger took over him.

- Milan Kundera

I hope...that mankind will at length, as they call themselves reasonable creatures, have reason and sense enough to settle their differences without cutting throats; for in my opinion there never was a good war, or a bad peace.

- Benjamin Franklin

Nonviolence is not a garment to be put on and off at will. Its seat is in the heart, and it must be an inseparable part of our being.

- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

I for one believe that if you give people a thorough understanding of what confronts them and the basic causes that produce it, they'll create their own program, and when the people create a program, you get action.

- Malcolm X

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids both rich and poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

- Anatole France

We declare our right on this earth...to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary.

- Malcolm X

The point of nonviolence is to build...a strong new floor, beneath which we can no longer sink...a few feet above napalm, torture, exploitation, poison gas, A and H bombs, the works. Give man a decent place to stand.

- Joan Baez