Biblio | Beyond Intractability

When we treat man as he is, we make him worse than he is; when we treat him as if he already were what he potentially could be, we make him what he should be.

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The finger pulls the trigger, but the trigger may also be pulling the finger.

- Leonard Berkowitz

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

Any city, however small, is in fact divided into two, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich; these are at war with one another.

- Plato

If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.

- Nelson Mandela

The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without.

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction.

- Albert Einstein

Nobody was born nonviolent. No one was born charitable. None of us comes to these things by nature but only by conversion. The first duty of the nonviolent community is helping its members...come to conversion.

- Lanza del Vasto

When the rich make war, it's the poor that die.

- Jean-Paul Sartre

Mankind will never win lasting peace so long as men use their full resources only in tasks of war. While we are yet at peace, let us mobilize...the moral and spiritual potentialities...which we usually reserve for war.

- John Foster Dulles

The man who goes into the world believing that everyone is his enemy will very soon find his suspicions confirmed.

- Kenneth Boulding

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

The love of one's country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border?

- Pablo Casals

- Lanza del Vasto

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