Biblio | Beyond Intractability

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.

- George Orwell

A man may build himself a throne of bayonets, but he cannot sit on it.

- William Ralph Inge

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

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

- Therese of Lisieux

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

- Kenneth Boulding

I have great belief in the fact that whenever there is chaos, it creates wonderful thinking. I consider chaos a gift.

- Septima Poinsette Clark

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

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

- John F. Kennedy

We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

The human mind likes a strange idea as little as the body likes a strange protein and resists it with a similar energy.

- W.H. Beveridge

The evils of government are directly proportional to the tolerance of the people.

- Frank Kent

As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

- Nelson Mandela

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.

The arms race can kill, though the weapons themselves may never be used...by their cost alone, armaments kill the poor by causing them to starve.

- Vatican statement to the U.N.

Human beings feel dishonor the most, sometimes, when they most deserve it.

- Mark Twain