Biblio | Beyond Intractability

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

- William Ralph Inge

I believe we are on the edge of a quantum leap into a whole new way of organizing and living as a human family.

- Mairead Corrigan Maguire

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

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

We are, each of us angels with only one wing; and we can only fly by embracing one another.

- Luciano de Crescenzo

There is no time left for anything but to make peace work a dimension of our every waking activity.

- Elise Boulding

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

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 destroy my enemies when I make them my friends.

- Abraham Lincoln

The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.

- Hannah Arendt

The first essential characteristics of nonviolent action is that it is creative.

- Hildegarde Goss-Mayr

It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.

- Alfred Adler

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

- John F. Kennedy

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

Violence just hurts those who are already hurt...Instead of exposing the brutality of the oppressor, it justifies it.

- Cesar Chavez