Biblio | Beyond Intractability

I found one day in school a boy of medium size ill-treating a smaller boy. I expostulated, but he replied: "The bigs hit me, so I hit the babies; that's fair." In these words he epitomized the history of the human race.

- Bertrand Russell

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The ugliest is that man who thinks nothing is worth fighting and dying for and lets men better and braver than himself protect him.

- John Stuart Mill

There is no conflict that cannot be resolved. Violent conflict is created and sustained by human beings, and it can be ended by human beings.

- George Mitchell

War does not determine who is right - only who is left.

- Bertrand Russell

Peace we want because there is another war to fight against poverty, disease and ignorance.

- Indira Gandhi

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

War is a cowardly escape from the problems of peace.

- Thomas Mann

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.

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

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

- David Bower

The pens which write against disarmament are made with the same steel from which guns are made.

- Aristide Briand

The miracle of the wicked is reinforced by the weakness of the virtuous.

- Winston Churchill

Nationalism is an infantile sickness. It is the measles of the human race.

- Albert Einstein

We challenge the culture of violence when we ourselves act in the certainty that violence is no longer acceptable, that it's tired and outdated no matter how many cling to it in the stubborn belief that it still works and that it's still valid.

- Gerard Vanderhaar

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