User account | Beyond Intractability

All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do.

- Leo Tolstoy

Nothing that is morally wrong can be politically right.

- William E. Gladstone

If we do not change our direction we are likely to end up where we are headed for.

- Chinese Proverb

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

An act of love, a voluntary taking on oneself of some of the pain of the world, increases the courage and love and hope of all.

- Dorothy Day

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

- Therese of Lisieux

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 cause of violence is not ignorance. It is self-interest. ... Only reverence can restrain violence -- reverence for human life and the environment.

- William Sloan Coffin, Jr.

Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.

- William Ellery Channing

The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.

- Dante

If we divide reality into two camps the violent and the nonviolent and stand in one camp while attacking the other, the world will never have peace.

- Thich Nhat Hanh

The...human race is characterized by efforts to get along much more than by violent disputes, although it's the latter that make the history books. Violence is actually exceptional. The human race has survived because of cooperation.

- Gerard Vanderhaar

And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.

- Isaiah 2:4

We have met the enemy, and he is us.

- Walt Kelly

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

- Nelson Mandela