User account | Beyond Intractability

Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

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

- Nelson Mandela

If you torture data sufficiently, it will confess to almost anything.

- Fred Menger

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

War stirs in men's hearts the mud of their worst instincts. It puts a premium on violence, nourishes hatred, and gives free rein to cupidity. It crushes the weak, exalts the unworthy, and bolsters tyranny.

- Charles DeGaulle

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

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

- Dante

I expect to pass through this world but once, therefore any good that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now; let me not defer it or neglect it, for I shall not come this way again.

- Stephen Grellett

The infusion of a sense of righteousness into the common urge to bash things around has always proved to be a powerful stimulus to action.

- Kenneth Boulding

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

- Cesar Chavez

I'm not disturbing the peace. I'm disturbing the war.

- Ammon Hennacy

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

Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win.

- Jonathan Kozol

The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.

- Steven King

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