User account | Beyond Intractability

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

If it were proved to me that in making war, my ideal had a chance of being realized, I would still say "No" to war. For one does not create human society on mounds of corpses.

- Louis Lecoin

Can I see another's woe, and not be in sorrow too? Can I see another's grief, and not seek for kind relief?

- William Blake

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

- John F. Kennedy

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.

When the rich make war, it's the poor that die.

- Jean-Paul Sartre

There are three truths: my truth, your truth and the truth.

- Chinese Proverb

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 only final good is the quality of human life.

- Kenneth Boulding

Thaw with her gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer. The one melts, the other breaks into pieces.

- Henry David Thoreau

Always forgive your enemies. Nothing annoys them more.

- Oscar Wilde

You can no more win a war than win an earthquake.

- Jeanette Rankin

The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions.

- Robert Lynd

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

- Nelson Mandela

If you succumb to the temptation of using violence in the struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and your chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos.

- Martin Luther King, Jr.