PeaceAndJusticeQuotations

Peace and Justice Quotations

We who claim to love peace and justice must always be careful that we do not use our righteousness to provoke the violent, and in this way bring about the conflict for which we, too, like other men, are hungering in secret, and with suppressed barbarity. Thomas Merton, "Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander"

"Today, the scale and horror of modern warfare--whether nuclear or not--makes it totally unacceptable as a means of settling differences between nations. War should belong to the tragic past, to history; it should find no place on humanity's agenda for the future." Pope John Paul II

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.... This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children... under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron." General Dwight Eisenhower

"We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount." General Omar Bradley

"One must understand what fear means: what it implies and what it rejects. It implies and rejects the same fact: a world where murder is legitimate and where human life is considered trifling... All I ask is that, in the midst of a murderous world, we agree to reflect on murder and to make a choice. After that, we can distinguish those who accept the consequences of being murderers themselves or the accomplices of murderers, and those who refuse to do so with all their force and being. Since this terrible dividing line does actually exist, it will be a gain if it be clearly marked."

To recognize conflicting parties, we must have the ability to understand the suffering of both sides. If we take sides, it is impossible to do the work of reconciliation. And humans want to take sides. That is why the situation gets worse and worse. Are there people who are still available to both sides? They need not do much. They need do only one thing: Go to one side and tell all about the suffering endured by the other side, and go to the other side and tell all about the suffering endured by this side. That is our chance for peace. That can change the situation, but how many of us are able to do that? Thich Nhat Hanh

"Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral." Paulo Freire

Our society is dedicated almost entirely to the celebration of the ego, with all its sad fantasies about success and power, and it celebrates those very forces of greed and ignorance that are destroying the planet. Sogyal Rinpoche

The grudge against God is the keystone to all one's unhappiness. Follow all your petty, middling, and major grudges back to this keystone grudge, and then ask yourself the question, "Is it more likely that God was wrong to make the world this way, or that I am somehow wrong in the way I'm looking at it?" If you decide that God is wrong --- or that there is no God, just a faceless, mechanical universe that cares nothing about the human drama --- then there isn't much you can do. But if you realize that you can always adjust your perceptions of the world, you can start learning and contributing again. This seems to be the way to both humility and power.

D. Patrick Miller, A Primer on Forgiveness, "The Sun", 9/94

The term clinical depression finds its way into too many conversation these days. One has a sense that a catastrophe has occurred in the psychic landscape. Leonard Cohen

The Swiss have an interesting army. 500 years without a war. Pretty impressive. Also pretty lucky for them. Ever see that little Swiss Army knife they have to fight with? Not much of a weapon there. Corkscrews. Bottle openers. "Come on buddy, let's go. You get past me, the guy in back of me, he's got a spoon. Back off. I've got the toe clippers right here.

Sometimes I think war is God's way of teaching us geography. Paul Rodriguez

Martin Luther King Jr.

....the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of

extremists will we be? Will we be extremists for hate or extremists for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice--or will we be extremists for the cause of justice?'

"In spite of this prevailing tendency to conform, we as Christian have a mandate to be nonconformist. There are some things in our world to which [people] of goodwill must be maladjusted. I confess that I never intend to become adjusted to the evils of segregation and the crippling effects of discrimination, to the moral degeneracy of religious bigotry and the corroding effects of narrow sectarianism, to economic conditions that deprive [people] of work and food, and to the insanities of militarism and the self-defeating effects of physical violence. Human solution lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted."

"The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be guide and critic of the state and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social clubwithout moral or spiritual authority."

An Ohio governor has declared, "I never had a person come before me on an application for clemency (that is persons sentenced for execution) who ever had money to hire a lawyer out of his own funds." After reviewing over 150 homicide cases he stated "I don't know a single man who was sentenced to death in Ohio who was a known racketeer or belonged to a commercialized syndicate dedicated to crime, because these people have the money to protect themselves."

"Solutions lie in the hands of the creatively maladjusted."

"The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the

servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be guide and critic of the state and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority." .

In part it was watching music videos and seeing the images of scantily clad female "bootays" shaking and jiggling to the beats of some man's song that strengthened my reserve. As did observing the faceless women being pimped across the swcreen according to some brother's understanding of their sexuality. It was also attempting to ease the late-night, teary-eyed phone sessios of sisters wondering why their man wasn't acting right and how they were going to fix that slut he was cheating with. But ultimately, I think, it was listening to the sweet-talking lips of brothers themselves that did it for me. Their refusal to uphold visions of female sexuality that were about more than just "getting some" made me decide early on that I wanted to be in control of and empowered by my sexuality. Thus I chose, and still am choosing, virginity.

Tara Roberts, "Am I the Last Virgin: Ten African American Reflectios on Sex and Love" edited by Tara Roberts

"When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him." Jonathan Swift

There seems no plan because it's all plan. There seems no center because it's all center. C. S. Lewis

There is no greater illusion than fear,

no greater wrong than preparing to defend yourself,

no greater misfortune than having an enemy.

Whoever can see through all fear

will always be safe.

Lao-Tsu, Tao Te Ching

One of the first things to learn if you want to be a contemplative is to mind your own business. Nothing is more suspicious, in a man who seems holy, than an impatient desire to reform other men.

Thomas Merton, "New Seeds of Contemplation"

"The genius of you Americans is that you never make any clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves that leave us scratching our heads wondering if we might possibly have missed something." Gamel Abdel Nasser

In Germany, they first came for the communists,

and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the jews,

and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a jew.

Then they came for the trade unionists,

and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the homosexuals, and I didn't speak up

because I wasn't a homosexual.

Then they came for the catholics, and I didn't speak up

because I was a protestant.

Then they came for me --

but by that time there was no one left to speak up.

Pastor Martin Neimoller

"Just say no' has done as much for drugs and sex as 'have a nice day' has for depression."

Dr. E. Tyson, Texas Medical Association

"When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him." Jonathan Swift

I love the story about AJ Muste, who, during the Vietnam War, stood in front of the White House night after night with a candle --- sometimes alone. A reporter interviewed him one evening as he stood there in the rain. "Mr. Muste," the reporter said, "do you really think you are going to change the policies of this country by standing out here alone at night with a candle?" AJ responded, "Oh, I don't do this to change the country. I do this so the country won't change me."

The causes we know everything about depend on causes we know very little about, which depend on causes we know absolutely nothing about. Tom Stoppard

We are like flies crawling across the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel: we cannot see what angels and gods lie underneath the threshold of our perceptions. We do not live in reality; we live in our paradigms, our habituated perceptions, our illusions; the illusions we share through culture we call reality, but the true historical reality of our condition is invisible to us.

William Irwin Thompson

Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just. Thomas Jefferson

Life is god's novel. Let him write it. Isaac Bashevis Singer

The danger is not lest the soul should doubt whether there is any bread, but lest, by a lie, it should persuade itself that it is not hungry. Simone Weil

The purpose of life is to be defeated by bigger and bigger things. Rainer Maria Rilke

The only way into truth is through one's own annihilation; through dwelling a long time in a state of extreme and total humiliation. Simone Weil

The world is not a prison-house but a kind of spiritual kindergarten where millions of bewildered infants are trying to spell God with all the wrong blocks. Edwin Arlington Robinson

The fact that we are totally unable to imagine a form of existence without space and time by no means proves that such an existence is itself impossible. Carl Jung

"You have to draw a distinction between hope and optimism. Vaclav Havel put it well when he said "optimism" is the belief that things are going to turn out as you would like, as opposed to "hope," which is when you are thoroughly convinced something is moral and right and just and therefore you fight regardless of the consequences. In that sense, I'm full of hope but in no way optimistic." Cornel West in The Progressive, January, 1997

If you are afraid of being lonely, don't try to be right. Jules Renard

"There is a strange relationship between the system of a country and its people. In England, the people are hostile to a man but the system is compassionate. The very old, the very young, and the ill-equipped-to-live will always be looked after. In America everyone is friendly --- almost doggie-like --- but the system is ruthless. Once you can be pronounced unproductive, you've had it." Quentin Crisp, Resident Alien, 1996

I am doomed to an eternity of compulsive work. No set goal achieved satisfies. Success only breeds a new goal. The golden apple devoured has seeds. It is endless. Bette Davis (Does Ms. Davis describe heaven or hell?)

The real 1960s began on the afternoon of 11/22/1963.... It came to seem that Kennedy's murder opened some malign trapdoor in American culture, and the wild bats flapped out. Lance Morrow

We have no art; we do everything as well as we can. Balinese saying

A lady came up to me on the street and pointed at my suede jacket. "You know a cow was murdered for that jacket?" she sneered. I replied in a spsychotic tone, "I didn't know there were any witnesses. Now I'll have to kill you too."

"Football combines the worst elements of America: Mass violence punctuated by committee meetings."

In the beginning was the word. And the word was God. And the word was with God. John's Gospel

I am the shadow my words cast. Octavio Paz

Email: Holy Family



	HOME Peace and Justice Quotations We who claim to love peace and justice must always be careful that we do not use our righteousness to provoke the violent, and in this way bring about the conflict for which we, too, like other men, are hungering in secret, and with suppressed barbarity. Thomas Merton, "Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander" "Today, the scale and horror of modern warfare--whether nuclear or not--makes it totally unacceptable as a means of settling differences between nations. War should belong to the tragic past, to history; it should find no place on humanity's agenda for the future." Pope John Paul II "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.... This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children... under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron." General Dwight Eisenhower "We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount." General Omar Bradley "One must understand what fear means: what it implies and what it rejects. It implies and rejects the same fact: a world where murder is legitimate and where human life is considered trifling... All I ask is that, in the midst of a murderous world, we agree to reflect on murder and to make a choice. After that, we can distinguish those who accept the consequences of being murderers themselves or the accomplices of murderers, and those who refuse to do so with all their force and being. Since this terrible dividing line does actually exist, it will be a gain if it be clearly marked." Albert Camus To recognize conflicting parties, we must have the ability to understand the suffering of both sides. If we take sides, it is impossible to do the work of reconciliation. And humans want to take sides. That is why the situation gets worse and worse. Are there people who are still available to both sides? They need not do much. They need do only one thing: Go to one side and tell all about the suffering endured by the other side, and go to the other side and tell all about the suffering endured by this side. That is our chance for peace. That can change the situation, but how many of us are able to do that? Thich Nhat Hanh "Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral." Paulo Freire Our society is dedicated almost entirely to the celebration of the ego, with all its sad fantasies about success and power, and it celebrates those very forces of greed and ignorance that are destroying the planet. Sogyal Rinpoche The grudge against God is the keystone to all one's unhappiness. Follow all your petty, middling, and major grudges back to this keystone grudge, and then ask yourself the question, "Is it more likely that God was wrong to make the world this way, or that I am somehow wrong in the way I'm looking at it?" If you decide that God is wrong --- or that there is no God, just a faceless, mechanical universe that cares nothing about the human drama --- then there isn't much you can do. But if you realize that you can always adjust your perceptions of the world, you can start learning and contributing again. This seems to be the way to both humility and power. D. Patrick Miller, A Primer on Forgiveness, "The Sun", 9/94 The term clinical depression finds its way into too many conversation these days. One has a sense that a catastrophe has occurred in the psychic landscape. Leonard Cohen The Swiss have an interesting army. 500 years without a war. Pretty impressive. Also pretty lucky for them. Ever see that little Swiss Army knife they have to fight with? Not much of a weapon there. Corkscrews. Bottle openers. "Come on buddy, let's go. You get past me, the guy in back of me, he's got a spoon. Back off. I've got the toe clippers right here. Jerry Seinfeld Sometimes I think war is God's way of teaching us geography. Paul Rodriguez Martin Luther King Jr. ....the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists will we be? Will we be extremists for hate or extremists for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice--or will we be extremists for the cause of justice?' "In spite of this prevailing tendency to conform, we as Christian have a mandate to be nonconformist. There are some things in our world to which [people] of goodwill must be maladjusted. I confess that I never intend to become adjusted to the evils of segregation and the crippling effects of discrimination, to the moral degeneracy of religious bigotry and the corroding effects of narrow sectarianism, to economic conditions that deprive [people] of work and food, and to the insanities of militarism and the self-defeating effects of physical violence. Human solution lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted." "The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be guide and critic of the state and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social clubwithout moral or spiritual authority." An Ohio governor has declared, "I never had a person come before me on an application for clemency (that is persons sentenced for execution) who ever had money to hire a lawyer out of his own funds." After reviewing over 150 homicide cases he stated "I don't know a single man who was sentenced to death in Ohio who was a known racketeer or belonged to a commercialized syndicate dedicated to crime, because these people have the money to protect themselves." "Solutions lie in the hands of the creatively maladjusted." "The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be guide and critic of the state and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority." . In part it was watching music videos and seeing the images of scantily clad female "bootays" shaking and jiggling to the beats of some man's song that strengthened my reserve. As did observing the faceless women being pimped across the swcreen according to some brother's understanding of their sexuality. It was also attempting to ease the late-night, teary-eyed phone sessios of sisters wondering why their man wasn't acting right and how they were going to fix that slut he was cheating with. But ultimately, I think, it was listening to the sweet-talking lips of brothers themselves that did it for me. Their refusal to uphold visions of female sexuality that were about more than just "getting some" made me decide early on that I wanted to be in control of and empowered by my sexuality. Thus I chose, and still am choosing, virginity. Tara Roberts, "Am I the Last Virgin: Ten African American Reflectios on Sex and Love" edited by Tara Roberts "When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him." Jonathan Swift There seems no plan because it's all plan. There seems no center because it's all center. C. S. Lewis There is no greater illusion than fear, no greater wrong than preparing to defend yourself, no greater misfortune than having an enemy. Whoever can see through all fear will always be safe. Lao-Tsu, Tao Te Ching One of the first things to learn if you want to be a contemplative is to mind your own business. Nothing is more suspicious, in a man who seems holy, than an impatient desire to reform other men. Thomas Merton, "New Seeds of Contemplation" "The genius of you Americans is that you never make any clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves that leave us scratching our heads wondering if we might possibly have missed something." Gamel Abdel Nasser In Germany, they first came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the homosexuals, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a homosexual. Then they came for the catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a protestant. Then they came for me -- but by that time there was no one left to speak up. Pastor Martin Neimoller "Just say no' has done as much for drugs and sex as 'have a nice day' has for depression." Dr. E. Tyson, Texas Medical Association "When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him." Jonathan Swift I love the story about AJ Muste, who, during the Vietnam War, stood in front of the White House night after night with a candle --- sometimes alone. A reporter interviewed him one evening as he stood there in the rain. "Mr. Muste," the reporter said, "do you really think you are going to change the policies of this country by standing out here alone at night with a candle?" AJ responded, "Oh, I don't do this to change the country. I do this so the country won't change me." Andrea Ayvazian The causes we know everything about depend on causes we know very little about, which depend on causes we know absolutely nothing about. Tom Stoppard We are like flies crawling across the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel: we cannot see what angels and gods lie underneath the threshold of our perceptions. We do not live in reality; we live in our paradigms, our habituated perceptions, our illusions; the illusions we share through culture we call reality, but the true historical reality of our condition is invisible to us. William Irwin Thompson Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just. Thomas Jefferson Life is god's novel. Let him write it. Isaac Bashevis Singer The danger is not lest the soul should doubt whether there is any bread, but lest, by a lie, it should persuade itself that it is not hungry. Simone Weil The purpose of life is to be defeated by bigger and bigger things. Rainer Maria Rilke The only way into truth is through one's own annihilation; through dwelling a long time in a state of extreme and total humiliation. Simone Weil The world is not a prison-house but a kind of spiritual kindergarten where millions of bewildered infants are trying to spell God with all the wrong blocks. Edwin Arlington Robinson The fact that we are totally unable to imagine a form of existence without space and time by no means proves that such an existence is itself impossible. Carl Jung "You have to draw a distinction between hope and optimism. Vaclav Havel put it well when he said "optimism" is the belief that things are going to turn out as you would like, as opposed to "hope," which is when you are thoroughly convinced something is moral and right and just and therefore you fight regardless of the consequences. In that sense, I'm full of hope but in no way optimistic." Cornel West in The Progressive, January, 1997 If you are afraid of being lonely, don't try to be right. Jules Renard "There is a strange relationship between the system of a country and its people. In England, the people are hostile to a man but the system is compassionate. The very old, the very young, and the ill-equipped-to-live will always be looked after. In America everyone is friendly --- almost doggie-like --- but the system is ruthless. Once you can be pronounced unproductive, you've had it." Quentin Crisp, Resident Alien, 1996 I am doomed to an eternity of compulsive work. No set goal achieved satisfies. Success only breeds a new goal. The golden apple devoured has seeds. It is endless. Bette Davis (Does Ms. Davis describe heaven or hell?) The real 1960s began on the afternoon of 11/22/1963.... It came to seem that Kennedy's murder opened some malign trapdoor in American culture, and the wild bats flapped out. Lance Morrow We have no art; we do everything as well as we can. Balinese saying A lady came up to me on the street and pointed at my suede jacket. "You know a cow was murdered for that jacket?" she sneered. I replied in a spsychotic tone, "I didn't know there were any witnesses. Now I'll have to kill you too." Jake Johansen "Football combines the worst elements of America: Mass violence punctuated by committee meetings." In the beginning was the word. And the word was God. And the word was with God. John's Gospel I am the shadow my words cast. Octavio Paz Email: Holy Family