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”Certified lunatics are shut up because of their proneness to violence when their pretensions are questioned; the uncertified variety are given the control of powerful armies, and can inflict death and disaster upon all sane men within their reach.” -- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
“Show, by your actions, that you choose peace over war, freedom over oppression, voice over silence, service over self-interest, respect over advantage, courage over fear, cooperation over competition, action over passivity, diversity over uniformity, and justice over all.” -- Anthony J. Marsella, PhD
“It takes only one man to commit a crime but an entire community to conceal it” -- Krishnamurti
“We're not made by God to mass kill one another, and that's backed up by the Gospels. Lying and war are Quotablealways associated. Pay attention to war-makers when they try to defend their current war; if they’re moving their lips they're lying.” -- Phil Berrigan
"The poor tell us who we are; the prophets tell us who we could be,
So we hide the poor; and kill the prophets." -- Phil Berrigan
"One is called to live nonviolently, even if the change one works for seems impossible. It may or may not be possible to turn the US around through nonviolent revolution. But one thing favors such an attempt: the total inability of violence to change anything for the better." -- Daniel Berrigan
"One cannot level one's moral lance at every evil in the universe. There are just too many of them. But you can do something, and the difference between doing something and doing nothing is everything." -- Daniel Berrigan
"Because we want peace with half a heart, half a life and half a will, the war-making continues because the making of war is total, but the making of peace - by our cowardice - is partial." -- Daniel Berrigan“The prophet courageously challenges oppressive social structures of which the church may be an integral part. The prophet is the end result of the best in the tradition and spirituality of the church, which soon, sadly, drives him or her out.” -- J. Milton Yinger, 1946
"You assist an evil system most effectively by obeying its orders and decrees. An evil system never deserves such allegiance. Allegiance to it means partaking of the evil. A good person will resist an evil system with his or her whole soul." -- Gandhi
"The things that will destroy us are: politics without principle; pleasure without conscience; wealth without work; knowledge without character; business without morality; science without humanity; and worship without sacrifice." – Gandhi
“The Great Christian Task Of Our Time” by Thomas Merton
"The church must lead the way on the road to nonviolent settlement of difficulties and toward the gradual abolition of war as the way of settling international or civil disputes. Christians must become active in every possible way, mobilizing all their resources for the fight against war. Peace is to be preached, nonviolence is to be explained as a practical method, and not left to be mocked as an outlet for crackpots who want to make a show of themselves. Prayer and sacrifice must be used as the most effective spiritual weapons in the war against war, and like all weapons, they must be used with deliberate aim: not just with a vague aspiration for peace and security, but against violence and war. This implies that we are also willing to sacrifice and restrain our own instinct for violence and aggressiveness in our relations with other people. We may never succeed in this campaign, but whether we succeed or not, the duty is evident. It is the great Christian task of our time. Everything else is secondary, for the survival of the human race itself depends upon it." -- Thomas Merton, quoted in Our God is Nonviolent, written by John Dear
"The duty of the Christian at this time is to do the one task God has imposed upon us in this world today. The task is to work for the total abolition of war. There can be no question that unless war is abolished; the world will remain constantly in a state of madness…The church [meaning all Christians] must lead the way on the road to the abolition of war…Peace is to be preached and nonviolence is to be explained and practiced."— From “The Great Christian Task Of Our Time” by Thomas Merton
“Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence. Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle.” -- Alexander Solzhenitsyn
“Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that numbers of people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience. . Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity and war and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem." -- Howard Zinn, Failure to Quit
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." -- Edmund Burke (British Statesman and Philosopher, 1729-1797)
“When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses … the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker, a raving lunatic." - Dresden James
"There comes a time when silence is betrayal.” -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
"It may well be that the greatest tragedy of this period of social change is not the glaring noisiness of the so-called bad people, but the silence of the so-called good people." -- Martin Luther King. Jr.
"As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems, maintaining my convictions that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But, they asked, and rightly so, what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their question hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against violence on the oppressed in the ghettos without first having spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today - our own government." -- Martin Luther King, Jr. NYC April 4, 1967
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Love is the most durable power in the world. Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend." -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
“I have learned over the years . . .that when one's mind is made up, this diminishes fear,
knowing what must be done does away with fear.” -- Rosa Parks
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." -- Voltaire
“Anyone who has proclaimed violence his method inexorably must choose lying as his principle.” -- Mikhail Gorbachev
"The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing." -- Albert Einstein
“My kind of loyalty was to one’s country, not to its institutions or its office holders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease and death.” -- Mark Twain
"To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.” -- Tacitus
“War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.” -- John F. Kennedy
“The most important topic on earth: peace. What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children — not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women — not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.”-- John F. Kennedy, American University commencement address, Washington, 10 June 1963. (Four months later Kennedy was assassinated.)
"Those who make peaceful change impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” -- John F. Kennedy
"It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped.
Each time a person stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."-- Robert F. Kennedy, from his speech on June 6, 1966 at the UN, exactly 2 years before his assassination.
"All through history it has been the nations that have given the most to generals and the least to the people that have been the first to fall." -- Harry Truman
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor never the oppressed. Silence comforts the tormenter, never the tormented." -- Elie Wiesel
“If you see injustice and say nothing, you have taken the side of the oppressor." -- South African Anglican Archbishop Desmund Tutu
"When I feed the hungry, they call me a saint, but when I ask why people should be hungry, they call me a communist." -- Brazilian Archbishop Dom Helder Camara
“Praying for peace is like praying for a weedless garden. Nothing will happen until you get your hands dirty.” -- John K. Stoner, co-founder of Every Church A Peace Church
"You Christians have vested interests in unjust structures, that create victims, to whom you then can pour out your hearts in charity." -- Karl Marx
"Oh Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown out the thunder of guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander un-befriended the wastes of their desolated land. We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love. Amen." -- Mark Twain (THE CHRISTIAN PATRIOT'S [UNSPOKEN] PULPIT PRAYER TO "SUPPORT OUR TROOPS")
"A country that has dangled the sword of nuclear holocaust over the world for half a century and claims that someone else invented terrorism is a country out of touch with reality." -- John K. Stoner, 2001
“A church that does not provoke any crisis, preach a gospel that does not unsettle, proclaim a word of God that does not get under anyone's skin or a word of God that does not touch the real sin of the society in which it is being proclaimed: what kind of gospel is that?” -- Bishop Oscar Romero, El Salvador, April 16, 1978
"To preach to the powerful without denouncing oppression is to promise Easter without Calvary, forgiveness without conversion, and healing without cleansing the wound." -- From What We Have Seen and Heard, Pastoral Letter of US. Catholic Black Bishops
“If any preacher tells you that personal salvation can be achieved without first paying attention to social justice, you may know by this sign alone that you are listening to a false prophet.” -- Sydney Harris
"Beginning with Constantine, Christianity triumphed at the level of the state and soon began persecutions (against the enemies of the state) similar to those in which the early Christians were victims. Like so many previous religious and political enterprises, Christianity suffered persecution while it was weak and became the persecutor as soon as it gained strength." -- Rene Girard; The Scapegoat
“A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.” – Aristotle
"A society whose citizens refuse to see and investigate the facts and who refuse to believe that their government and their media will routinely lie to them and fabricate a reality contrary to verifiable facts, is a society that chooses and deserves the Police State Dictatorship it's going to get." -- Ian Williams Goddard
"Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day." -- Theodore Roosevelt, on April 19, 1906
"It seems to me that the tellers of unwelcome truths (the poets, the prophets, the whistle-blowers and the vocal, knowledgeable exposers of conspiracies) are dealt with in six ways: 1) First, they are ignored; 2) Secondly, they are ridiculed; 3) Thirdly, they are threatened with ostracization, persecution, imprisonment or execution; 4) Fourthly, they are ostracized, persecuted, imprisoned, disappeared, suicided or otherwise executed (physically, psychologically or spiritually); 5) Fifthly, their truths may eventually be accepted as self-evident; 6) And then, Sixthly (and scandalously) the truths of these courageous prophets are then co-opted by the old lie-tellers, persecutors and detractors (namely, the politically powerful, the tyrants, the police state, the wealthy elite and/or the ruthless, amoral corporate powers) who then may build statues (and even declare federal holidays) to honor the name of the then safely dead truth-teller." -- G. G. Kohls, amateur philosopher, “plagiarizing” the famous German philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer, who famously said: "All great truth is dealt with in three ways: First it is ridiculed; then it is violently opposed; and finally, it is accepted as self-evident."
"It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the air force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber" -- Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF)
"The test of the sincerity of one's prayer is the willingness to labor on its behalf." -- St. John Chrysostom
"We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we do about peace - more about killing than we do about living." -- WWII General Omar Bradley
"Military power is as corrupting to the man who possesses it as it is pitiless to its victims. Violence is just as devastating to the soul of the perpetrator as it is to the body and souls of those who are victims of it" -- American Friends (Quakers) Service Committee
"In war, there are no unwounded soldiers" -- Jose Narosky
"Where there is mercy, there is the Christ. And where there is cruelty, there is the satanic." -- Father Emmanuel Charles McCarthy
"To care for a thing as if it were a thing is reality,
To care for a thing as if it was a person is illusion.
To care for a person as if he or she was a thing is violence,
To care for a person as if he or she was a person is justice,
And to care for a person as if he or she was yourself is love." -- Fr. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy
"A church which cannot take a firm stand against war is a church which does not deserve to be believed."-- Harvey Cox, American Baptist theologian at Harvard Divinity School
"Nonviolence is the inherent quality of women. For ages men have trained in violence. In order for them to become nonviolent they have to cultivate the qualities of women. Ever since I have taken to nonviolence, I have become more and more of a woman." -- Mohandas Gandhi
"In nonviolence, the masses have a weapon that enables a child, a woman, or even a decrepit old man to resist the mightiest government successfully. If your spirit is strong, mere lack of physical strength ceases to be a handicap." -- Gandhi
"If man will only realize that it is unmanly to obey laws that are unjust, no man's tyranny will enslave him." -- Gandhi
"No one has a right to sit down and feel helpless, there's too much to do." -- Dorothy Day
"The greatest threat to our world and its peace comes from those who want war, who prepare for it, and who, by holding out vague promises of future peace or by instilling fear of foreign aggression, try to make us accomplices to their plans." -- Hermann Hesse
"I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." -- James Madison (1788)
"I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future." -- Frederick Douglass, July 4, 1852
"There must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has and it never will." -- Frederick Douglass 1857
"War is the greatest plague that can afflict humanity; it destroys religions, it destroys states, it destroys families. Any scourge is preferable to it." -- Martin Luther, 16th Century Just War, Constantinian Christian monk who created a great schism in Christianity when he tried to reform a corrupted church by endorsing violent means - and therefore obviously failed to bring any peaceful Christ-like transformation to the church.
"The church that preaches the gospel in all of its fullness, except as it applies to the great social ills of the day, is failing to preach the gospel." -- Martin Luther
Martin Luther Advocated Selective Conscientious Objection to War and Killing: Addressing the question "Suppose my lord were wrong in going to war?" Luther replied:
“If you know for sure that he is wrong, then you should fear God rather than men (Acts 5:29),
and you should neither fight nor serve. For you cannot have a good conscience before God.”
"Oh, no, you say, my lord would force me to do it; he would take away my fief and would not give me my money, pay and wages. Besides, I would be despised and put to
shame as a coward, even worse as a man who did not keep his word and deserted his lord in time of need."
“I answer: You must take that risk and, with God's help, let whatever happens, happen.
He can restore you a hundred-fold as he promises in the gospel..." -- Martin Luther
"He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice...Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable love-of country stance - how violently I hate all this; how despicable and ignoble war is...I would rather be torn to shreds than be part of so base an action. It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder." -- Albert Einstein
"As a physician, I contend that nuclear technology threatens life on our planet with extinction. If present trends continue, the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the water we drink will soon be contaminated with enough radioactive pollutants to pose a potential health hazard far greater than any plague humanity has ever experienced." -- Dr. Helen Caldicott
"Spending hundreds of billions of dollars on Star Wars will take money away from education, programs for women and children, and health care. There is a direct link between promoting weapons for space and the destabilization of our communities. People must connect these struggles." -- Bruce Gagnon
"The project of the conservative throughout the ages is the search for a higher moral justification for selfishness. This is still worth every word of political philosophy written since the war, as well as being a damn good explanation of why self-styled "Libertarians" and traditional conservatives stick together." -- John Kenneth Galbraith, economist and ambassador
"Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder and it is the working class who fights all the battles, the working class who makes the supreme sacrifices, the working class who freely sheds their blood and furnishes their corpses, and it is they who have never yet had a voice - in either declaring war or making peace. It is the ruling class that invariably does both. They alone declare war and they alone make peace. They are continually talking about their patriotic duty. It is not their duty but your patriotic duty that they are concerned about. There is a decided difference. Their patriotic duty never takes them to the firing line or chucks them into the trenches." -- Eugene V. Debs
“Working men and working women of America! Let us swear by all that is dear to us and all that is sacred to our cause, never to become a soldier and never go to war! Capitalist wars for capitalist conquest and capitalist plunder must be fought by the capitalists themselves!” -- Eugene V. Debs, 1915. Debs was sentenced to 15 years in jail for this conviction
"Conceit, arrogance and egotism are the essentials of patriotism. Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who had the fortune of being born on some particular spot, consider themselves better, nobler, grander and more intelligent than the living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill, and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all others." -- Emma Goldman
"An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents. What does happen is that the opponents gradually die out and a new generation is familiarized with the idea from the beginning." -- Max Planck, father of modem physics
"Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral." -- Paulo Friere
"The most profoundly creative way to overcome enemies is to make them our friends. But this involves a series of painful acts, a constant decision never to achieve our goals by destroying or humiliating others." -- Dom Paulo Cardinal Arns
"The gospel that Jesus preached is radically different than the gospel that the churches preach, and that reality has woefully impoverished the church’s sense of missional identity.” -- From the Missional Church ed. by Darrel L. Guder, 1998
“The reason we are fighting the war on drugs is that we lost the war on poverty.” -- Sargent Shriver
"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 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. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron." -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
“We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations. This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.” -- President Dwight D. Eisenhower in a televised speech 1961
"I am sick and tired of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a
shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell." -- General William Tecumseh Sherman
"Fascism should rightly be called corporatism as it is a merger of state and corporate power" -- Benito Mussolini
“Globalization is but another name for colonialization -- nothing has changed but the name. And, just as the East India Company was the instrument for colonialization, today's corporation is the instrument for globalization. And corporatization is but another name for Fascism.” -- Urban Kohler
"Slavery is the legal fiction that a person is property. Corporate personhood is the legal fiction that property is a person." -- Anonymous
"The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." -- President Theodore Roosevelt, in an editorial for the Kansas City Star - May 7, 1918
“We can either have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.” -- Justice Louis D. Brandeis
”Few of us can easily surrender our belief that society must somehow make sense. The thought that the State has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people is intolerable. And so the evidence has to be internally denied.” -- Arthur Miller
”In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.“ -- George Orwell
”The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in time of great moral crises maintain their neutrality.” -- Dante
"Ours ought to be a society in which the weak are not preyed upon and the innocent have nothing to fear." -- Ruben Navarette
"May I become at all times, both now and forever,
a protector for those without protection
a guide for those who have lost their way
a ship for those with oceans to cross
a bridge for those with rivers to cross
a sanctuary for those in danger
a lamp for those who need light
a place of refuge for those needing shelter
and a servant to all those in need."
-- The Dalai Lama
"Aggressive militarization under the rubric of defense against terrorism threatens to provoke a chain reaction among nuclear nations, big and small, that, once set in motion, may prove impossible to control. No military confrontation anywhere in the world is free from this ominous and ever-present danger." -- Helen Caldicott, The New Nuclear Danger, 2002
"Security policy" has led us into the most dire insecurity the world has ever faced. The politics of nuclear confrontation imposes a brand of insanity upon us that says, ‘In order to defend freedom, we must be prepared to destroy life itself.’ The system is bankrupt when humanity shrinks from recognizing that it is in the process of destroying itself. The enormous expenditure of energy, scientific sophistication and wealth on the military is the main cause of poverty, inflation and despair in the world." -- Petra Kelly, Fighting For Hope, 1984
"We were constantly told by our friends, ‘Who were we to differ with able statesmen, with men of sensitive conscience who also absolutely abhorred war, but were convinced that this war for the preservation of democracy would make all future wars impossible, that the priceless values of civilization which were at stake could at this moment be saved only by war?’ But these very dogmatic statements spurred one to alarm. Was not war in the interest of democracy for the salvation of civilization a contradiction of terms, whoever said it or however often it was repeated?" -- Jane Addams, Nobel Peace Prize Winner and Founder of Hull House; Personal Reactions During War, 1922
"It can never be lawful for a righteous man to go to war, since his warfare is in righteousness itself; nor to accuse anyone of a capital charge, since it makes no difference whether you put a man to death by word or by sword, since it is the act of putting to death which is prohibited. It is always unlawful to put a man to death." -- Lacantius
"Anyone who trades liberty for security deserves neither liberty nor security" -- Benjamin Franklin
“When I tell any truth it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those who do.” -- William Blake
"Loyalty doesn't mean following the President when he decides to drive over a cliff. It means holding him back." -- Burr Loomis
"All that was required of them (i.e. the brain-washed masses) was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working hours or shorter rations. And even when they became discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere, because, being without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty specific grievances. The larger evils invariably escaped their notice." -- George Orwell 1984
"And it seems to me perfectly in the cards that there will be within the next generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda, brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods."-- the prophetic words of Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, 1959
"With numbing regularity good people were seen to knuckle under the demands of authority and perform actions that were callous and severe. Men who are in everyday life responsible and decent were seduced by the trappings of authority, by the control of their perceptions, and by the uncritical acceptance of the experimenter's definition of the situation, into performing harsh acts. A substantial proportion of people do what they are told to do, irrespective of the content of the act and without limitations of conscience, so long as they perceive that the command comes from a legitimate authority" -- Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority, 1965
"War represents a vice that mankind would like to get rid of but which it cannot do without. Man is like an alcoholic who knows that drink will destroy him but who always has a reason for drinking. So with war." -- Thomas Merton
"Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience. Therefore (individual citizens) have the duty to (refuse to obey) domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring." -- Nuremberg War Crime Tribunal, 1950
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were,
as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were.
Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind;
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
-- John Donne, Meditation XVII (1624)
"I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do. What I can do, I should do. And what I should do, by the grace of God, I will do." -- Edward Everett Hale
"Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God" -- Thomas Jefferson's motto
“Apathy and indifference are nurtured in the modern age as most peoples’ free time is frittered away with worthless trivia like ball games, computer games, movies and soaps, and fiddling with their mobile phones. These distractions might be fun, but after most of them you’ve learnt nothing of any value, and remain ignorant, malleable and suggestible, which is just how the elites want you.” -- Clive Maund
"I never told my own religion nor scrutinized that of another. I never attempted to make a convert, nor wished to change another's creed. I am satisfied that yours must be an excellent religion to have produced a life of such exemplary virtue and correctness. For it is in our lives, and not from our words that our religion must be judged." --Thomas Jefferson writing to Mrs. H. Harrison Smith in 1816
"Personal violence is for the amateur in dominance.... [but] structural violence is the tool of the professional. The amateur who wants to dominate uses guns; the professional uses social structure. The legal criminality of the social system and its institutions, of government, and of individuals at the interpersonal level is tacit violence. Structural violence is a structure of exploitation and social injustice." -- Anthony Judge - from "Metaphoric Entrapment In Time"
"Imagining what it is like to be someone other than yourself is at the core of our humanity. It is the essence of compassion, and it is the beginning of morality." -- Ian McEwan
"A truth’s initial commotion is directly proportional to how deeply the lie was believed... When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker, a raving lunatic." -- Dresden James
"When you let people do whatever they want, you get Woodstock. When you let governments do whatever they want, you get Auschwitz." -- Doug Newman
“Whenever a people... entrust the defense of their country to a regular, standing army, composed of mercenaries, the power of that country will remain under the direction of the wealthiest citizens." -- An anonymous 'framer' of the US Constitution - Source: Independent Gazetteer, January 29, 1791
“We yearn to be part of a church that prays and works for peace, loves its neighbors and enemies alike, and embraces the redemptive power of forgiveness. We cry out for a church that speaks without fear of consequences, including loss of revenue. We implore our church leadership to follow the example of Jesus and unequivocally renounce the sins of our empire’s war-making, the possession and use of weapons of mass destruction, oppression, scapegoating and aspirations of global domination.
“When our body issued its last national plea in 2006, the response was profoundly disappointing and no less than tragic. Rather than a clear pronouncement condemning the illegal and immoral nature of our current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the evil wrought by torture and other crimes against humanity, the U.S. Catholic Bishops merely stated that ‘our nation’s military forces should remain in Iraq only as long as their presence contributes to a responsible transition.’...
“We call on our church to be a prophetic voice, a sanctuary, and a source of encouragement to those who want to work in community toward peace, justice and reconciliation.” -- CATHOLIC WORKER MOVEMENT’S 75TH ANNIVERSARY STATEMENT TO U.S. CATHOLIC BISHOPS, published in the Catholic Agitator (Los Angeles), August 2008. (http//www.catholicworker.org). (“The Catholic Worker Movement is grounded in a firm belief in the God-given dignity of every human person. Today over 185 Catholic Worker communities remain committed to nonviolence, voluntary poverty, prayer, and hospitality for the homeless, exiled, hungry, and forsaken. Catholic Workers continue to protest injustice, war, racism, and violence of all forms.”)
"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 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. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron." -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
“We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations. This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.” -- President Dwight D. Eisenhower in a televised speech 1961
"I am sick and tired of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a
shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell." -- General William Tecumseh Sherman
"Fascism should rightly be called corporatism as it is a merger of state and corporate power" -- Benito Mussolini
“Globalization is but another name for colonialization -- nothing has changed but the name. And, just as the East India Company was the instrument for colonialization, today's corporation is the instrument for globalization. And corporatization is but another name for Fascism.” -- Urban Kohler
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