war

We frail humans are at one time capable of the greatest good and, at the same time, capable of the greatest evil. Change will only come about when each of us takes up the daily struggle ourselves to be more forgiving, compassionate, loving, and above all joyful in the knowledge that, by some miracle of grace, we can change as those around us can change too.
~Maíread Maguire
War would end if the dead could return.
~Stanley Baldwin
Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind...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

war propaganda

There is no telling how many wars it will take to secure freedom in the homeland.
~ George W. Bush(1946- ) 43rd US President: Source: In a speech on August 7, 2002

The war made possible for us the solution of a whole series of problems that could never have been solved in normal times.
~ Joseph Paul Goebbels (1897-1945) Nazi Propaganda Minister in: The Göebbels Diaries, 1942-1943

All our political forms are exhausted and practically nonexistent. Our parliamentary and electoral system and our political parties are just as futile as dictatorships are intolerable. Nothing is left. And this nothing is increasingly aggressive, totalitarian, and omnipresent. Our experience today is the strange one of empty political institutions in which no one has any confidence any more, of a system of government which functions only in the interests of a political class, and at the same time of the almost infinite growth of power, authority, and social control which makes any one of our democracies a more authoritarian mechanism than the Napoleonic state.
~ Jacques Ellul

suffering

Suffering and joy teach us, if we allow them, how to make the leap of empathy, which transports us into the soul and heart of another person. ln those transparent moments we know other people's joys and sorrows, and we care about their concerns as if they were our own.
~ Fritz Williams
It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.
~ Samuel Johnson

...when we finally know we are dying, and all other sentient beings are dying with us, we start to have a burning, almost heartbreaking sense of the fragility and preciousness of each moment and each being, and from this can grow a deep, clear, limitless compassion for all beings.
~ Sogyal Rinpoche
He jests at scars that never felt a wound.
~ William Shakespeare

the freedom to think and speak

We are reluctant to admit that we owe our liberties to men of a type that today we hate and fear -- unruly men, disturbers of the peace, men who resent and denounce what Whitman called 'the insolence of elected persons' -- in a word, free men.
~ Gerald W. Johnson - (1890-1980) Source: American Freedom and the Press, 1958

And I honor the man who is willing to sink half his present repute for the freedom to think, and, when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak, Will risk t' other half for the freedom to speak.
~James Russell Lowell: - (1819-1891) Poet and author Source: A Fable for Critics, 1848

This is, in theory, still a free country, but our politically correct, censorious times are such that many of us tremble to give vent to perfectly acceptable views for fear of condemnation. Freedom of speech is thereby imperiled, big questions go undebated, and great lies become accepted, unequivocally as great truths.
~ Simon Heffer Source: Daily Mail, 7 June 2000

An unconditional right to say what one pleases about public affairs is what I consider to be the minimum guarantee of the First Amendment.
~ Justice Hugo L. Black: (1886-1971) US Supreme Court Justice Source: NY Times Company vs. Sullivan, 1964

war is barbarous and will not resolve conflicts

Pope John Paul II: "We can enrich our common heritage with a very simple
discovery that is within our reach, namely that war is the most barbarous
and least effective way of resolving conflicts."

leaders & war

A tyrant... is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.
~ Plato - (429-347 BC), Source: The Republic

Every collectivist revolution rides in on a Trojan horse of 'emergency'. It was the tactic of Lenin, Hitler, and Mussolini. In the collectivist sweep over a dozen minor countries of Europe, it was the cry of men striving to get on horseback. And 'emergency' became the justification of the subsequent steps. This technique of creating emergency is the greatest achievement that demagoguery attains. ~ Herbert Hoover (1874-1964), 31st US President

peace & poverty

Peace, in the sense of the absence of war, is of little value to someone who is dying of hunger or cold. It will not remove the pain of torture inflicted on a prisoner of conscience. It does not comfort those who have lost their loved ones in floods caused by senseless deforestation in a neighboring country. Peace can only last where human rights are respected, where the people are fed, and where individuals and nations are free. ~ HH the Dalai Lama

freedom & laws

Tolerance is a better guarantee of freedom than brotherly love; for a man may love his brother so much that he feels himself thereby appointed his brother's keeper.
~ Everett Dean Martin - (1880-1941) Source: Liberty, 1930

Free government is founded in jealousy, not confidence. It is jealousy and not confidence which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind those we are obliged to trust with power.... In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in men, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.
~ Thomas Jefferson, 1799

If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.
~Somerset Maugham

A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self- preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to written law would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property, and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the end to the means.
~Thomas Jefferson to John Colvin, 1810

fear

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
~ H.L. Mencken 1880-1956 American journalist, satarist, social critic, anti-establishment figure, considered by scholars as one of America's greatest writers, known as 'The Sage of Baltimore.'

laws & leaders

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule
~ H. L. Mencken

It is easy to be conspicuously 'compassionate' if others are being forced to pay the cost.
~ Murray N. Rothbard

We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.
~ Ayn Rand in "The Nature of Government"

The American government creates 50,000 new laws each year, and over 2 million new regulations. Then we are told by the courts that 'Ignorance of the law is no excuse!
~ Lorne Strider

cluster bombs

"A U.S. government official told reporters in Geneva last week that the Bush administration opposes a global agreement that would ban cluster bombs. State Department officials have also told Congress they oppose legislation that would ban the use of cluster bombs in or near civilian areas. If the administration refuses to act, Congress should act by passing the Cluster Munitions Civilian Protection Act."

~ Lora Lumpe, FCNL Legislative Representative

killing

I hate it when they say, 'He gave his life for his country.' Nobody gives their life for anything. We steal the lives of these kids. We take it away from them. They don't die for the honor and glory of their country. We kill them."
~Admiral Gene LaRocque

courage

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundnce of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.
~Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Cowardice asks the question - is it safe? Expediency asks the question - is it politic? Vanity asks the question - is it popular? But conscience asks the question - is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take it because it is right.
~Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them. There is almost no kind of outrage-----torture, imprisonment without trial, assassination, the bombing of civilians .. . which does not change its moral color when it is committed by 'our' side. The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.
~George Orwell

freedom & government

These things I believe: That government should butt out. That freedom is our most precious commodity and if we are not eternally vigilant government will take it all away. That individual freedom demands individual responsibility. That government is not a necessary good but an unavoidable evil. That the executive branch has grown too strong, the judicial branch too arrogant and the legislative branch too stupid. That political parties have become close to meaningless. That government should work to insure the rights of the individual, not plot to take them away. That government should provide for the national defense and work to insure domestic tranquillity. That foreign trade should be fair rather than free. That once a year we should hang someone in government as an example to his fellows.

~Lyn Nofziger

torture

They are torturing people. They are torturing people on Guantanamo Bay. They are engaging in acts which amount to torture in the medieval sense of the phrase. They are engaging in good old-fashioned torture, as people would have understood it in the Dark Ages.
~ Richard Bourke, Australian attorney

[torture] presupposes, it requires, it craves the abrogation of our capacity to imagine others' suffering, dehumanizing them so much that their pain is not our pain. It demands this of the torturer, placing the victim outside and beyond any form of compassion or empathy, but also demands of everyone else the same distancing, the same numbness.
~ Ariel Dorfman [from his book "Torture: A Collection"]

Modern man likes to pretend that his thinking is wide-awake. But this wide-awake thinking has led us into the mazes of a nightmare in which the torture chambers are endlessly repeated in the mirrors of reason.
~ Octavio Paz quotes

The civilized have created the wretched, quite coldly and deliberately, and do not intend to change the status quo; are responsible for their slaughter and enslavement; rain down bombs on defenseless children whenever and wherever they decide that their 'vital interests' are menaced, and think nothing of torturing a man to death: these people are not to be taken seriously when they speak of the 'sanctity' of human life, or the 'conscience' of the civilized world.
~ James Baldwin [From chapter one of "The Devil Finds Work" (orig. pub. 1976), page 489 of Collected Essays

What the world needs is not dogma but an attitude of scientific inquiry combined with a belief that the torture of millions is not desirable, whether inflicted by Stalin or by a Deity imagined in the likeness of the believer.
~ Bertrand Russell

The healthy man does not torture others."
~ Carl Gustav Jung

We don't torture people in America and people who say we do simply know nothing about our country.
~ George W. Bush [Interview with Australian TV - October 18, 2003]

Those who torture, or allow or recommend it, make the greatest liars.
~ Sebastian L. Muccilli, Embarrassed U.S. Citizen

war & peace

"I BELIEVE that God wants me to be president." George W. Bush
"I would like to thank Providence and the Almighty for choosing me of all people to be allowed to wage this battle for Germany," Adolf Hitler - Berlin March, 1936

God is not on the side of any nation, yet we know He is on the side of justice. Our finest moments [as a nation] have come when we faithfully served the cause of justice for our own citizens, and for the people of other lands: George W. Bush

If we pursue this way, if we are decent, industrious, and honest, if we so loyally and truly fulfill our duty, then it is my conviction that in the future as in the past the lord God will always help us:
Adolf Hitler, at the Harvest Thanksgiving Festival on the Buckeburg held on 3 Oct. 1937

"freedom and fear, justice and cruelty have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them." George W. Bush

"Never in these long years have we offered any other prayer but this: Lord, grant to our people peace at home, and grant and preserve to them peace from the foreign foe!" : Adolf Hitler - Nuremberg Sept. 13, 1936.

civil obedience

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 and robbing the country. That's our problem.

~ Howard Zinn, from Failure to Quit

justice & truth

Where is the justice of political power if it executes the murderer and jails the plunderer, and then itself marches upon neighboring lands, killing thousands and pillaging the very hills?
~ Kahlil Gibran

An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.
~ Mohandas Gandhi

heroic labor of peace

I believe that if the people of this nation fully understood what Congress has done to them over the last 49 years, they would move on Washington; they would not wait for an election... It adds up to a preconceived plan to destroy the economic and social independence of the United States!
~ George W. Malone (1890-1961) U.S. Senator (Nevada) 1957 - Source: speaking before Congress

Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice. It demands greater heroism than war. It demands greater fidelity to the truth and a much more perfect purity of conscience.
~Thomas Merton

A rooster crows only when it sees the light. Put him in the dark and he'll never crow. I have seen the light and I'm crowing.
~ Muhammad Ali (born Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr.)

my country

When shall it be said in any country of the world, my poor are happy, neither ignorance or distress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want, the taxes not oppressive; the rational world is my friend because I am friend of its happiness. When these things can be said, then may that country boast of its constitution and government . ~ Thomas Paine

saying no to war

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 - French pacifist leader

a free press

Paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.
~ Hugo Black

freedom

The necessity of the times, more than ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude, and perseverance. Let us remember that `if we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom.' it is a very serious consideration...that millions yet unborn may be the miserable sharers of the event. ~ Samuel Adams, speech in Boston, 1771.   

 

I am done with great things and big things, great institutions and big success, and I am for those tiny invisible molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, yet which if you give them time, will rend the hardest monuments of man's pride. ~ William James   

 

The evils of government are directly proportional to the tolerance of the people. ~ Frank Kent   

 

Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think. But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing. ~ Thomas Paine

the nationalist

  To save your world you asked this man to die; Would this man, could he see you now, ask why? ~ W. H. Auden: "Epitaph for an Unknown Soldier"  

Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them. There is almost no kind of outrage-----torture, imprisonment without trial, assassination, the bombing of civilians-----which does not change its moral color when it is committed by 'our' side. ...The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them. ~ George Orwell  

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundnce of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little. ~ Franklin Delano Roosevelt

what is morally wrong can never be advantageous

We know that dictators are quick to choose aggression, while free nations strive to resolve differences in peace.
~ George W. Bush UN Speech Sept 2004

Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so, whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose -- and you allow him to make war at pleasure. If today, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, 'I see no probability of the British invading us' but he will say to you, 'Be silent; I see it, if you don't.'
~ Abraham Lincoln

So let us regard this as settled: what is morally wrong can never be advantageous, even when it enables you to make some gain that you believe to be to your advantage. The mere act of believing that some wrongful course of action constitutes an advantage is pernicious.
~ Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.)

war & patriotism

Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.
~ Ernest Hemingway

How many does it take to metamorphose wickedness into righteousness? One man must not kill. If he does, it is murder.... But a state or nation may kill as many as they please, and it is not murder. It is just, necessary, commendable, and right. Only get people enough to agree to it, and the butchery of myriads of human beings is perfectly innocent. But how many does it take?
~ Adin Ballou, The Non-Resistant, 5 February 1845

There have been periods of history in which episodes of terrible violence occurred but for which the word violence was never used.... Violence is shrouded in justifying myths that lend it moral legitimacy, and these myths for the most part kept people from recognizing the violence for what it was. The people who burned witches at the stake never for one moment thought of their act as violence; rather they thought of it as an act of divinely mandated righteousness. The same can be said of most of the violence we humans have ever committed.
~ Gil Bailie

Give me the money that has been spent in war and I will clothe every man, woman, and child in an attire of which kings and queens will be proud. I will build a schoolhouse in every valley over the whole earth. I will crown every hillside with a place of worship consecrated to peace.
~ Charles Sumner

Our country is the world, our countrymen are all mankind. We love the land of our nativity, only as we love all other lands. The interests, rights, and liberties of American citizens are no more dear to us than are those of the whole human race. Hence we can allow no appeal to patriotism, to revenge any national insult or injury.
~ William Lloyd Garrison, Declaration of Sentiments, Boston Peace Conference, 1838