Peace Thoughts

"Smiling is very important. If we are not able to smile, then the world will not have peace. It is not by going out for a demonstration against nuclear missiles that we can bring about peace. It is with our capacity of smiling, breathing, and being peace that we can make peace." - Tich Nhat Hanh, Being Peace

"When the power of love becomes stronger than the love of power, we will have peace." - Jimi Hendrix

Our neighbors are those we happen to be with at the momoent. Life is for service. We human beings are meant to be helpers. in fact, the greatedst thing we can do in live is to help our neighbors come to know that they are lovable and capable of loving. Anyone who truly knows this will not lose hope - and therefore will not resort to violence. - Mr. (Fred) Rogers

Violence as a way of achieving justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends by defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers. - Martin Luther King, Jr.

Humanly speaking, it is possible to understand the Sermon on the Mount in a thousand different ways. But Jesus knows only one possibility: simple surrender and obedience - not intrepreting or applying it, but doing and obeying it. That is the only way to hear his words. He does not mean for us to discuss it as an ideal. He really means for us to get on with it. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

There has never been a good war, or a bad peace. - Benjamin Franklin

Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him. - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 1964 Nobel Peace Prize

Establishing lasting peace is the work of education; all politics can do is keep us out of war. - Maria Montessori

“Where there is a deep, simple, all-embracing love of man, of the created world of living and inanimate things, then there will be respect for life, for freedom, for truth, for justice and there will be humble love of God. But where there is no love of man, no love of life, then make all the laws you want, all the edicts and treaties, issue all the anathemas; set up all the safeguards and inspections, fill the air with spying satellites, and hang cameras on the moon. As long as you see your fellow man being essentially to be feared, mistrusted, hated, and destroyed, there cannot be peace on earth. And who knows if fear alone will suffice to prevent a war of total destruction?” - Thomas Merton (from "Seeds of Destruction")

First there must be order and harmony within your own mind. Then this order will spread to your family, then to the community, and finally to your entire kingdom. Only then can you have peace and harmony. Confucius

The just path is always the right one. - Yiddish Proverb

Peace is our work. Do not be afraid to take a chance on peace, to teach peace. Peace will be the last word of history. - Pope John Paul II

You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist. - Indira Gandhi

Though I am different from you, we were born involved in one another. - T'ao Chien

It is the enemy who can truly teach us to practice the virtues of compassion and tolerance. - The Dalai Lama, 1998 Nobel Peace Prize

Sometime they will give a war and nobody will come. - Carl Sandburg

“People seem to think that it is in some way a proof that no merciful God exists, if we have so many wars. On the contrary consider how in spite of centuries of sin and greed and lust and cruelty and hatred and avarice and oppression and injustice, spawned and bred by the free wills of men, the human race can still recover, each time, and can still produce men and women who overcome evil with good, hatred with love, greed with charity, lust and cruelty with sanctity. How could all this be possible without the merciful love of God, pouring out His grace upon us? Can there be any doubt where wars come from and where peace comes from, when the children of this world, excluding God from their peace conferences, only manage to bring about greater and greater wars the more they talk about peace?” - From Seeds by Thomas Merton

The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. Even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained; and even in the best of all hearts, there remains a small corner of evil. It is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict it within each person. - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

Never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world. Indeed it is very often the only thing that does. -Margaret Mead

Peace is a daily, a weekly, a montly process, gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers, quietly building new structures. John F. Kennedy

For it isn't enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must work at it. - Eleanor Roosevelt

Peace and love are always allive in us, but we are not always alive to peace and love. - Julian of Norwich

Only when peace lives within each of us, will it live outside of us. - Deng Ming Dao

There are only two powers in the world - the power of the sword and the power of the spirit. In the long run, the sword will always be conquered by the spirit. - Napoleoon Bonaparte

Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God. - Jesus (Matthew 5:9)

It is not how much we do, but how much love we put in the action that we do. - Mother Teresa, 1979 Nobel Peace Prize

I am prepared to die, but there is no cause for which I am prepared to kill. - Mahatma Gandhi

Grandfather, Sacred One, teach us love, compassion, and honor that we may heal the earth and heal each other. - Ojibway prayer

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 another bomber. - Women's International League for Peace and Freedom

I wondered why somebody didn't do something for peace. Then I realized that I am somebody. - Anonymous

The truest and greatest power is the strength of peace, because peace is the will of the Great Spirit. - Hopi Declaration of Peace

Poverty is the worst form of violence. - Mahatma Gandhi

Peace cannot be kept by force, it can only be achieved by understanding. - Albert Einstein

We know too that one evil cannot be cured by another. Evils don't cancel each other out. They total up. - Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, 1980 Nobel Peace Prize

Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it stands than to anything on which it is poured. - Anonymous

If I could have three wishes, world peace would be all three. - Marlia Moore, 8th grade

A mind that is stretched by a new idea can never go back to its original dimensions. - Oliver Wendell Holmes

If you want to see the future, look iinside you, for it is where all the building begins. - Samantha Abeel, age 13, "Reach for the Moon"

It is in each of us that the peace of the world is cast. From there it must spread out to the limits of the universe. - Leo Cardinal Suenens.

Peace is not the absence of conflict, but the presence of creative alternatives for responding to conflict. - Jeanne Larson, "Seeds of Peace"

Peace is inclusive. - Madge Micheels-Cyrio, "Seeds of Peace"

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. - Martin Luther King, Jr., "Letter from a Birmingham Jail"

The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain, until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life. - Jane Addams, 1931 Nobel Peace Prize

If everyone gives one thread, the poor man will have a shirt. - Russian proverb

The path of prayer leads to the center of peace. - Oscar Wilde

No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There's too much work to do. - Dorothy Day

Internationalism does not mean the end of individual nations. Orchestras don't mean the end of violins. - Golda Meir

Be like a tree in pursuit of your cause, stand firm, grip hard, thrust upward, bend to the winds of heaven, and learn tranquility. - Dedication to Richard St. Barbe Baker, "Father of Trees"

Peace. The choice of a new generation. - Matt Bell, 7th grade

I still believe that people are really good at heart. I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again. - Anne Frank, July 1944

Peace is not won by those who fiercely guard their differences, but by those who wil open minds and hearts seek out connection. - Katherine Paterson

Why do people kill people to prove that killing people is wrong? - Anonymous

When the power of love overcomes the love of power, then there will be true peace. - Sri Chin Moi Gosh

The servants of the All-Merciful are those who go about the earth with gentleness, and when the foolish ones address them, they answer, "Peace!" - Kroan 25:63

Since when do you have to agree with people to defend them from injustice? - Lillian Hellman

If we cannot end our differneces, at lease we can make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal. - John F. Kennedy

In peace, sons bury their fathers. In war, fathers bury their sons. - Herodotus

Let us take the riskes of peace upon our lives, not impose the risks of war upon the world. - Quaker proverb

An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth - that way everyone in the world will soon be blind and toothless. - Tevya, Fiddler on the Roof

In planning for a future of peace, there are no experts to lead us. There are no colleges to train us. The inventions will arise from our deepest longing, our imagination, our hopes, our common sense. We can start building a peaceful future by first creating images of it in our minds. - Women's Peace Presence

IMAGINE - John Lennon
 
Imagine there's no heaven,
It's easy if you try.
No hell below us,
Above us only sky.
Imagine all the people,
Living for today.
 
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do.
Nothing to kill or die for,
And no religion, too.
Imagine all the people,
Living life in peace~~~
 
You, you may say I'm a dreamer,
But I'm not the only one.
I hope some day you'll join us,
And the world will live as one.
 
Imagine no possessions,
I wonder if you can.
No need for greed or hunger,
a brotherhood of man.
Imagine all the people,
Sharing all the world~~~
 
You----you may say I'm a dreamer,
But I'm not the only one.
I hope some day you'll join us,
And the world will live as one.