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...Any
definition of a culture of peace must address
the problem of achieving justice for communities
and individuals who do not have the means
to compete or cope without structured assistance
and compassionate help.
--
Mahnaz Afkhami
We
have the ability to achieve, if we master
the necessary goodwill, a common global society
blessed with a shared culture of peace that
is nourished by the ethnic, national and local
diversities that enrich our lives.--
Mahnaz Afkhami
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War
is not inherent in human beings. We learn
war and we learn peace. The culture of peace
is something which is learned, just as violence
is learned and war culture is learned.
-- Elise
Boulding
Peace
cultures thrive on and are nourished by visions
of how things might be, in a world where sharing
and caring are part of the accepted lifeways
for everyone.
--
Elise
Boulding
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We
cannot have peace among men whose hearts delight
in killing any living creature. By every act
that glorifies or even tolerates such moronic
delight in killing we set back the progress
of humanity.
--Rachel
Carson
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"You
know, if people are not pacifists, it's not
their fault. It's because society puts them
in that spot. You've got to change it. You don't
just change a man - you've got to change his
environment as you do it."
-- Cesar
Chavez |
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War is an invention of the human mind. The human
mind can invent peace.
-- Norman
Cousins |
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"We
must inoculate our children against militarism,
by educating them in the spirit of pacifism...
Our schoolbooks glorify war and conceal its
horrors. They indoctrinate children with hatred.
I would teach peace rather than war, love
rather than hate."
-- Albert
Einstein
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I
believe that a culture of peace must be the
essential foundation of our efforts for peace.
-- Daisaku
Ikeda
Let
us join our efforts toward building the unshakable
foundations for a culture of peace.
-- Daisaku
Ikeda
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We
have really got to create a culture in our world
today where we recognize that every human life
is sacred and precious and we have no right
to take another human life.
-- Mairead
Corrigan Maguire |
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A
universal renunciation of violence requires
the commitment of the whole of society.
These are not matters of government but matters
of State; not only matters for the authoirities,
but for society in its entirety, including civilian,
military, and religious bodies. The mobilization
which is urgently needed to effect the transition
within two or three years from a culture of
war to a culture of peace demands co-operation
from everyone. In order to change, the world
needs everyone.
-- Federico
Mayor |
It
is a good moment to repeat that a war is never won.
Never mind that history books tell us the opposite.
The psychological and material costs of war are
so high that any triumph is a pyrrhic victory. Only
peace can be won and winning peace means not only
avoiding armed conflict but finding ways of eradicating
the causes of individual and collective violence:
injustice and oppression, ignorance and poverty,
intolerance and discrimination. We must construct
a new set of values and attitudes to replace the
culture of war which, for centuries, has been influencing
the course of civilization. Winning peace means
the triumph of our pledge to establish, on a democratic
basis, a new social framework of tolerance and generosity
from which no one will feel excluded.
-- Federico
Mayor
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"We
must have research for peace... It would embrace
the outstanding problems of morality. The time
has come for man's intellect, his scientific
method, to win over the immoral brutality and
irrationality of war and militarism … Now we
are forced to eliminate from the world forever
this vestige of prehistoric barbarism, this
curse to the human race."
-- Linus
Pauling |
"I
believe that love, kindness, compassion, tolerance,
and peace can be implanted in the psyche of man
only when fear, paranormal illusion and ignorance
are removed. We can then shift our attention more
to matters of peace, rather than to matters of war."
-- Peter Retzinger
The
improvement of life was only accomplished to
the extent to which it was based on a change
of consciousness, that is, to the extent to
which the law of violence was replaced in men's
consciousness by the law of love.
-- Leo
Tolstoy |
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Since
wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds
of men that the defences of peace must be constructed
-- Constitution of UNESCO (United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization)
Wars
are not acts of God. They are caused by man, by
man-made institutions, by the way in which man has
organized his society. What man has made, man can
change.
-- Frederic Moore Vinson
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Time
itself becomes subordinate to war. If only
we could celebrate peace as our various ancestors
celebrated war; if only we could glorify peace
as those before us, thirsting for adventure,
glorified war; if only our sages and scholars
together could resolve to infuse peace with
the same energy and inspiration that others
have put into war.
Why
is war such an easy option? Why does peace
remain such an elusive goal? We know statesmen
skilled at waging war, but where are those
dedicated enough to humanity to find a way
to avoid war>
Every
nation has its prestigious military academies
- or so few of them - that reach not only
the virtues of peace but also the art of attaining
it? I mean attaining and protecting it by
means other than weapons, the tools of war.
Why are we surprised whenever war recedes
and yields to peace?
-- Elie
Wiesel
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CULTURE
OF VIOLENCE
The
sad truth is that most evil is done by people who
never make up their minds to be good or evil.
--Hannah Arendt
Violence
is the last refuge of the incompetent.
-- Isaac
Asimov
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If
it's natural to kill, how come men have to go
into training to learn how?
--Joan
Baez
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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 though
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
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"For
most of recorded history, parental violence
against children and men's violence against
wives was explicitly or implicitly condoned.
Those who had the power to prevent and/or punish
this violence through religion, law, or custom,
openly or tacitly approved it. …..The reason
violence against women and children is finally
out in the open is that activists have brought
it to global attention."
-- Riane
Eisler |
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It
is the ignorant and childish part of mankind
that is the fighting part. Idle and vacant
minds want excitement
~ Ralph
Waldo Emerson
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Violence
is a crime against humanity, for it destroys the
very fabric of society.
-- Pope John Paul II
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"Strange
how blind people are! They are horrified by
the torture chambers of the Middle Ages, but
their arsenals fill them with pride!"
-- Bertha
Von Suttner |
Men
are so accustomed to maintaining external order
by violence that they cannot conceive of life
being possible without violence.
-- Leo
Tolstoy |
|
We
challenge the culture of violence when we our selves
act in the certainty that violence is no longer
acceptable, that it's tired and outdated no matter
how many cling to it in the stubborn belief that
it still works and that it's still valid.
-- Gerard Vanderhaar
PEACE
INSTITUTIONS
The
prophecy of a world moving toward political unity
is the light which guides all that is best, most
vigorous, most truly alive in the work of our time.
-- Walter Lippman
 |
"There
must be, not a balance of power, but a community
of power; not organized rivalries, but an
organized peace.
-- Woodrow
Wilson
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For
a Department of Peace
Back
in 1792, Dr. Benjamin Banneker, the famed African-American
inventor and scientist in Washington, proposed
a Department of Peace for the new Nation to
his friends George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.
His prophetic suggestion was not implemented;
but now, more than 200 years later, the need
for a Peace Department is too compelling to
ignore.
-- John
Conyers |
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Citizens
across the United States are now uniting in
a great cause to establish a Department of
Peace, seeking nothing less than the transformation
of our society, to make non-violence an organizing
principle, to make war archaic through creating
a paradigm shift in our culture for human
development, for economic and political justice
and for violence control.
-- Dennis
Kucinich
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"A
Department of Peace and National Peace Academy will
provide training for our troops so that they will
be prepared whether dealing with conflict in a war
zone, the aftermath of a tsunami, or providing relief
aid to hungry children overseas.”
-- Dorothy Maver
"Needed:
A Department of Peace."
-- Karl E. Mundt
On
the whole our armed services have been doing
pretty well in the way of keeping us defended,
but I hope our State Department will remember
that it is really the department of achieving
peace.
-- Eleanor
Roosevelt |
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The
grim fact is that we prepare for war like precocious
giants and for peace like retarded pygmies.
-- Lester
Pearson
|
| As
the War-Office of the United States was established
in the time of peace, it is equally reasonable
that a Peace-Office should be established in
the time of war. -- Benjamin
Rush |
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In
order more deeply to affect the minds of the citizens
of the United States with the blessings of peace,
by contrasting them with the evils of war, let the
following inscriptions be painted upon the sign
which is placed over the door of the War Office:
1. An office for butchering the human species. 2.
A Widow and Orphan making office. 3. A broken bone
making office. 4. A Wooden leg making office. 5.
An office for the creating of public and private
vices. 6. An office for creating a public debt.
7. An office for creating speculators, stock Jobbers,
and Bankrupts. 8. An office for creating famine.
9. An office for creating pestilential diseases.
10. An office for creating poverty, and the destruction
of liberty, and national happiness. -- Benjamin
Rush
We
have contingency plans for war, but none for peace.
--Theodore C. Sorensen
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The
Department of Peace would take a more human
approach to healing our society, looking not
merely for ways we can destroy an enemy, but
for more powerful ways to create new friends.
While the State Department engages in international
diplomacy, there is no domestic parallel.
There is no department seeking to harness
the power of a nonviolent heart.
-- Marianne
Williamson
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ARTS
FOR A BETTER WORLD
War
makes rattling good history; but Peace is poor reading.
--Thomas Hardy
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"Art in its highest form is art that serves
and instructs society and human development."
-- Harry
Belafonte
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If
we are to change our world view, images have
to change. The artist now has a very important
job to do. He's not a little peripheral figure
entertaining rich people, he's really needed.
-- Vaclav
Havel |
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If
peace…only had the music and pageantry of war, there'd
be no wars.
-- Sophie Kerr
