Peace

• "I think that people want peace so much that one of these days government had better get out of their way and let them have it." ~Dwight David Eisenhower

• '"As people are not eaten, butchering them is of no use.'" ~Arndt Pekurinen

• "There is no way to peace; peace is the way." ~A. J. Muste A.J. Muste Memorial Institute - NY [1]

• "Peace can only last where human rights are respected, and where individuals and nations are free." ~Dalai Lama

• "The environment is very important in the aspects of peace because when we destroy our resources, they become scarce and we fight over that." ~Wangari Maathai

• '"If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace." ~John Lennon

• "Sometimes there's truth in old cliches. There can be no real peace without justice. And without resistance there will be no justice." ~Arundhati Roy, Peace?... (fragment) Speech on Accepting the Sydney Peace Prize - Nov 07, 2004 Sydney IMC [2] Peace?... Full speech [3]

• "Peace is a resistance to the terrible satisfactions of war." - Judith Butler, The Believer Magazine - Interview - Issue 2

• "Peace is not the absence of anything. Real peace is the presence of something beautiful. Both peace and the thirst for it have been in the heart of every human being in every century and every civilization." Maharaji, Address to faculty, students and guests at Harvard University's Sanders Theater (August 2004)

• "...no matter what someone else has done, it still matters how we treat people. It matters to our humanity that we treat offenders according to standards that we recognize as just. Justice is not revenge - it's deciding for a solution that is oriented towards peace, peace being the harder but more human way of reacting to injury. That is the very basis of the idea of rights." - Judith Butler, The Believer Magazine - Interview - Issue 2

• "The most profound danger to world peace in the coming years will stem not from the irrational acts of states or individuals but from the legitimate demands of the world's dispossessed. Of these poor and disenfranchised, the majority live a marginal existence in equatorial climates. Global warming, not of their making but originating with the wealthy few, will affect their fragile ecologies most. Their situation will be desperate and manifestly unjust.
  It cannot be expected, therefore, that in all cases they will be content to await the beneficence of the rich. If then we permit the devastating power of modern weaponry to spread through this combustible human landscape, we invite a conflagration that can engulf both rich and poor. The only hope for the future lies in co-operative international action, legitimized by democracy.
  It is time to turn our backs on the unilateral search for security, in which we seek to shelter behind walls. Instead, we must persist in the quest for united action to counter both global warming and a weaponized world. These twin goals will constitute vital components of stability as we move toward the wider degree of social justice that alone gives hope of peace.
  Some of the needed legal instruments are already at hand, such as the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the Convention on Climate Change, the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. As concerned citizens, we urge all governments to commit to these goals that constitute steps on the way to replacement of war by law.
  To survive in the world we have transformed, we must learn to think in a new way. As never before, the future of each depends on the good of all." -- This statement was signed by 110 Nobel Laureates and released on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the prizes, celebrated December 2001. Science, December 13, 2001.