War

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 are not clothed.
--- President Dwight D. Eisenhower April 16, 1953

Wars never hurt anybody except the people who die.
--- Salvador Dali

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

Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.
--- Herman Goering (at the Nuremberg trials)

Peace

The most disadvantageous peace is better than the most just war.
--- Desiderius Erasmus

I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.
--- Dwight D. Eisenhower

If the human race wishes to have a prolonged and indefinite period of material prosperity, they have only got to behave in a peaceful and helpful way toward one another.
--- Winston Churchill

We should take care, in inculcating patriotism into our boys and girls, that it is a patriotism above the narrow sentiment which usually stops at one's country, and thus inspires jealousy and enmity in dealing with others....Our patriotism should be of the wider, nobler kind which recognises justice and reasonableness in the claims of others and which lead our country into comradeship with...the other nations of the world. The first step to this end is to develop peace and goodwill within our borders, by training our youth of both sexes to its practice as their habit of life, so that the jealousies of town against town, class against class and sect against sect no longer exist; and then to extend this good feeling beyond our frontiers towards our neighbours.
--- Lord Baden-Powell

Nonviolence

We cannot have peace among men whose hearts delight in the killing of any living creature. By every act that glorifies or even tolerates such delight in killing, we set back the progress of humanity.
--- Rachel Carson (1907-1964)

I will not kill or hurt any living creature needlessly, nor destroy any beautiful thing, but I will strive to save and comfort all gentle life, and guard and protect all natural beauty upon the earth.
--- John Ruskin (1819-1900)

Teaching a child not to step on a caterpillar is as valuable to the child as it is to the caterpillar.
--- Bradley Miller

...kindness and benificence should be extended to all creatures of every species, and these will flow from the breast of a true man, as streams that issue from a living fountain.
--- Plutarch (46-120 CE)

It ill becomes us to invoke in our daily prayers the blessing of god, the compassionate if we in turn will not practice elementary compassion towards our fellow creatures.
--- Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.
--- Mohandas K. Gandhi

All who affirm the use of violence admit it is only a means to achieve justice and peace. But peace and justice are nonviolence....Those who abandon nonviolence have no sense of history. Rather they are bypassing history, freezing history, betraying history.
--- André Trocmé

Leadership

Our leaders got confused, so...
We're all leaders now.
They told us there was nothing we could do.
They were wrong.
When we tell ourselves there's nothing we can do,
we are wrong.
--- Anne Herbert and Margaret M. Pavel "Random Acts of Kindness & Senseless Acts of Beauty"

We shall pass through this world but once.
Therefore, any good thing I can do,
For any living being,
Let me do it now.
Let me not defer it or neglect it,
For I shall not pass this way again.
--- Anonymous

All great truths begin as blasphemies.
--- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

It is madness to think that one can solve a problem with the same kind of thinking that created it.
--- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.
--- Pastor Martin Niemöller

Democracy

You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists.
--- Abbie Hoffman

Labor

Arise ye workers from your slumbers
Arise ye prisoners of want
For reason in revolt now thunders
And at last ends the age of cant.
Away with all your superstitions
Servile masses arise, arise
We'll change henceforth the old tradition
And spurn the dust to win the prize.

So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.
So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.

No more deluded by reaction
On tyrants only we'll make war
The soldiers too will take strike action
They'll break ranks and fight no more
And if those cannibals keep trying
To sacrifice us to their pride
They soon shall hear epithets flying
We'll boo the generals on our own side.

No saviour from on high delivers
No faith have we in prince or peer
Our own right hand the chains must shiver
Chains of hatred, greed and fear
E'er the thieves will give up their booty
And give to all a happier lot.
Those at the forge must do their duty
And we'll strike while the iron is hot.
--- after Eugene Pottier, "The Internationale"

[Sung to the tune of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic"]
When the union's inspiration through the workers' blood shall run
There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun
Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one
For the Union makes us strong

Chorus
Solidarity forever, solidarity forever
Solidarity forever
For the Union makes us strong

Is there aught we hold in common with the greedy parasite 
Who would lash us into serfdom and would crush us with his might?  
Is there anything left to us but to organize and fight?  
For the union makes us strong

[Chorus]

It is we who ploughed the prairies, built the cities where they trade
Dug the mines and built the workshops, endless miles of railroad laid
Now we stand outcast and starving 'mid the wonders we have made
But the union makes us strong 

[Chorus]

All the world  that's owned by idle drones is ours and ours alone 
We have laid the wide foundations, built it skyward stone by stone 
It is ours, not to slave in, but to master and to own  
While the union makes us strong

[Chorus]

They have taken untold millions that they never toiled to earn
But without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn
We can break their haughty power gain our freedom when we learn
That the Union makes us strong

[Chorus]

 In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold
Greater than the might of armies magnified a thousandfold
We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old
For the Union makes us strong
--- Ralph Chaplin, "Solidarity Forever"

Other

The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.
--- Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

There is a destiny that makes us brothers,
None goes his way alone --
All that we send into the lives of others
Comes back into our own.
--- Anonymous

I think that I shall never see
a billboard lovely as a tree.
Perhaps, unless the billboards fall,
I'll never see a tree at all.
--- Ogden Nash (1902 - 1971)

Anyone who believes that exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.
--- Kenneth E. Boulding

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