Words of Wisdom

It is a bigger miracle to be patient and refrain from anger than it is to control the demons which fly through the air.
John Cassian

Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

‘Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.’
Thomas A. Edison

‘Colorful demonstrations and weekend marches are vital but alone are not powerful enough to stop wars. Wars will be stopped only when soldiers refuse to fight, when workers refuse to load weapons onto ships and aircraft, when people boycott the economic outposts of Empire that are strung across the globe. ‘
Arundhati Roy Public Power in the Age of Empire

‘We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence.’
Martin Luther King Jr.

‘We do not need guns and bombs to bring peace, we need love and compassion.’
Mother Teresa The Joy in Loving: A Guide to Daily Living

‘Peace cannot be built on exclusivism, absolutism, and intolerance. But neither can it be built on vague liberal slogans and pious programs gestated in the smoke of confabulation. There can be no peace on earth without the kind of inner change that brings man back to his ‘right mind.’ p. 31’
Thomas Merton, On Non-Violence

‘In the use of force, one simplifies the situation by assuming that the evil to be overcome is clear-cut, definite, and irreversible. Hence there remains but one thing: to eliminate it. Any dialogue with the sinner, any question of the irreversibility of his act, only means faltering and failure. Failure to eliminate evil is itself a defeat. Anything that even remotely risks such defeat is in itself capitulation to evil. The irreversibility of evil then reaches out to contaminate even the tolerant thought of the hesitant crusader who, momentarily, doubts the total evil of the enemy he is about to eliminate. p. 21’
Thomas Merton On Non-Violence

‘The first principal of non-violent action is that of non-cooperation with everything humiliating.’
Mahatma Gandhi On Non-Violence