MISSING FROM AMERICAN CONSCIENCE...
The people who will have the biggest problem with the following quotes are those self-styled tough guys and pro-corporation capitalists. We have been fed a bunch of war b.s. so that we can maximize the profits of the military-industrial greed component in the U.S. Notice the leaders who comment who are from a variety of faiths, and from those we only see quoted when it satisfies our war-desires for profit.
"You will not enter Paradise until you have faith, and you will not complete your faith until you love one another." -Muhammad (ca. 570-632), prophet of Islam
"Nonviolence is a power which can be wielded equally by all -- children, young men and women or grown-up people -- provided they have a living faith in the God of love and have, therefore, equal love for all mankind." -Mahatma Gandhi
"Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all." -George Washington
"Let us not accept violence as the way of peace. Let us instead begin by respecting true freedom. The resulting peace will be able to satisfy the world's expectations, for it will be a peace built on justice, a peace founded on the incomparable dignity of the free human being." -Pope John Paul II
"Make wars unprofitable and you make them impossible." -A. Philip Randolph
"There never was a good war or a bad peace." -Benjamin Franklin
"I do not recollect in all the animal kingdom a single species but man which is eternally and systematically engaged in the destruction of its own species." -Thomas Jefferson
"After each war there is a little less democracy to save." -Brooks Atkinson [American journalist]
"Endless money forms the sinews of war." -Cicero [106-143 BC], Roman statesman/philosopher
"Of course it is tempting to close one's eyes to history and instead to speculate about the roots of war in some possible animal instinct: as if, like a tiger, we still had to kill to live, or, like the robin redbreast, to defend a nesting territory. But war, organized war, is not a human instinct. It is a highly planned and cooperative form of theft. And that form began ten thousand years ago when the harvesters of wheat accumulated a surplus and the nomads rose out of the desert to rob them of what they themselves could not provide." -Jacob Bronowski [1906-1974, Polish-born British mathematician]
"The church allows people to believe that they can be good Christians and yet draw dividends from armament factories, can be good Christians and yet imperil the well-being of their fellows by speculating in stock and shares, can be good Christians and yet be imperialists, yet participate in war." -Aldous Leonard Huxley [1894-1963, English author]
"Terrorism' is what we call the violence of the weak, and we condemn it; 'war' is what we call the violence of the strong, and we glorify it." -Sydney J. Harris, American journalist and columnist
"Who is a hero? He who turns his enemy into a friend." -The Talmud
"You have heard that they were told, 'An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.' But what I tell you is this: Do not resist those who wrong you. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn and offer him the other also." -quote attributed to Jesus of Nazareth in Matthew 5:38-39
"All men tremble at punishment, all men fear death: Remember that you are like unto them, and do not kill nor cause slaughter." -Buddha
"I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too. I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again." -Anne Frank [German-born Jewish diarist]
And so now I return to the reality of what faces us in America and the world. Am I a pacifist? No, I am not. I refer to former American talk-show host, Phil Donahue, who commented:
"I'm not a pacifist. I'm not that brave."
