QUOTES
"We
have assumed the name of peacemakers, but we have been, by and large, unwilling
to pay any significant price. And because we want the peace with half a heart
and half a life and will, the war, of course, continues, because the waging of
war, by its nature, is total--but the waging of peace, by our own cowardice, is
partial. So a whole will and a whole heart and a whole national life bent toward
war prevail over the mere desire for peace…" - Daniel Berrigan
"One
is called to live nonviolently, even if the change one works for seems impossible.
It may or may not be possible to turn the US around through nonviolent revolution.
But one thing favors such an attempt: the total inability of violence to change
anything for the better" -- Daniel Berrigan
"Because
we want the peace with half a heart and half a life and will, the war, of course,
continues, because the waging of war, by its nature, is total - but the waging
of peace, by our own cowardice, is partial."
Certainly
the trouble is not that we do not want peace. We have seen enough war, we are
sick of it, unto death. The war has come home like a stalking corpse, tailing
its blood, its tears, its losses, its despairs — seeking like an American ghost
the soul of America. We want the peace; but most of us do not want to pay the
price of peace. We still dream of a peace that has no cost attached. We want peace,
but we live content with poverty and injustice and racism, with the murder of
prisoners and students, the despair of the poor to whom justice is endlessly denied.
We long for peace, but we wish also to keep undisturbed a social fabric of privilege
and power that controls the economic misery of two thirds of the world's people.
"Obviously
there will be no genuine peace while such an inherently violent scheme of things
continues. America will in time extricate herself from the bloody swamps, the
ruined villages, the mutilated dead of Vietnam. But nothing will be settled there,
nothing mitigated at home. Nothing changed, that is, until a change of heart leads
us to a change of social structures in every area of our lives."
"The
sponsors of war closely resemble the weapons they create. And smart bombs, depleted
uranium, land mines, rockets and tanks, rather than protect 'widows and orphans
and strangers at the gate,' are designed precisely to create 'widows and orphans,'
to transform strangers into enemies and enemies into corpses."
We
spoke out, committed civil disobedience, and went to jail because the peace hangs
senselessly and precariously upon weapons costing billions to build and billions
to improve — weapons which become more useless as we add to their destructive
force. With this money we could have fed the world's people. Half the children
on earth go to bed hungry — millions more have retarding and stunting protein
deficiencies. Instead of building the peace by attacking injustices like starvation,
disease, illiteracy, political and economic servitude, we spend a trillion dollars
on war since 1946, until hatred and conflict have become the international preoccupation."
