Be
a Hero for a Better World ... Every Act of Kindness Makes
a Difference!
Unity
In DIVERSITY
"There
is a Law that man should love his neighbor as himself. In
a few hundred years it should be as natural to mankind as
breathing or the upright gait; but if he does not learn
it he must perish."
-- Alfred Adler
"United
we stand, divided we fall."
-- Aesop (620 -560 B.C.)
*
We
have the ability to achieve, if we master the necessary
goodwill, a common global society blessed with a shared
culture of peace that is nourished by the ethnic,
national and local diversities that enrich our lives.
--
Mahnaz Afkhami
"Peace
requires everyone to be in the circle – wholeness, inclusion."
-- Isabel Allende
It
is time for parents to teach young people early on
that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.
-- Maya
Angelou
*
"We
may have different religions, different languages, different
colored skin, but we all belong to one human race."
-- Kofi
Annan
*
"There
are no nations! There is only humanity. And if we don't
come to understand that right soon, there will be no
nations, because there will be no humanity."
-- Isaac
Asimov
You
cannot contribute anything to the ideal condition of mind
and heart known as Brotherhood, however much you preach,
posture, or agree, unless you live it. ~
-- Faith Baldwin
It is
thus tolerance that is the source of peace, and intolerance
that is the source of disorder and squabbling.
-- Pierre Bayle
*
In
world history, those who have helped to build the
same culture are not necessarily of one race, and
those of the same race have not all participated in
one culture.
-- Ruth
Fulton Benedict
"Diversity
is the magic. It is the first manifestation, the first
beginning of the differentiation of a thing and of
simple identity. The greater the diversity, the greater
the perfection."
~ Thomas
Berry
One
of the very hallmarks of our nation is the ideal of
E Pluribus Unum. It is a concept that richly flows
from the highest ideals of our nation.
~ Sen.
Cory Booker
When
you're finally up on the moon, looking back at the earth,
all these differences and nationalistic traits are pretty
well going to blend and you're going to get a concept that
maybe this is really one world and why the hell can't we
learn to live together like decent people?
-- Frank Borman
"Toleration
is good for all, or it is good for none."
-- Edmund Burke
*
We
are of course a nation of differences. Those differences
don’t make us weak. They’re the source of our strength.
-- Jimmy
Carter
*
We
ought to think that we are one of the leaves of a
tree, and the tree is all humanity. We cannot live
without the others, without the tree.
-- Pablo
Casals
The
love of one's country is a splendid thing. But why
should love stop at the border?
-- Pablo
Casals
*
"We
live now in a global village and we are in one single
family. It’s our responsibility to bring friendship
and love from all different places around the world
and to live together in peace."
-- Jackie
Chan
Global
Family Day provides a way in which every man, woman,
and child in the United States can help to reduce suffering
at home, repair our damaged image abroad, and help us
remember that in the end, all people belong to the same
human family.
-- John
Conyers
Let
us have but one end in view, the welfare of humanity; and
let us put aside all selfishness in consideration of language,
nationality, or religion.
-- John Comenius, 17th century philosopher
*
Internal
peace is an essential first step to achieving peace
in the world. How do you cultivate it? It's very simple.
In the first place by realizing clearly that all mankind
is one, that human beings in every country are members
of one and the same family.
- The
Dalai Lama
*
Years
ago I recognized my kinship with all living things,
and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better
than the meanest on the earth. I said then and I say
now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it;
while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while
there is a soul in prison, I am not free.
-- Eugene
V. Debs
*
"We
need to dissolve the lie that some people have a right
to think of other people as their property. And we need
at last to form a circle that includes us all, in which
all of us are seen as equal.
-- Barbara
Deming
The
wise man belongs to all countries, for the home of a great
soul is the whole world
-- Democritus
*
"I
know there is strength in the differences between us.
I know there is comfort where we overlap.” -- Ani
DiFranco
No
man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece
of the continent … any man's death diminishes me, because
I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know
for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
-- John Donne
*
"Human
diversity makes tolerance more than a virtue; it makes
it a requirement for survival."
~ René
Dubos
As
we get deeper, we move closer and closer to other people;
we feel closer to life as a whole.
-- Eknath Easwaran
Our
task must be to free ourselves... by widening our circle
of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the
whole of nature and its beauty.
-- Albert
Einstein
"There
is the sky, which is all men's together..."
-- Euripides (412 B.C.)
*
“...the
world is a giant community now. This excuse of distance,
time, doesn’t work...We’re all so connected. We can’t
spend every second of our lives worrying about another
family miles away but we somehow have to factor it
in where we can."
-- Ralph
Fiennes
"I
keep my ideals, because in spite of everything I still believe
that people are really good at heart."
-- Anne Frank
*
We
are not going to be able to operate our spaceship earth
successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as
a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to
be everybody or nobody.
-- R.
Buckminster Fuller
*
"I
don't believe in charity. I believe in solidarity. Charity
is vertical, so it's humiliating. It goes from the top
to the bottom. Solidarity is horizontal. It respects
the other and learns from the other. I have a lot to
learn from other people."
-- Eduardo
Galeano
*
All
humanity is one undivided and indivisible family
"All
humanity is one undivided and indivisible family,
and each one of us is responsible for the misdeeds
of all the others. I cannot detach myself from the
wickedest soul."
"It
is easy enough to be friendly to one's friends. But
to befriend the one who regards himself as your enemy
is the quintessence of true religion. The other is
mere business." -- Mohandas
K. Gandhi
*
Peace
is not unity in similarity but unity in diversity, in
the comparison and conciliation of differences
-- Mikhail
Gorbachev
*
We
are eternally linked not just to each other but our
environment.
-- Herbie
Hancock
*
We
cannot afford to be separate. . . . We have to see that
all of us are in the same boat.
-- Dorothy
Height
I can
not, and will not judge, by what my eyes may see. For the
skin on a man shall not reveal his true identity.
-- Robert M. Hensel
In the
dark, equality for all of mankind couldn't seem brighter.
-- Robert M. Hensel
"The
minute we become an integrated whole, we look through the
same eyes and we see a whole different world together."
-- Azizah Al-Hibri
*
"Let
America be America, where equality is in the air we
breathe."
-- Langston
Hughes
"Toleration
is the best religion."
-- Victor Hugo
All
conflict is about difference; whether the difference
is race religion, or nationality…
--
John Hume
*
Difference
is of the essence of humanity. Difference is an accident
of birth and it should therefore never be the source
of hatred or conflict. The answer to difference is
to respect it. Therein lies a most fundamental principle
of peace: respect for diversity.
--
John Hume
"As
we grow in awareness of one another – whether two people
beginning a romance or two disparate and far-removed strangers
taking an interest in the other's culture – a wonderful
thing begins to happen: we begin to care for the other as
if the other is part of us. This is the magic of life that
our ancient teachers have bid us to see; the invisible filaments
of interconnectedness that bind us together in love and
appreciation."
-- Scott A. Hunt
This is peace with dignity. This is peace with commitment.
This is our gift to our peoples and the generations
to come…It will be real, as we open our hearts and minds
to each other.
-- King
Hussein of Jordan
"It
is in the shelter of each other that the people live."
-- Irish proverb
*
Our
flag is red, white and blue, but our nation is a rainbow-
red, yellow, brown, black and white- and we're all precious
in God's sight. ...
-- Jesse
Jackson
"My
hope is for us to come together not only embracing shared
beliefs and values, but acknowledging our differences in
ways that promote respect and appreciation. To ask for a
shared vision is a fair and legitimate human proposal; what
is not fair and legitimate is to dictate the ways on how
we get there. If we are to emerge from the long shadows
that can engulf us, we must talk with each other, come to
understand each other, and renew ourselves and our perceptions
of each other."
-- Alma Abdul-Hadi Jadallah
*
Peace
and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy,
and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it.
-- Thomas
Jefferson
"We
are so bound together that no man can labor for himself
alone. Each blow he strikes in his own behalf helps to mold
the universe."
-- Jerome K. Jerome
The
social progress, order, security and peace of each country
are necessarily connected with the social progress, order,
security and peace of all other countries.
-- Pope John XXIII
"As
man draws nearer to the stars, why should he not also draw
nearer to his neighbor?"
-- Lyndon B. Johnson
“How
do we create a harmonious society out of so many kinds of
people? The key is tolerance -- the one value that is indispensable
in creating community.” -- Barbara Jordan
What
divides us pales in comparison to what unites us.
-- US Senator Edward Kennedy
*
"Our
most basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet.
We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's
future. And we are all mortal." -- John
F. Kennedy
*
Ultimately,
America's answer to the intolerant man is diversity,
the very diversity which our heritage of religious freedom
has inspired.
-- Robert
F. Kennedy
"The
Holy Prophet Mohammed came into this world and taught us:
'That man is a Muslim who never hurts anyone by word or
deed, but who works for the benefit and happiness of God's
creatures. Belief in God is to love one's fellow men.'"
-- Abdul Ghaffar Khan
*
"We
may have all come on different ships, but we're in
the same boat now." -- Martin
Luther King, Jr
"We
must learn to live together as brothers, or we are
going to perish together as fools." -- Martin
Luther King, Jr
We
have learned to fly the air like birds and swim the
sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple
art of living together as brothers. --
Martin
Luther King, Jr
"The
hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined
nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace
and brotherhood." --
Martin
Luther King, Jr
I look
forward confidently to the day when all who work for a living
will be one with no thought to their separateness as Negroes,
Jews, Italians or any other distinctions. This will be the
day when we bring into full realization the American dream
-- a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of equality of opportunity,
of privilege and property widely distributed; a dream of
a land where men will not take necessities from the many
to give luxuries to the few; a dream of a land where men
will not argue that the color of a man's skin determines
the content of his character; a dream of a nation where
all our gifts and resources are held not for ourselves alone,
but as instruments of service for the rest of humanity;
the dream of a country where every man will respect the
dignity and worth of the human personality. --
Martin
Luther King, Jr
I have
a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out
the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to
be self-evident: that all men are created equal." I have
a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons
of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will
be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi,
a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and
oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom
and justice. I have a dream that my four children will one
day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the
color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today. --
Martin
Luther King, Jr
*
"What
we need to do is learn to respect and embrace our differences
until our differences don’t make a difference in how
we are treated."
-- Yolanda
King
*
"Don't
become too narrow. Live fully. Meet all kinds of people.
You'll learn something from everyone. Follow what
you feel in your heart." -- Yuri
Kochiyama
"The American ideal is not that we all agree with each
other, or even like each other, every minute of the
day. It is rather that we will respect each other's
rights, especially the right to be different, and that,
at the end of the day, we will understand that we are
one people, one country, and one community, and that
our well-being is inextricably bound up with the well-being
of each and every one of our fellow citizens."
-- C.
Everett Koop
"There
will be peace on earth when there is peace among the world
religions."
-- Hans Küng
mitakuye
oyasin (we are all related)
~ Lakota
Know
that although in the eternal scheme of things you are small,
you are also unique and irreplaceable, as are all your fellow
humans everywhere in the world.
-- Margaret Laurence
*
Imagine
no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world
-- John
Lennon
And
so Happy Christmas for black and for white, for
yellow and red, let's stop all the fight.
-- John
Lennon
"Either
men will learn to live like brothers, or they will die like
beasts."
-- Max Lerner
You may call for peace as loudly as you wish, but where
there is no brotherhood there can in the end be no peace."
-- Max Lerner (The Gifts of the Magi, 1949)
The
prophecy of a world moving toward political unity is the
light which guides all that is best, most vigorous, most
truly alive in the work of our time.
-- Walter Lippman
All
your strength in is your union. All your danger is in discord.
Therefore be at peace henceforward, And as brothers live
together.
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Our
cause is the cause of equality between nations and peoples.
Only thus can the brotherhood of man be firmly established.
-- Chief
Albert John Lutuli
*
Although
we are in different boats you in your boat and we in
our canoe we share the same river of life. -- Chief
Oren Lyons, Onandaga Nation
*
Our
cultural strength has always been derived from our
diversity of understanding and experience.
-- Yo-Yo
Ma
When
you learn something from people, or from a culture,
you accept it as a gift, and it is your lifelong commitment
to preserve it and build on it.
-- Yo-Yo
Ma
*
“When
we enlarge our view of the world, we deepen our understanding
of our own lives."
-- Yo-Yo
Ma
*
It's
like everybody's sitting there and they have some
kind of veil over their face, and they look at each
other through this veil that makes them see each other
through some stereotypical kind of viewpoint. If we're
ever gonna collectively begin to grapple with the
problems that we have collectively, we're gonna have
to move back the veil and deal with each other on
a more human level.
-- Wilma
Mankiller
"The
crest and crowning of all good,
Life's final star, is Brotherhood."
-- Edwin Markham
"There
is a destiny which makes us brothers;
None goes his way alone."
-- Edwin Markham
Understand
the differences; Act on the commonalities.
-- Andrew Masondo, African National Congress
There
are a number of attributes of species and populations that
are not of any particular selective advantage to any single
individual in a population but that are of great advantage
to the population as a whole.
-- Ernst Mayr
*
"If
we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting
values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human
potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social
fabric, one in which each diverse gift will find a
fitting place."
-- Margaret
Mead
"We
cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect
us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic
threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to
us as effects."
-- Herman Melville
*"I
resolutely believe that respect for diversity is a
fundamental pillar in the eradication of racism, xenophobia
and intolerance. There is no excuse for evading the
responsibility of finding the most suitable path toward
the elimination of any expression of discrimination
against indigenous peoples."
-- Rigoberta
Menchu
*
"The
whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness
of the interdependence of all these living beings, which
are all part of one another, and all involved in one
another."
-- Thomas
Merton
*
It
is hardly possible to overrate the value, for the
improvement of human beings, of things which bring
them into contact with persons dissimilar to themselves
and with modes of thought and action unlike those
with which they are familiar... It is indispensable
to be perpetually comparing [one's] own notions and
customs with the experience and example of persons
in different circumstances... There is no nation which
does not need to borrow from others.
-- John
Stuart Mill
The
peace I am thinking of is the dance of an open mind when
it engages another equally open one.
-- Toni Morrison
Identity
is a concept of our age that should be used very carefully.
All types of identities, ethnic, national, religious, sexual
or whatever else, can become your prison after a while.
The identity that you stand up for can enslave you and close
you to the rest of the world.
-- Murathan Mungan
*
"When
strangers start acting like neighbors...communities
are reinvigorated."
-- Ralph
Nader
*
We
are a gentle angry people
We are a land of many colors
We are gay and straight together
We are a peaceful loving people
And we are singing, singing for our lives.
-- Holly
Near
*
All
the nations and peoples are too closely knit together
today for any one of them to imagine that it can live
apart. Peace has been said to be indivisible, so is
freedom, so is prosperity now, and so also is disaster
in this one world that can no longer be split into isolated
fragments."
-- Jawaharlal
Nehru
"There
really is no such thing as race. We all came from
Africa. We are all of the same stardust. We are all
going to live and die on the same planet, a Pale Blue
Dot in the vastness of space. We have to work together."
-- Bill
Nye
*
We
have a stake in one another ... what binds us together
is greater than what drives us apart, and ... if enough
people believe in the truth of that proposition and
act on it, then we might not solve every problem,
but we can get something meaningful done for the people
with whom we share this Earth.
-- Barack
Obama
There
is not a liberal America and a conservative America
- there is the United States of America. There is
not a black America and a white America and latino
America and asian America - there's the United States
of America.
-- Barack
Obama
We will
remember that we are not as divided as our politics suggests;
that we are one people; we are one nation and together,
we will begin the next great chapter in the American story
with three words that will ring from coast to coast, from
sea to shining sea:-- Yes. We. Can.
-- Barack
Obama
*
"The
World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and
to do good is my religion."
-- Thomas
Paine.
*
Share
our similarities, celebrate our differences."
-- M.
Scott Peck
The
social progress, order, security and peace of each country
are necessarily connected with the social progress, order,
security and peace of all other countries.
-- Pope John XXIII
"If
you wish to be brothers, let the arms fall from your hands.
One cannot love while holding offensive arms."
-- Pope Pius VI
We
must realize the truth of ourselves --- we are one
human family. One a part of the other. My old work
horse Teddy and the fancy registered horse visiting
us had no trouble eating out of the same dish. We
must discover the same.
-- Sister
Lucy Poulin
"Behold
how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together
in unity."
-- Psalms. CXXXIII: 1
"All
people are a single nation."
-- Qu-ran
*
Technology
is driving us together. In many ways we are becoming
like one family. With the global threats resulting from
science and technology, the whole of humankind now needs
protection. We have to extend our loyalty to the whole
of the human race.
-- Joseph
Rotblat
Whatever
system of governance is eventually adopted, it is important
that it carries the people with it. We need to convey the
message that safeguarding our common property, humankind,
will require developing in each of us a new loyalty: a loyalty
to mankind. It calls for the nurturing of a feeling of belonging
to the human race. We have to become world citizens.
-- Joseph
Rotblat
*
There
can be hope only for a society which acts as one big
family, not as many separate ones.
-- Anwar
Sadat
There
is only one man in the world and his name is All Men. There
is only one woman in the world and her name is All Women.
There is only one child in the world and the child’s name
is All Children.
-- Carl Sandburg
*
if
you can just see all the children of the world as
your own, all the mothers of the world as you are,
we can make a huge difference.
*
"If
you walk down the street and see someone in a box,
you have a choice. That person is either the other
and you're fearful of them, or that person is an extension
of your family."
-- Susan
Sarandon
"Live
and let live."
-- Scottish proverb
States
are more like people than they are like anything else: they
exist by purpose, reason, suffering, and joy. And peace
between states is also like peace between people. It involves
the willing renunciation of purpose, in the mutual desire
not to do, but to be.
-- Roger Scruton
*
The
best hope for peace in the world lies in the simple
but far-reaching recognition that we all have many
different associations and affiliations, and we need
not see ourselves as being rigidly divided by a single
categorization of hardened groups, which confront
each other. -- Amartya
Sen
Any
classification according to a singular identity polarizes
people in a particular way, but if we take note of the fact
that we have many different identities - related not just
to religion but also to language, occupation and business,
politics, class and poverty, and many others - we can see
that the polarization of one can be resisted by a fuller
picture. So knowledge and understanding are extremely important
to fight against singular polarization. -- Amartya
Sen
But
once we recognize that many ideas that are taken to be quintessentially
Western have also flourished in other civilizations, we
also see that these ideas are not as culture-specific as
is sometimes claimed. We need not begin with pessimism,
at least on this ground, about the prospects of reasoned
humanism in the world. -- Amartya
Sen
*
We
are members one of another; so that you cannot injure
or help your neighbor without injuring or helping
yourself.
-- George
Bernard Shaw
*
"The primary threat to nature and people today comes
from centralising and monopolising power and control.
Not until diversity is made the logic of production
will there be a chance for sustainability, justice
and peace. Cultivating and conserving diversity is
no luxury in our times: it is a survival imperative."
~ Vandana
Shiva
*
Uniformity
is not nature's way; diversity is nature's way.
~ Vandana
Shiva
cultural
differences should not separate us from each other,
but rather cultural diversity brings a collective
strength that can benefit all of humanity.
--
Robert
Alan Silverstein
intercultural
dialogue is the best guarantee of a more peaceful,
just and sustainable world.
-- Robert
Alan Silverstein
Okay,
we are different it's true.
And I don't like to do all the things that you do.
But here's one thing to think through,
You're a lot like me and I'm a lot like you!
-- Robert
Alan Silverstein
"I
am not an Athenian, nor a Greek, but a citizen of the world."
-- Socrates
*
Just
imagine how boring life would be if we were all the
same. My idea of a perfect world is one in which we
really appreciated each other's differences: Short,
tall; Democrat, Republican; black, white; gay, straight--a
world in which all of us are equal, but definitely
not the same.
-- Barbra
Streisand
"The
age of chivalry has gone; the age of humanity has come."
-- Charles Sumner
*
"Our
expanding ethnic diversity of this century, a time
when we will all be minorities, offers us an invitation
to create a larger memory of who we are as Americans
and to re-affirm our founding principle of equality.
Let's put aside fears of the "disuniting of America"
and warnings of the "clash of civilizations." As Langston
Hughes sang, "Let America be America, where equality
is in the air we breathe."
-- Ronald
Takaki
How
can diverse Americans become "one people"? I believe that
one path is for us to pursue the study of the past that
includes all of us, making all of us feel connected to one
another as "we the people," working and living in a nation,
founded and "dedicated" (to use Lincoln's language) to the
"proposition" that "all men are created equal."
-- Ronald
Takaki
The
nation was founded and “dedicated,” to use Lincoln’s language
in the “Gettysburg Address,” to equality as a “self-evident
truth.” But this very principle of equality, as Lincoln
also noted, was a “proposition.” To make it a reality remained
“the unfinished work” of Americans.
-- Ronald
Takaki
*
"We
have to sit down, have a meal together, pray together
and then actually talk together. Then we realize that,
yes, although we have some differences they are not
impassable differences."
-- Pauline
Tangiora
*
The
war we have to wage today has only one goal and that
is to make the world safe for diversity.
~ U
Thant
*
"My
humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human
together."
-- Archbishop
Desmond Tutu
*
The
universal brotherhood of man is our most precious possession.
-- Mark
Twain
"We
are all full of weakness and errors; let us mutually pardon
each other our follies -- it is the first law of nature."
-- Voltaire
It
just seems clear to me that as long as we are all
here, it's pretty clear that the struggle is to share
the planet, rather than divide it.
~Alice
Walker
*I
think we have to own the fears that we have of each
other, and then, in some practical way, some daily
way, figure out how to see people differently than
the way we were brought up to.
~Alice
Walker
"It's
so clear that you have to cherish everyone. I think
that's what I get from these older black women, that
every soul is to be cherished, that every flower is
to bloom."
~Alice
Walker
*
We
can find common ground only by moving to higher ground
-- Jim
Wallis
"In
a sense, each of us is an island. In another sense, however,
we are all one. For though islands appear separate, and
may even be situated at great distances from one another,
they are only extrusions of the same planet, Earth."
-- J. Donald Walters
"There
are realities we all share, regardless of our nationality,
language, or individual tastes. As we need food, so do we
need emotional nourishment: love, kindness, appreciation,
and support from others. We need to understand our environment
and our relationship to it. We need to fulfill certain inner
hungers: the need for happiness, for peace of mind -- for
wisdom."
-- J. Donald Walters
In
all things that are purely social we can be as separate
as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential
to mutual progress.
-- Booker
T. Washington
*
"Our
true nationality is mankind." -- H.G.
Wells
For
those who have seen the Earth from space, and for the hundreds
and perhaps thousands more who will, the experience most
certainly changes your perspective. The things that we share
in our world are far more valuable than those which divide
us.
-- Donald Williams
"As
a woman I have no country. As a woman my country is the
whole world."
-- Virginia Woolf
*
The
oneness of human beings is the basic ethical thread
that holds us together.
-- Muhammad
Yunus
