Better World Quotes - addressing Root Causes

Man has but little heeded the advice of the wise men. He has been - fatefully, if not willingly - less virtuous, less constant, less rational, less peaceful than he knows how to be, than he is fully capable of being. He has been led astray from the ways of peace and brotherhood by his addiction to concepts and attitudes of narrow nationalism, racial and religious bigotry, greed and lust for power.
-- Ralph J. Bunche

* "Everyone has a right to peaceful coexistence, the basic personal freedoms, the alleviation of suffering, and the opportunity to lead a productive life..."
-- Jimmy Carter

* "Peace can only last where human rights are respected, where the people are fed, and where individuals and nations are free."
-- 14th Dalai Lama

The problems we face today, violent conflicts, destruction of nature, poverty, hunger and so on, are human-created problems which can be resolved through human effort, understanding and the development of a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood. We need to cultivate a universal responsibility for one another and the planet we share.
-- 14th Dalai Lama

A pacifism which can see the cruelties only of occasional military warfare and is blind to the continuous cruelties of our social system is worthless.
-- Mohandas K. Gandhi

* "Peace does not fare well where poverty and deprivation reign. It does not flourish where there is ignorance and a lack of education and information. Repression, injustice and exploitation are inimical with peace. Peace is gravely threatened by inter-group fear and envy and by the unleashing of unrealistic expectations. Racial, class and religious intolerance and prejudice are its mortal enemies."
-- Frederik W. de Klerk

Aye, fight! But not your neighbor. Fight rather all the things that cause you and your neighbor to fight.
-- Mikhail Naim

FREEDOM

Hope is the strongest driving force for a people. Hope which brings about change, which produces new realities, is what opens man's road to freedom. Once hope has taken hold, courage must unite with wisdom. That is the only way of avoiding violence, the only way of maintaining the calm one needs to respond peacefully to offenses.
-- Oscar Arias Sanchez

* “If liberty and equality, as is thought by some are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost.”
-- Aristotle

* The well-being and the hopes of the peoples of the world can never be served until peace - as well as freedom, honor and self-respect - is secure.
-- Ralph J. Bunche

The progress of freedom depends more upon the maintenance of peace, the spread of commerce, and the diffusion of education, than upon the labours of cabinets and foreign offices.
-- Richard Cobden

* “In a democracy, the individual enjoys not only the ultimate power but carries the ultimate responsibility.”
-- Norman Cousins

Brute force, no matter how strongly applied, can never subdue the basic human desire for freedom.
-- Dalai Lama

Without free, self-respecting and autonomous citizens there can be no free and independent nations. Without internal peace, that is, peace among citizens and between the citizens and the state, there can be no guarantee of external peace.
-- Vaclav Havel

“We need to be activating deep democracy because democracy is fleeting through our fingers, and most people are unaware of it. Democracy is about dispersing power among the interconnected people. As a people, we need to rise to the level of forcing our leaders to abide by our stated principles - really exercise democracy, not only on our behalf but on behalf of the world. We need to continue, as part and parcel of the American experience created by the founding forefathers, and now the foremothers, to insist, "We want democracy to work, and that means every voice counts."
-- Dr. Azizah al-Hibri

We can enhance democracy by making it in line with its original vision. Read the dollar bill - E pluribus unum, out of many, one; novus ordo seclorum, a new order of the ages. That's democracy.
-- Barbara Marx Hubbard

"Much violence is based on the illusion that life is a property to be defended and not to be shared."
-- Henri Nouwen

You cannot separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.
--Malcolm X

There never was a war that was not inward; I must fight till I have conquered in myself what causes war.
-- Marianne Moore

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

There is much to be done, there is much that can be done… one person of integrity can make a difference, a difference of life and death. As long as one dissident is in prison, our freedom will not be true. As long as one child is hungry, our lives will be filled with anguish and shame. What all these victims need above all is to know that they are not alone; that we are not forgetting them, that when their voices are stifled we shall lend them ours, that while their freedom depends on ours, the quality of our freedom depends on theirs.
-- Elie Wiesel

Only in time of fear is government thrown back to its primitive and sole function of self-defense and the many interests of which it is the guardian become subordinate to that.
-- Jane Addams

We discovered that peace at any price is no peace at all. We discovered that life at any price has no value whatever; that life is nothing without the privileges, the prides, the rights, the joys which make it worth living, and also worth giving. And we also discovered that there is something more hideous, more atrocious than war or than death; and that is to live in fear.
-- Eve Curie, French author

It seems to me that there are two great enemies of peace - fear and selfishness.
-- Katherine Paterson

Misunderstanding arising from ignorance breeds fear, and fear remains the greatest enemy of peace.
-- Lester B. Pearson

"Reconciliation should be accompanied by justice, otherwise it will not last. While we all hope for peace it shouldn't be peace at any cost but peace based on principle, on justice"
-- Corazon C. Aquino

I cannot accept that to be realistic means to tolerate misery, violence and hate. I do not believe that the hungry man should be treated as subversive for expressing his suffering. I shall never accept that the law can be used to justify tragedy, to keep things as they are, to make us abandon our ideas of a different world. Law is the path of liberty, and must as such open the way to progress for everyone.
-- Oscar Arias Sanchez

Peace and justice are two sides of the same coin.
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower

"If people have moral courage to stand up to the smallest injustice – their own and other’s – it’s kind of like practice for when the big ones come around."
-- Colleen Kelly

Peace is more important than all justice; and peace was not made for the sake of justice, but justice for the sake of peace.
-- Martin Luther

”Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.”
-- Reinhold Niebuhr

An act of justice closes the book on a misdeed; an act of vengeance writes one of its own - Marilyn Vos Savant

Peace will never be entirely secure until men everywhere have learned to conquer poverty without sacrificing liberty or security.
-- Norman Thomas

Because there is global insecurity, nations are engaged in a mad arms race, spending billions of dollars wastefully on instruments of destruction, when millions are starving. And yet, just a fraction of what is extended so obscenely on defense budgets would make a real difference in enabling God's children to fill their stomachs, be educated, and be given the chance to lead fulfilled and happy lives.
-- Desmond Tutu

* ...just a fraction of what is extended so obscenely on defense budgets would make a real difference in enabling God's children to fill their stomachs, be educated, and be given the chance to lead fulfilled and happy lives.
-- Desmond Tutu

"The arms race can kill, though the weapons themselves may never be used...by their cost alone, armaments kill the poor by causing them to starve."
-- Vatican statement to the U.N., 1976

HUNGER

…the first essential component of social justice is adequate food for all mankind. Food is the moral right of all who are born into this world.
-- Norman Borlaug

Without food, man can live at most but a few weeks; without it, all other components of social justice are meaningless.
-- Norman Borlaug

If you desire peace, cultivate justice, but at the same time cultivate the fields to produce more bread; otherwise there will be no peace.
-- Norman Borlaug