Better World Quotes

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VALUES

It's crucial to understand that as a society, we can reorganize. We can reorganize socially, politically, and economically, and we can reorganize according to our values.
-- Rebecca Adamson

Every Day is an opportunity for all who value spirituality in their lives to connect and unite in our wish for a more peaceful, just and sustainable world based on values grounded in our deeper spiritual connection to each other and the world around us.
-- Robert Alan Silverstein

* If tolerance, respect and equity permeate family life, they will translate into values that shape societies, nations and the world.
-– Kofi Annan

* "Founded on the principles of private initiative, entrepreneurship and self-employment, underpinned by the values of democracy, equality and solidarity, the co-operative movement can help pave the way to a more just and inclusive economic order"
-- Kofi Annan

We must restore the sacredness of the family as a bedrock of humane values everywhere, in peace as well as in war.
-– Kofi Annan

It is within the family that children learn the values that will guide them for the rest of their lives. It is within the family that they form their earliest relationships, learn to communicate with others and interact with the world around them. It is within the family that the notion of human rights becomes a reality lived on a daily basis. If tolerance, respect and equity permeate family life, they will translate into values that shape societies, nations and the world.
-– Kofi Annan

* “We must ensure that the global market is embedded in broadly shared values and practices that reflect global social needs, and that all the world's people share the benefits of globalization.”
-- Kofi Annan

We are committed with our lives to building a different model and a different future for humanity, the Earth, and other species. We have envisaged a moral alternative to economic globalization and we will not rest until we see it realized.
-- Maude Barlow

* No piecemeal solution is going to prevent the collapse of whole societies and ecosystems ... a radical re-thinking of our values, priorities and political systems is urgent.
-- Maude Barlow

"Life is life's greatest gift. Guard the life of another creature as you would your own because it is your own. On life's scale of values, the smallest is no less precious to the creature who owns it than the largest."
-- Lloyd Biggle Jr.

When you become active in the system and communicate to your representatives, and they don't vote in accordance with your values, your responsibility is to support candidates who will.
-- Joan Blades

Nourishing spirituality means cultivating the inward space, the basis of which all things can be brought together. It means overwhelming deadness and stagnation and living reality in terms of values, inspiration, and symbols of higher meaning.
-- Leonardo Boff

* To be a soulful person means to go against all the pervasive, prove-yourself values of our culture and instead treasure what is unique and internal and valuable in yourself and your own personal evolution.
~ Jean Shinoda Bolen

"If you look at great human civilizations, from the Roman Empire to the Soviet Union, you will see that most do not fail simply due to external threats but because of internal weakness, corruption, or a failure to manifest the values and ideals they espouse. "
~ Sen. Cory Booker

The human rights we are to discuss here at Vienna are...the quintessential values through which we affirm together that we are a single human community.
-- Boutros Boutros-Ghali, at the World Conferenceon Human Rights, 14 June 1993

* In his scientific genius, man has wrought material miracles and has transformed his world. He has harnassed nature and has developed great civilizations. But he has never learned very well how to live with himself. The values he has created have been predominantly materialistic; his spiritual values have lagged far behind. He has demonstrated little spiritual genius and has made little progress toward the realization of human brotherhood. In the contemporary atomic age, this could prove man's fatal weakness.
-- Ralph J. Bunche

It is impossible to build enduring institutions without solid values. For us, the fundamental value is that associated with democracy.
-- Fernando Cardoso

Family values represent the core values and guidelines that parents and family members hold in high regard for the well-being of the family. Sincere family feelings are core heart feelings. They are the basis for true family values. While we have differences, we remain "family" by virtue of our heart connection. Family provides necessary security and support, and acts as a buffer against external problems. A family made up of secure people generates a magnetic power that can get things done. They are the hope for real security in a stressful world.
-- Doc Childre and Howard Martin, The HeartMath Solution

Our mission in this new century is clear. For good or ill, we live in an interdependent world. We can't escape each other. Therefore, we have to spend our lives building a global community of shared responsibilities, shared values, shared benefits.
~ Bill Clinton

* "Is it too late to prevent us from self-destructing? No, for we have the capacity to design our own future, to take a lesson from living things around us and bring our values and actions in line with ecological necessity. But we must first realize that ecological and social and economic issues are all deeply intertwined. There can be no solution to one without a solution to the others."
~ Jean-Michel Cousteau

I can’t think of any more important value to instill in our children than the desire to help others. I feel strongly about setting an example for them. Real problems can be solved by the next generation if we instill in them the right values.
-- Matt Damon

* There's two globalizations... The elite globalization represents minority forces. The elite globalization is about making money... The people's globalization, the democratic mass globalization is about life values.
-- Kevin Danaher

Success is achievable without public recognition, and the world has many unsung heroes. The teacher who inspires you to pursue your education to your ultimate ability is a success. The parents who taught you the noblest human principles are a success. The coach who shows you the importance of teamwork is a success. The spiritual leader who instills in you spiritual values and faith is a success. The relatives, friends, and neighbors with whom you develop a reciprocal relationship of respect and support--they, too, are successes. The most menial workers can properly consider themselves successful if they perform their best and if the product of their work is of service to humanity.--Michael DeBakey, M.D.

"The concept of the public welfare is broad and inclusive ... the values it represents are spiritual as well as physical, aesthetic as well as monetary. It is within the power of the legislature to determine that the community should be beautiful as well as healthy, spacious as well as clean, well balanced as well as carefully patroled."
~ Justice William O. Douglas

We do not have a money problem in America. We have a values and priorities problem.
-- Marian Wright Edelman

I think it is important that people who are perceived as liberals not be afraid of talking about moral and community values.
-- Marian Wright Edelman

"Our society's values are being corrupted by advertising's insistence on the equation: youth equals popularity, popularity equals success, success equals happiness."
-- John Arbuthnot Fisher

I see religion as a powerful positive healing force for this nation and the world. But that force is blunted, weakened, compromised inestimably, if we turn religion into a tool for advancing political strategy; if we make it a matter of how to win political office; if we treat it as anything other than a sacred part of life from which we ought to draw sustenance and values and strength for living courageously as good citizens.
-- C. Welton Gaddy

It was once said that the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.
-- Hubert Humphrey

"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

* There is so much each one of us can do to make a difference. We are at a dangerous juncture in the history of mankind. … We need to defend our principles and values, human rights, civil liberties and the rule of international law. If we don’t our world will further descend into a state of chaos.
-- Bianca Jagger

* "Listen, the environmental movement is not about protecting the fishes and the birds so much as recognizing that nature is the infrastructure of our communities ... If you're saying the values that drive the environmental movement are uncool and antithetical to America, then I would argue just the opposite. If you think being patriotic is not cool, I'd say that's not true either. I'd say the most patriotic thing you can do is to take care of the environment and try to live sustainably."
~ ~ Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

* The true spiritual life begins within the individual when he perceives the importance of it, and begins to realize what spiritual values are. Therefore, in order for man to emerge from his present state of chaos, he must experience a revolution of a new type, one that will have neither a political nor an economic character. We may call it the individual self-revolution. There is nothing that can better transform man from his materialistic conception of existence to a spiritual awareness of life than such individual revolution from within...
-- Frederick Kettner

* We teach academic subjects and we assume life skills will somehow be acquired along the way. Not a safe assumption! The curriculum has to include things like communication, conflict resolution, parenting, family dynamics, critical thinking, values, ethics.
-- Azim Khamisa

There can be no peace without justice and respect for human rights. I passionately believe in the power of human rights as a set of global values to bring our fractured and divided world together. Around the world human rights activists are giving hope to millions of people - women, indigenous people, the poor and the marginalised - in their struggle for equality and dignity.
-- Irene Khan

"...we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin to shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people; the giant triplets of racism, militarism, and economic exploitation are incapable of being conquered. A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our present policies...
-- Martin Luther King, Jr

Every year at this time, an important phrase marks the season: peace on earth and goodwill towards men. It's so common we sometimes forget about what it really means - that we strive for a world without war, a society where we respect and help our neighbors, a place where we protect and uplift our most in need. This isn't a phrase we should live by for one day or one month. It's a set of values that must bond and motivate us every day.
-- Dennis Kucinich

* We have come a long way in America because of Martin Luther King, Jr. He led a disciplined, nonviolent revolution under the rule of law, a revolution of values, a revolution of ideas. We’ve come a long way, but we still have a distance to go before all of our citizens embrace the idea of a truly interracial democracy, what I like to call the Beloved Community, a nation at peace with itself.
-- John R. Lewis

* We can still alter our course. It is NOT too late. We still have options. We need the courage to change our values to the regeneration of our families, the life that surrounds us.
~ Chief Oren Lyons

* We must construct a new set of values and attitudes to replace the culture of war which, for centuries, has been influencing the course of civilization. Winning peace means the triumph of our pledge to establish, on a democratic basis, a new social framework of tolerance and generosity from which no one will feel excluded.
-- Federico Mayor

“All media exist to invest our lives with artificial perceptions and arbitrary values”
-- Marshall McLuhan quotes

* "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

In our country, the large corporations are the dominant institution. They comprise the strongest, consistent, generic power in the land. They share a high degree of coordinated values. Their power is all the more remarkable in its resiliency and ability to accommodate or absorb other challenging power centers such as big government and organized labor in ways that turn an additional profit, erect an additional privilege, or acquire protective mechanisms to ward off new pressures for change or reform."
-- Ralph Nader

* We need not throw away 200 years of American jurisprudence while we fight terrorism. We need not choose between our most deeply held values, and keeping this nation safe.
-- Barack Obama

Analyses of others are actually expressions of our own needs and values.
-- Marshall Rosenberg

* Markets and money must again become the servants and not the masters of our vision and values.
-- Jakob von Uexkull

On issue after issue, the polls -- and these are not snapshot polls; these are polls over a consistent period of time -- show that most Americans share what one could call core liberal or progressive values: investment in health care and education over tax cuts; fair trade over free trade; corporate accountability over deregulation; environmental protection over laissez-faire policies; defending Social Security and Medicare over privatizing them; raising the minimum wage over eliminating it. The country prefers progressive alternatives to the failed policies of the conservative right. -- Katrina vanden Heuvel

* It is absolutely sure that if globalization is not founded on moral values not only will fail but will bring about global calamities.
-- George Vithoulkas

* In many parts of the world the people are searching for a solution which would link the two basic values: peace and justice. The two are like bread and salt for mankind.
-- Lech Walesa