those who speak for peace

Misplaced Pages of History

Peace Dove by Cigal

The Nobel Peace Prize

 

World Peace by Robin Morgan

Leaders Speak on Peace


House of Peace by Susan Shie

Working with Peace Quotes

Peace Tree by Sayzie Carr

Listed below are a series of quotes that speak directly to working toward and achieving peace.  They date from biblical times to the present day.  Read each one and determine which has the most meaning to you.  Here are some activities you can do with the quotes:

  1. Create a list of directions, or a checklist, for achieving peace based on the ideas the quotes suggest.
  2. Research the authors of the quotes and report on whom they were and what events in their lives brought them to think about peace, non-violence and resolving conflict in the way in which they did.
  3. Create a peace book which may include the sayings below, newly researched quotes, and most importantly, quotes that you get from your family, friends and teachers to share with you.  The book could be illustrated with graphics, drawings or personal collages.

In place of weapons of violence, you have to use your mind, your heart, your sense of humor, every faculty available to you….because no one has the right to take the

 life of another human being.

Joan Baez

If the human race wishes to have a prolonged and indefinite period of material prosperity, they have only got to behave in a peaceful and helpful way toward one another.
Winston Churchill

I prefer the most unfair peace to the most righteous war.
Cicero.

If you want to make peace, you don’t talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.

Moshe Dayan

The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The most disadvantageous peace is better than the most just war.
Erasmus

There never was a good war or a bad peace.

Benjamin Franklin

You can’t shake hands with a clenched fist.

Indira Gandhi

I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.
Mohandas K. Gandhi

When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.

Jimi Hendrix

The case of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.

Thomas Jefferson 

Peace is a journey of a thousand miles and it must be taken one step at a time.
Lyndon B Johnson

I do not want the peace that passeth understanding. I want the understanding

 which bringeth peace

Helen Keller.

Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind….War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.
John F. Kennedy

Peace is a daily, a weekly, a monthly process, gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers, quietly building new structures.
John F. Kennedy

War is the greatest plague that can afflict humanity; it destroys religion, it destroys states, it destroys families. Any scourge is preferable to it.

Martin Luther, German founder of Lutheranism (1483-1546)

Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend.
Abraham Lincoln

Establishing lasting peace is the work of education; all politics can do is keep us out of war.

Maria Montessori

Five enemies of peace inhabit with us -- avarice, ambition, envy, anger, and pride; if these were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace.
Petrarch (14th century)

For it isn't enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must work for it.

Eleanor Roosevelt, Humanitarian, Educator, UN Spokesperson & 32nd US First Lady

Peace, like charity, begins at home.

Franklin D. Roosevelt 

instead of tug o' war, let's play hug o' war

Shel Silverstein

Your own soul is nourished when you are kind; it is destroyed when you are cruel.

King Solomon of Israel (970-928 BCE)

Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all.

George Washington

Peace is our gift to each other.
Elie Wiesel

 

Peace Symbols

 

Quotes and Questions about Peace

             

Peace and Community Building Curriculum--Teacher Guided Lessons

Riane Eisler

Peace is putting love into action.

Riane Eisler is recognized as one of the most original minds of our time, and has been honored as the only woman among 20 great thinkers. She is president of the Center for Partnership Studies and is best known for her international bestseller The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future

John Lennon and Yoko Ono

All we are saying is give peace a chance.

John Winston Ono Lennon, (October 1940 – December 1980, was an English rock musician, singer-songwriter, author, and peace activist who gained worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles. With Paul McCartney, Lennon formed one of the most influential and successful songwriting partnerships of the 20th century and "wrote some of the most popular music in rock and roll history."  He is ranked the second most successful songwriter in UK singles chart history after McCartney.

Lennon revealed a rebellious nature, and biting wit, in his music, on film, in books, and at press conferences and interviews. He was controversial through his work as a peace activist and visual artist. After The Beatles, Lennon enjoyed a successful solo career with such acclaimed albums as John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band and Imagine and iconic songs such as "Give Peace a Chance" and "Imagine."  After a self-imposed "retirement" to raise his son Sean, Lennon reemerged with a comeback album, Double Fantasy, but was murdered less than one month after its release. The album would go on to win the 1981 Grammy Award for Album of the Year.

In 2002, respondents to a BBC poll on the 100 Greatest Britons voted Lennon eighth. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked Lennon number 38 on its list of "The Immortals: The Fifty Greatest Artists of All Time" (The Beatles being number one). He was also ranked fifth greatest singer of all time by Rolling Stone in 2008.  He was posthumously inducted into both the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1987 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.

Multimedia artist Yoko Ono was born February 18, 1933, in Tokyo, Japan, the eldest of three children born to Eisuke and Isoko, a wealthy aristocratic family. 

Her father, who worked for the Yokohama Specie Bank, was transferred to San Francisco two weeks before she was born.  The rest of the family soon followed. Her father was transferred back to Japan in 1937, and she enrolled at the elite Peers’ School in Tokyo.   

In 1940, the family moved to New York, then back to Japan in 1941 when her father was transferred to Hanoi on the eve of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.  Ono remained in Tokyo through World War II, including the great-fire bombing of 1945.  

Ono first met John Lennon of the English rock band The Beatles on November 9, 1966, when he visited a preview of her exhibition at the Indica Gallery in London.  He was taken with the positive, interactive nature of her work.  He especially cited a ladder leading up to a black canvas with a spyglass on a chain, which revealed the word “yes’ written on the ceiling.

They collaborated on art, film, and musical projects, and became famous for their series of ‘conceptual events’ to promote world peace. Lennon was shot by a deranged fan, only a few feet from Ono, in 1980.

Following Lennon’s death, Ono continued her career and has recorded albums, performed concert tours, and composed two off-Broadway musicals. She exhibited her art internationally, and in 2002 the first U.S. retrospective of her work opened in New York City. On 9 October that year, to commemorate what would have been Lennon' 62nd birthday, she inaugurated the Lennon Ono Grant for Peace prize.

Source: Wikipedia for John Lennon and Biography for Yoko Ono; http://www.biography.com/articles/Yoko-Ono-9542162

 

 

Quotes from John Lennon

  • A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.
  • Everybody loves you when you're six foot in the ground.
  • A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.
  • All you need is love.
  • God is a concept by which we measure our pain.
  • I believe in everything until it's disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it's in your mind. Who's to say that dreams and nightmares aren't as real as the here and now?
  • I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It's just that the translations have gone wrong.
  • If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace.
  • If someone thinks that love and peace is a cliche that must have been left behind in the Sixties, that's his problem. Love and peace are eternal.
  • Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.
  • My role in society, or any artist's or poet's role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.
  • Possession isn't nine-tenths of the law. It's nine-tenths of the problem.
  • The more I see the less I know for sure.
  • The thing the sixties did was to show us the possibilities and the responsibility that we all had. It wasn't the answer. It just gave us a glimpse of the possibility.
  • When you're drowning, you don't say 'I would be incredibly pleased if someone would have the foresight to notice me drowning and come and help me,' you just scream.

 

Martin Luther King, Jr.

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