Famous quotes on peace and justice

The news is full of reports on the situation in Syria these days, especially after the alleged use of sarin gas by government forces against its citizens, killing hundreds. The U.S.A. is ramping up its war rhetoric, threatening to intervene militarily. If they do decide in favour of military intervention, I think that will have devastating consequences, and could lead to a larger, Middle Eastern War, rather than remain contained in Syria. If those who decide to use violence to prevail politically would focus more on nonviolent peace and justice conflict resolution, then they would hopefully realise that war is not an option. The following quotes, I think, demonstrate that peace with justice is possible among peoples who desire the common good.

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

   Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. –Isaac Asimov

Christianity stands or falls with its revolutionary protest against violence, arbitrariness and pride of power and with its plea for the weak. Christians are doing too little to make these points clear rather than too much. Christendom adjusts itself far too easily to the worship of power. Christians should give more offense, shock the world far more, than they are doing now. Christian should take a stronger stand in favor of the weak rather than considering first the possible right of the strong. –Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Sermon on 2 Cor 12:9

   Your life and my life flow into each other as wave flows into wave, and unless there is peace and joy and freedom for you, there can be no real peace or joy or freedom for me. To see reality--not as we expect it to be but as it is--is to see that unless we live for each other and in and through each other, we do not really live very satisfactorily; that there can really be life only where there really is, in just this sense, love. –Frederick Buechner

   One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one. –Agatha Christie

   If you want to make peace, you don't talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies. –Moshe Dayan

   The longer we listen to one another - with real attention - the more commonality we will find in all our lives. That is, if we are careful to exchange with one another life stories and not simply opinions. –Barbara Deming

   At some ideas you stand perplexed, especially at the sight of human sins, uncertain whether to combat it by force or by human love. Always decide, "I will combat it with human love." If you make up your mind about that once and for all, you can conquer the whole world. Loving humility is a terrible force; it is the strongest of all things and there is nothing like it. –F. Dostoyevsky, Brothers Karamazov  

   Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. –Dwight Eisenhower

   When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall -- think of it, ALWAYS! –Mohandas Gandhi

   Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. –Martin Luther King, Jr.

Without justice, there can be no peace. –Martin Luther King, Jr.