QUOTES

The world no longer has a choice between force and law: if civilization is to survive, it must choose the rule of law.

--Dwight D. Eisenhower

In Germany, they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist; and then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist, and then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew; and then . . . they came for me . . . and by that time there was no one left to speak up.

--Pastor Martin Niemöller

 

Go within every day and find the inner strength so that the world will not blow your candle out.

--Katherine Dunham

 

Institutions are what nations make of them. If the rule of law is to replace anarchy, international law involves surrender of a certain amount of sovereignty.

--Vernon A. Walters, former US Representative to the United Nations

A politician thinks of the next election; a statesman thinks of the next generation.

--James Freeman Clark

 

I am a citizen, not of Athens, or Greece, but of the World.

--Socrates

 

My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.

--Tom Paine

 

Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent than power derived from fear of punishment.

--Mohandas Gandhi

 

Peace and justice are two sides of the same coin.

--Dwight D. Eisenhower

 

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

Government … never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.

--George Washington

 

If the United Nations is to survive, those who represent it must bolster it; those who advocate it must submit to it, and those who believe in it must fight for it.

--Norman Cousins, past President, World Federalist Association

We have learned that we cannot live alone, at peace; that our own well-being is dependent on the well-being of other nations … We have learned to be citizens of the world, members of the human community.

--Franklin D. Roosevelt

 

The government is us; we are the government, you and I.

--Theodore Roosevelt.

 

In a democratic society like ours, relief must come through an aroused popular conscience that sears the conscience of the people's representatives.

--Felix Frankfurter, US Supreme Court Justice

 

The imperial project of the so-called neo-conservatives is not conservatism at all, but radicalism, egotism, and adventurism articulated in the stirring rhetoric of traditional patriotism.

--Clyde Prestowitz, Empire as a Way of Life, New York: Basic Books, 2003

 

The dominant values of American life - affluence, achievement, appearance, power, competition, consumption, individualism - are vastly different from anything recognizably Christian. As individuals and as a culture, our existence has become massively idolatrous.

--Marcus Borg, A New Vision, San Francisco, Harper & Row, 1987

 

Boldness has genius and a power and a magic in it. Whatever you do, or dream you can do, begin it.

--Goethe

 

Politics is what we create out of what we do, what we hope for, what we dare to imagine.

--Paul Wellstone

 

No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.

--Isaac Asimov

 

The independence of states can no longer be understood apart from the concept of interdependence. All states are interconnected -- both for better and for worse.

--POPE JOHN PAUL II, July 2003

 

New realities, which are forcefully affecting the production process - such as globalization of finance, of the economy, of commerce and of work - should never be allowed to violate the dignity and centrality of the human person or the democracy of peoples.

--POPE JOHN PAUL II, February 2000

In the twenty-first century, more than ever before, no State can stand wholly alone. Collective strategies, collective institutions, and a sense of collective responsibility are indispensable.

--Report of the High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change

 

Peoples and governments cannot change the world by themselves. They need not only good ideas but also sustained pressure from internationalists in all countries - people who are both visionary and pragmatic.

--Kofi Annan, UNSG

 

My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.

--Archbishop Desmond Tutu

 

There is one thing stronger than all the armies of the world and that is an idea whose time has come.

--Victor Hugo

 

An Affirmation Of Human Oneness

I am a member of the human family. My home is Earth.

The achievements of men and women throughout the ages are my heritage. My destiny is bound to that of all my fellow human beings.

What we jointly create forms our bequest to future generations.

May my life serve the good of my family.

May our use of the earth preserve it for those yet to come.

--Joseph Schwartzberg

 

The love of country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border?

--Pablo Casals

 

The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.

--Plato

 

A lot of people are waiting for Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi to come back -- but they are gone. We are it. It is up to us. It is up to you.

--Marian Wright Edelman

People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid.

--Soren Kierkegaard

 

Just living is not enough, one must have freedom, sunshine, and a little flower.

--Hans Christian Anderson

 

You cannot parcel out freedom in pieces, because freedom is all or nothing.

--Tertullian

 

The more we sweat in peace, the less we bleed in war.

--Madame Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit

 

I'm a universal patriot ... My country is the World.

--Charlotte Bronte

 

To work with what one has and at the same time for what one hopes to have -- this is the guiding principle of political progress.

--Ralph Barton Perry, One World in the Making

 

The state has become too big for the small things and too small for the big things. The small things call for delegation downwards to the local level … The big things call for delegation upwards, for coordination between national policies, or for transnational institutions.

--Paul Streeten, 1992

 

The world needs a centre, and some confidence that the centre is holding: the United Nations is the only credible candidate.

--External Affairs Committee, House of Commons of Canada

 

We have it in our power to begin the world over again.

--Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776

 

Every generation needs a new revolution.

--Thomas Jefferson

 

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable.

--John F. Kennedy

 

You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy; you must have a democracy to have a revolution.

--G.K. Chesterton

 

Sometimes one creates a dynamic impression by saying something, and sometimes one creates as significant an impression by remaining silent.

--Dalai Lama

It is not because it is difficult that we are afraid to act; it is because we are afraid to act that it is difficult.

--Seneca

 

Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

-- Old English proverb

 

“Science is my passion, politics my duty.”

-- Thomas Jefferson

 

"Behind the short-sighted governments that divide and mismanage human affairs, a

real force for world unity and order exists and grows.”

--H. G. Wells in A Short History of the World, 1943