The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate.... Returning violence for violence multiples violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that - Dr Martin Luther King Jnr

There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people - Howard Zinn

The line dividing dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being - Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul. - Mark Twain

Living well and beautifully and justly are all one thing - Socrates

True compassion is more than flinging a coin at a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring - Dr Martin Luther King Jnr

Behind the maze of field trenches, in which working men and employees shot down each other while their bosses made good profits by it... - Kurt Tucholsky, First World War

Freedom from fear can never be seperated from freedom from want - H.V. Evatt

No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent - Abraham Lincoln

When the rich wage war it is the poor who die - Jean-Paul Sartre

The arc of the universe is long but is bent towards justice - Martin Luther King

It seems to me it only takes a bit of thought to realize that if wars came out of human nature, out of a spontaneous urge to kill, then why is it that governments have to go to such tremendous lengths to mobilize the populations to go to war? It seems too obvious doesn't it? They really have to work at it. They have to dredge up an enormous number of reasons. - Howard Zinn

I do not believe we should stand neutrally between good and evil, right and wrong, aggressor and victim - Martin Bell BBC Correspondent

The day schools have all the funding they need, and the army has to hold a cake stall to get a new bomber....

I have a dream that one day...children will not be judged by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character - Martin Luther King Jnr.

Nothing is more costly, nothing is more sterile, than vengeance - Winston Churchill

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free our minds - Bob Marley

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship - George Bernard Shaw

Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men - Martin Luther King

Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee - John Donne

My pacifism is not based on any intellectual theory but on a deep antipathy to every form of cruelty and hatred - Albert Einstein

Whenever books are burned men also in the end are burned - Heinrich Heine

I cannot and will not give any undertaking at a time when I, and you, the people, are not free. Your freedom and mine cannot be separated - Nelson Mandela

For every talent that poverty has stimulated, it has blighted a hundred - John W. Gardner

Freedom is an indivisible word. If we want to enjoy it, and fight for it, we must be prepared to extend it to everyone, whether they are rich or poor, whether they agree with us or not, no matter what their race or the colour of their skin - Wendell Lewis Willkie

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison - Henry David Thoreau

The war against hunger is truly mankind's war of liberation - John Fitzgerald Kennedy

More die in the United States of too much food than of too little - John Kenneth Galbraith

Civilization is a method of living, an attitude of equal respect for all men - Jane Addams

Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves - Abraham Lincoln

The only difference is that the stress and the violence is worse at home, because it happens younger, it happens at the hands of someone you love and there is no recognition that this is the enemy - Gloria Steinem

Liberty does not consist in mere declarations of the rights of man. It consists in the translation of those declarations into definite action - Woodrow Wilson

I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunites...if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die - Nelson Mandela

Rape is a form of mass terrorism...The fear of rape keeps women off the streets at night. Keeps women at home. Keeps women passive and modest for fear that they be thought provocative - Susan Griffin

Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed - Constitution of UNESCO

The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance - John Philpot Curran

All those who are not racially pure are mere chaff - Adolf Hitler

Among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist - Edmund Burke

Man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but, when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all - Aristotle

Many people consider the things which government does for them to be social progress, but they consider the things government does for others as socialism - Earl Warren

Few people can be happy unless they hate some other person, nation or creed - Bertrand Russell (attrib)

The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men - Lyndon B. Johnson

In Germany, the Nazis came for the Communists and I didn't speak up because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the Jews and I didn't speak up because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists and I didn't speak up because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I was a Protestant so I didn't speak up. Then they came for me...By that time there was no one to speak up for anyone - Martin Niemoller