It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.

An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.

It is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.

The true strength of our nation comes not from our the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope.

The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.

The self-styled intellectual who is impotent with pen and ink hungers to write history with sword and blood.

Men are at war with each other because each man is at war with himself.

If peace . . . only had the music and pageantry of war, there'd be no more wars.

The pursuit of peace resembles the building of a great cathedral. It is the work of a generation. In concept it requires a master-architect; in execution, the labors of many.

Justice cannot be for one side alone, but must be for both.

All those who take up the sword shall likewise perish by the sword.

The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophes.

If, beginning with the children, we launch a campaign for the right kind of Peace Preparedness, the working out of governmental plans later will be easier.

Coercion may prevent many transgressions; but it robs even actions which are legal of a part of their beauty. Freedom may lead to many transgressions, but it lends even to vices a less ignoble form.

Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence. Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle.

An act of justice closes the book on a misdeed; an act of vengeance writes one of its own.

Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it.
Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it.
Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.

Must Mankind forever kill and kill,
Thwarting every decent dictate
of the human will?
War again!--
When will we know
War's final victors always were the slain.

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

Mental violence has no potency and injures only the person whose thoughts are violent. It is otherwise with mental non-violence. It has potency which the world does not yet know.

As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression... It is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air -- however slight -- lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.

There is nothing that war has ever achieved we could not better achieve without it.

Is it not equally to blame
To teach God's children,
'My Country, right or wrong';
'The White Man's Burden' --
or that 'Right is Might" --
Or that to dominion by conquest
For evermore they should proclaim
The dedication of their very race's name?