“Forgiving is not forgetting; it’s actually remembering -- remembering and not using your right to hit back. It’s a second chance for a new beginning. And the remembering part is particularly important. Especially if you don’t want to repeat what happened.”  ~ Desmond Tutu

“For the white person who wants to know how to be my friend...the first thing you do is to forget that I'm black.  Second, you must never forget that I'm black.” ~ Pat Parker

"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 at it."   ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

"No matter how big a nation is, it is no stronger than its weakest people, and as long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold him down, so it means you cannot soar as you might otherwise."   ~ Marian Anderson

"Until he extends the circle of compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace."     ~ Albert Schweitzer

"I destroy my enemies when I make them my friends."   ~ Abraham Lincoln

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view, until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”     ~ Harper Lee

"Violence produces only something resembling justice, but it distances people from the possibility of living justly, without violence."   ~ Leo Tolstoy

"There are many young girls, boat people, who were raped by sea pirates. Even though the United Nations and many countries tried to help the government of Thailand prevent that kind of piracy, sea pirates continued to inflict much suffering on the refugees. One day, we received a letter telling us about a young girl on a small boat who was raped by a Thai pirate. She was only twelve, and she jumped into the ocean and drowned herself. When you first learn of something like that, you get angry at the pirate. You naturally take the side of the girl. As you look more deeply you will see it differently. If you take the side of the little girl, then it is easy. You only have to take a gun and shoot the pirate. But we can't do that. In my meditation, I saw that if I had been born in the village of the pirate and raised in the same conditions as he was, I would now be the pirate. There is a great likelihood that I would become a pirate. I can't condemn myself so easily. In my meditation, I saw that many babies are born along the Gulf of Siam, hundreds every day, and if we educators, social workers, politicians, and others do not do something about the situation, in twenty-five years a number of them will become sea pirates. That is certain. If you or I were born today in those fishing villages, we might become sea pirates in twenty-five years. If you take a gun and shoot the pirate, you shoot all of us, because all of us are to some extent responsible for this state of affairs."  ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

"You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom."   ~ Malcolm X

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

"I plan to stand by nonviolence, because I have found it to be a philosophy of life that regulates not only my dealings in the struggle for racial justice, but also my dealings with people, and with my own self."   ~ Martin Luther King

"A riot is the language of the unheard."   ~ Martin Luther King

“I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.”   ~ Martin Luther King

“The moral arc of the universe bends at the elbow of justice.”   ~ Martin Luther King

“Reconciliation does not mean forgetting or trying to bury the pain of conflict; it means working together to correct the legacy of past injustice.” ~ Nelson Mandela

"Peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of creative alternatives for responding to conflict -- alternatives to passive or aggressive responses, alternatives to violence."   ~ Dorothy Thompson

"We enact many laws that manufacture criminals, and a few that punish them."   ~ Benjamin R. Tucker

“Human beings are inherently relational in that we are not merely interdependent with one another, but that we understand each other, through each other.”   ~ Jennifer Llewellyn

“Justice is truth in action.”   ~ Benjamin Disraeli

“The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth.”   ~  African Proverb

“If you are to punish a man retributively, you must injure him. If you are to reform him, you must improve him. And men are not improved by injuries.”   ~ George Bernard Shaw