In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to 'preserve, protect, and defend it'.
Abraham LincolnRelated topics
government heaven mine oath preserve war while handsRelated quotes
My attitude to peace is rather based on the Burmese definition of peace - it really means removing all the negative factors that destroy peace in this world. So peace does not mean just putting an end to violence or to war, but to all other factors that threaten peace, such as discrimination, such as inequality, poverty.
Aung San Suu Kyi
Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt! May your eyes never shed such stormy, scalding, heart-wrung tears as poured from mine. May you never appeal to Heaven in prayers so hopeless and so agised as in that hour left my lips: for never may you, like me, dread to be the instrument of evil to what you wholly love.
Charlotte Brontë
That there are men in all countries who get their living by war, and by keeping up the quarrels of nations, is as shocking as it is true but when those who are concerned in the government of a country, make it their study to sow discord, and cultivate prejudices between nations, it becomes the more unpardonable.
Thomas Paine
Here I swear, and as I break my oath may eternity blast me, here I swear that never will I forgive Christianity It is the only point on which I allow myself to encourage revenge. Oh, how I wish I were the Antichrist, that it were mine to crush the Demon to hurl him to his native Hell never to rise again I expect to gratify some of this insatiable feeling in Poetry.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Abba Macarius was asked, How should one pray? The old man said, There is no need at all to make long discourses; it is enough to stretch out ones hands and say, "Lord, as you will, and as you know, have mercy." And if the conflict grows fiercer say, "Lord, help!" He knows very well what we need and he shews us his mercy.
Macarius of Egypt