Amesbury Friends Peace Center

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

 When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall -- think of it, ALWAYS! Mahatma Gandhi

 Peace is not the absence of war; it is a virtue; a state of mind; a disposition for benevolence; confidence; and justice. Spinoza

 If you want peace, work for justice. Pope Paul VI

 While you are proclaiming peace with your lips, be careful to have it even more fully in your heart. St. Francis of Assisi

 Being a pacifist between wars is as easy as being a vegetarian between meals. Ammon Hennacy, US Labor leader

 Peace is not the product of a victory or a command. It has no finishing line, no final deadline, no fixed definition of achievement. Peace is a never-ending process, the work of many decisions. Oscar Arias

 This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before. Leonard Bernstein

 The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us. Black Elk

 Five enemies of peace inhabit with us--avarice, ambition, envy, anger, and pride; if these were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace. Petrarch

 Peace, in the sense of the absence of war, is of little value to someone who is dying of hunger or cold. It will not remove the pain of torture inflicted on a prisoner of conscience. It does not comfort those who have lost their loved ones in floods caused by senseless deforestation in a neighboring country. Peace can only last where human rights are respected, where the people are fed, and where individuals and nations are free. The Dalai Lama

In 1989, thirteen nations comprising 1,695,000 people experienced nonviolent revolutions that succeeded beyond anyone's wildest expectations . . . If we add all the countries touched by major nonviolent actions in our century (the Philippines, South Africa . . . the independence movement in India . . .) the figure reaches 3,337,400,000, a staggering 65% of humanity! All this in the teeth of the assertion, endlessly repeated, that nonviolence doesn't work in the 'real' world. Walter Wink

 The first principle of non-violent action is that of non-cooperation with everything humiliating. César Chávez

  When you give food to the poor, they call you a saint. When you ask why the poor have no food, they call you a communist. Archbishop Helder Camara, Brazilian liberation theologist

 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

Anyone can love peace, but Jesus didn't say, "Blessed are the peace-lovers." He says “peacemakers.” He is referring to a life vocation, not a hobby on the sidelines of life. Jim Wallis

Nonviolence is really tough. You don't practice nonviolence at conferences; you practice it on picket-lines. César Chávez