Quotes on Peace & Peace Monuments

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Bennett, James Richard (May 1999) in "Centers, Museums, and Public Memorials for Nonviolent Peacemaking in the US: A Visitors' Guide:" "Our warmaking country can be restored to peace consciousness through the guiding presence of the arts and sciences of peace studies centers, museums, parks, and memorials, public and private, which lead us to peacemakers and active peacemaking, These foundations inspire us to extend them until wasteland, war, and warriors become the smaller voice and vision."

Einstein, Albert, January 1946: "Mankind's desire for peace can be realized only by the creation of a world government."

Einstein, Albert, May 1946: "Our world faces a crisis as yet unperceived by those possessing the power to make great decisions for good and evil. The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe."

Einstein, Albert, February 1950: "What can we do in the prevailing situation to bring about peaceful coexistence among all nations? The first goal must be to do away with mutual fear and distrust. Solemn renunciation of the policy of violence, not only with respect to weapons of mass destruction, is without doubt necessary. Such renunciation, however, will be effective only if a supranational judicial and executive agency is established at the same time, with power to settle questions of immediate concern to the security of nations."

Eisenhower, President Dwight D. [1890-1969], from a speech before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16, 1953: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron." (On monument in Croydon, Indiana).

Gide, Andre: "We badly need symbols -- our imagination would perish from exhaustion if it did not have symbols on which to rest, like bird in flight has to have a perch on which to repose." (F. Gonzalez-Crussi (1993) adds "Our perches are flags, national anthems, memorial monuments, effigies, and tombs.")

Kennedy, President John F., in a letter to a Navy friend: "War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today."

King, Jr., Martin Luther, Letter from the Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are all caught in an escapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny."

King, Jr., Martin Luther, acceptance speech for the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize, Oslo: "It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it."

Muste, A.J.: "There is no way to peace — peace is the way." (The early Christians were called "people of the Way" because they lived the way of Jesus. If the sharing of our faith is to have any integrity, Christians who say "Jesus is the Way" must embody "the Way of Jesus." The same is true of peace activists, Christian or otherwise. As Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. would often say, "Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal."

Roosevelt, President Franklin Deleno, Chautauqua, NY, August 14, 1936: "I have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded. I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed. I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war." (Inscribed at FRD Memorial in Washington, DC.)

Roosevelt, President Franklin Deleno, address to Congress after his return from Yalta, March 1, 1945: "The structure of world peace cannot be the work of one man, or one party, or one nation... It must be a peace which rests on the cooperative effort of the whole world." (Inscribed at FRD Memorial in Washington, DC.)

Russell–Einstein Manifesto, London (England), July 9, 1955: "We appeal, as human beings, to human beings: Remember your humanity and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open for a new paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death."

Rustin, Bayard [1912-1987], as quoted on a plaque: "The principal factors which influenced my life are non-violent tactics, constitutional means, democratic procedures, respect for human personality, a belief that all people are one."

Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias, 1818: "I met a traveller from an antique land - Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone - Stand in the desert.
Near them on the sand, - Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown - And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command -
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read - Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things, -
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed. - And on the pedestal these words appear: -
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: - Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' - Nothing beside remains.
Round the decay - Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, - The lone and level sands stretch far away."

van den Dungen, Peter, in Japan, August 2011: "The world should be more aware of the threat posed by nuclear weapons. We should have Hiroshima-type museums in the capital cities of all the nuclear-weapons states, in Washington, London, Paris, Beijing and Moscow. That would have a momentous impact on public opinion and would greatly strengthen the global movement for the abolition of nuclear weapons."

van den Dungen, Peter, in Japan, August 2011: "Although it's more than 65 years since atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I can't believe that the Nobel Peace Prize has not been awarded to hibakusha. Unfortunately, the peace prize is often awarded to leading politicians, even those engaged in wars."

von Suttner, Baroness Bertha, at inauguration of the Peace Palace, The Hague, August 28, 1913: Says that peace connferences, treaties & tribunals are not sufficient by themselves. "These things also require their material forms, their easliy recognisable visible symbols, their homes. War, which has dominated the world for thousands of years, is not short of monuments and palaces. Peace has just ONE monument: the statue of Christ on the Andes [sic]; and in Europe it now has for the first time ONE beautiful building: the Peace Palace..."

Wright, Quincy [1890-1970]: "The artist, sculptor, or poet can produce a work of art which the untutored will at once label 'war.' It is difficult, on the other hand, to imagine a painting, statue, or poem that the average man would unequivocally label 'peace.'"