There is so much that must be done in a civilized barbarism like war.

Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?

Our lifetime may be the last that will be lived out in a technological society.

If you know how to read, you have a complete education about life, then you know how to vote within a democracy. But if you don’t know how to read, you don’t know how to decide. That’s the great thing about our country – we’re a democracy of readers, and we should keep it that way.

Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.

I would be stupid not to be on my own side. But I’m a human being, too. And I’m on the side of human beings, rather than on the side of crocodiles.

In America today, we are nearer a final triumph over poverty than is any other land.

If there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers.

The argument that resistance to the war should remain strictly nonviolent seems to me overwhelming.

The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.

Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. I am not unmindful of the fact that violence often brings about momentary results. Nations have frequently won their independence in battle. But in spite of temporary victories, violence never brings permanent peace.

We had violence directed at us by the growers themselves, trying to run us down by cars, pointing rifles at us, spraying the people when they were on the picket line with sulfur.

In war there is no substitute for victory.

I am just one human being.

Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.

The paradox of education is precisely this – that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.

People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.

People love conspiracy theories.

No one can say, ‚I have dropped out – I am no longer in the system.‘ When you’re in prison, you’re even closer to the system: you feel it more, and you might be in there for whatever reason. You don’t transform the system as an absolute thing.

If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there’d be peace.

It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived.

Me only have one ambition, y’know. I only have one thing I really like to see happen. I like to see mankind live together – black, white, Chinese, everyone – that’s all.

There is no glory in battle worth the blood it costs.

We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.

That sort of half sigh, which, accompanied by two or three slight nods of the head, is pity’s small change in general society.

For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s futures. And we are all mortal.

Judge Afiuni has suffered enough. She has been subject to acts of violence and humiliations to undermine her human dignity. I am convinced that she must be set free.

If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known, that we are at all times ready for War.

I don’t think we handled the aftermath of the fall of Baghdad as well as we might have. But that’s now history.

There are some loony people in this world!

In the early days of the military Arpanet, my daughter was studying in Nicaragua. Because the U.S. was essentially at war with them, contact was difficult. I managed to use MIT’s Arpanet connection, and she found one, so we could communicate thanks to the Pentagon!

To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity.

The human animal cannot be trusted for anything good except en masse. The combined thought and action of the whole people of any race, creed or nationality, will always point in the right direction.

Music is always a commentary on society.

It’s not that every single thing that happens on Facebook is gonna be good. This is humanity. People use tools for good and bad, but I think that we have a clear responsibility to make sure that the good is amplified and to do everything we can to mitigate the bad.

The fundamental defect of fathers, in our competitive society, is that they want their children to be a credit to them.

In every society some men are born to rule, and some to advise.

Washington still refuses to provide evidence to support the claims in 1990 that a huge Iraqi military build-up on the Saudi border justified war.

Poverty is a veil that obscures the face of greatness. An appeal is a mask covering the face of tribulation.

It is not possible for civilization to flow backwards while there is youth in the world. Youth may be headstrong, but it will advance it allotted length.

Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity.

I particularly admire are Mark Twain and Jerome K. Jerome who wrote in a certain tone of voice which was humane and understanding of humanity, but always ready to annotate its little foibles. I think I’d lay my cards down on that, and say that it’s that that I’m trying to do.

The very existence of flame-throwers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I’m just not close enough to get the job done.

I shall proceed from the simple to the complex. But in war more than in any other subject we must begin by looking at the nature of the whole; for here more than elsewhere the part and the whole must always be thought of together.

Those who ‚abjure‘ violence can do so only because others are committing violence on their behalf.

Society can overlook murder, adultery or swindling; it never forgives preaching of a new gospel.

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.

For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.

If one by one we counted people out For the least sin, it wouldn’t take us long To get so we had no one left to live with. For to be social is to be forgiving.

War is not merely a political act but a real political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, a carrying out of the same by other means.

The world, we are told, was made especially for man – a presumption not supported by all the facts. A numerous class of men are painfully astonished whenever they find anything, living or dead, in all God’s universe, which they cannot eat or render in some way what they call useful to themselves.

Politics is almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.

You can’t make war in the Middle East without Egypt and you can’t make peace without Syria.

Anyone who thinks must think of the next war as they would of suicide.

I claim that human mind or human society is not divided into watertight compartments called social, political and religious. All act and react upon one another.

Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter. When they separate, man is no more.

The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.

Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight? They never mention that part to us, do they?

There is in general good reason to suppose that in several respects the gods could all benefit from instruction by us human beings. We humans are – more humane.

Humanity is still advancing; and it will probably continue to advance for hundreds of thousands of years more, always on condition that we know how to keep the same line of advance as our ancestors towards ever greater consciousness and complexity.