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

- Leonard Bernstein

Violence is born from a wounded spirit: A spirit burned and blistered by the fire of arrogance; a spirit splintered and frayed by the frustration of
powerlessness; a spirit parched with an unquenched thirst for meaning in life; a spirit shriveled and shrunk by feelings of inferiority. The rage that results from injured self-respect, from humiliation, erupts as violence. A culture of violence, which delights in crushing and beating others into submission, spreads throughout society, often amplified by the media.

Non-violence is the highest form of humility; it is supreme courage.  Jawaharlal Nehru said that the essence of Gandhi's teachings was fearlessness. The Mahatma taught that the strong are never vindictive and that dialogue can only be engaged in by the brave.

-- editorial in The Times of India, January 30, 2002; Daisaku Ikeda

"Through violence you murder the hater; but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate...Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.  Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that

.-- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

...At the end of the talk someone from the audience asked the Dalai Lama, "Why didn't you fight back against the Chinese?" The Dalai Lama looked down, swung his feet just a bit, then looked back up at us and said with a gentle smile, "Well, war is obsolete, you know." Then, after a few moments, his face grave, he said, "Of course, the mind can rationalize fighting back...but the heart, the heart would never understand. Then you would be divided in yourself, the heart and the mind, and the war would be inside you."

"If we attempt to act and do things for others or for the world without deepening our own self-understanding, our own freedom, integrity and capacity to love, we will not have anything to give to others. We will communicate nothing but the contagion of our own obsessions, our aggressiveness, our own ego-centered ambitions."

- Thomas Merton

"Peace is more than the absence of war,
more than the maintenance of a balance of power between enemies...
We believe that peace is the result of justice.
When society is rightly ordered, when people live as God intends, then peace reigns.
But while this is true, we also realize the peace must be constantly built up,
human nature must be called again and again to make peace.
But even this is not sufficient...
Peace comes, in the end, from love.
Unless people willingly come together to share their talents and bright minds,
peace cannot be achieved.
Love goes beyond what justice can achieve."

-Pope John Paul