December 2025
“To practice nonviolence, first of all we have to practice it within ourselves.”
“All violence begins with the personal, with the I, and with a point of decision, a crossing of a line, where each of us chooses momentarily to view another living being as an It rather than a Thou. The ultimate purpose of each act of violence, each reduction of another person from a Thou to an It, is to control the other. . . . Our choices matter, even on what seems like a small scale. They have resonance in the universe. When we truly see another person or living being as a Thou, we cannot dominate or control them. We then must enter into a different kind of covenant, where power is shared.”
—Pamela Cooper-White, The Cry of Tamar: Violence against Women and the Church’s Response
November 2025
“I want you to understand that we are part of the natural world. And even today, when the planet is dark, there still is hope. Don’t lose hope. If you lose hope, you become apathetic and do nothing. And if you want to save what is still beautiful in this world—if you want to save the planet for the future generations, your grandchildren, their grandchildren—then think about the actions you take each day.”
— Jane Goodall
October 2025
“After a rain mushrooms appear on the surface of the earth as if from nowhere. Many come from a sometimes vast underground fungus that remains invisible and largely unknown. What we call mushrooms, mycologists call the fruiting body of the larger, less visible fungus. Uprisings and revolutions are often considered to be spontaneous, but it is the less visible long-term organising and groundwork—or underground work—that often laid the foundation. Changes in ideas and values also result from work done by writers, scholars, public intellectuals, social activists and participants in social media. To many, it seems insignificant or peripheral until very different outcomes emerge from transformed assumptions about who and what matters, who should be heard and believed, who has rights.”
September 2025
“Why did all that we’re seeing have to happen on our watch? Why now, and why us? I would suggest that there is a reason why the things we are witnessing are happening in our exact time on this planet. Because we are the ones who are made for this moment. We are not in the situation we’re facing because we can’t hadle it, we’re in the situation that we’re facing precisely because we can. For some reason that only the universe knows, we are exactly where we are supposed to be in the flow of human existence. It will be up to each of us to figure out what we each uniquely can bring to this moment when the planet and species need us most.”
August 2025
“Unfortunately the blindness and madness of a society that is shaken to its very roots by the storms of passion and greed for power make the fully effective use of political negotiation impossible. Men want to negotiate for peace, and strive to do so, but their fear is greater than their good will. They do not dare to take serious and bold initiatives for peace. Fear of losing face, fear of the propaganda consequences of apparent ‘weakness,’ make it impossible for them to do what is really courageous: to take firm steps toward world peace. When they take one step forward they immediately tell the world about it and then take four steps backward. We are all walking backward toward a precipice. We know the precipice is there, but we assert that we are all the while going forward. This is because the world in its madness is guided by military men, who are the blindest of the blind.”
— Thomas Merton’s August, 1962 letter to Shinzo Hamai, mayor of Hiroshima, Japan.
June 2025
“Safety and security don’t just happen, they are the result of collective consensus and public investment. We owe our children, the most vulnerable citizens in our society, a life free of violence and fear.”
“Nonviolence is not inaction. It is not discussion. It is not for the timid or weak. . . . Nonviolence is hard work.”
May 2025
“Peace is made with our hands. It is not only built by the powerful with their choices and their international treaties, we too can build peace, in our homes, in the family, among neighbors, in our workplaces, in the neighborhoods where we live.”
Pope Francis
April 2025
“Connections are made slowly, sometimes they grow underground.
You cannot tell always by looking what is happening.
More than half a tree is spread out in the soil under your feet.
Penetrate quietly as the earthworm that blows no trumpet.
Fight persistently as the creeper that brings down the tree.
Spread like the squash plant that overruns the garden.
Gnaw in the dark and use the sun to make sugar.”Marge Piercey, “The Seven of Pentacles,” Circles on the Water
March 2025
“People are aware that they cannot continue in the same old way but are immobilized because they cannot imagine an alternative. We need a vision that recognizes that we are at one of the great turning points in human history when the survival of our planet and the restoration of our humanity require a great sea change in our ecological, economic, political, and spiritual values.”
“We’ve got to be as clear-headed about human beings as possible, because we are still each other’s only hope.”
James Baldwin, A Rap on Race
“In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground. A time when we have to shed our fear and give hope to each other. That time is now.”
Wangari Maathai
“O let America be America again –
The land that never has been yet –
And yet must be –”
January 2025
“All the changes in one’s environment are brought about by one’s hands.”
Maria Montessori
December 2024
“There is just so much hurt, disappointment, and oppression one can take. . . . The line between reason and madness grows thinner.”
Rosa Parrks
November 2024
“I do not allow myself to be overcome by hopelessness, no matter how tough the situation. I believe that if you just do your little bit without thinking of the bigness of what you stand against, if you turn to the enlargement of your own capacities, just that itself creates new potential.”
October 2024
“We stand with you and breathe. We stand with you in our continued grief, shock, and devastation with all that is unfolding on our planet. We stand with you as we contemplate how not to fall into the pitfalls of anger, aggression, and revenge. We stand with you as we choose, as best we can, not to attack or blame others. We stand with you as we face depression that keeps us numb and anxiety that keeps us frozen and reactive, and we stand with you as we seek support during this wild and utterly unholy time. We stand with you because we need each other. We stand with you and breathe.”
September 2024
“When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”Wendell Berry in Openings: Poems by Wendell Berry
“If we want our actions to add to the building of a new culture even while resolving the issue at hand, we should not hesitate to explain why we’re doing what we’re doing, to anyone who will listen. The point is not that they’ll immediately ‘get it’: the point is that this is how paradigms change: through repetition that slowly builds up and becomes the new normal.”
Michael Nagler, The Third Harmony
July 2024
“We must accept finite disappointment but never lose infinite hope.”
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
June 2024
“There is no greater block to world peace or inner peace than fear. . . and through negative concentration we tend to attract the things we fear. If we fear nothing and radiate love, we can expect good things to come.”
Peace Pilgrim
May 2024
“The choice today is no longer
between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence.”Dr. Martin Luther King
April 2024
“It may seem sometimes as if a culture of peace does not stand a chance against the culture of war, the culture of violence and the cultures of impunity and intolerance. Peace may indeed be a complex challenge, dependent on action in many fields and even a bit of luck from time to time. It may be a painfully slow process, and fragile and imperfect when it is achieved. But peace is in our hands. We can do it.”
Kofi Annan
March 2024
“It has always been easy to hate and destroy. To build and to cherish is much more difficult.”
Queen Elizabeth II
January 2024
“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”
Albert Einstein
February 2024
“Gandhi had a strong belief that all people can shape and guide their lives according to the highest ideals, no matter how insignificant and powerless they might feel themselves to be. Gandhi lived his life, from childhood on, as someone convinced that his decisions about how to live mattered and that he had the power to make those decisions conform to what he believed right.”
Sissela Bok, in the foreword to Gandhi: An Autobiography—the Story of My Experiments With Truth
December 2023
“I seek the comfort of our sameness before I become distracted by our differences.”
Will Covert, Veterans For Peace
Twin Cities Nonviolent 