Monday 29 December 2014

Quotes

Security – a new vision: “It is easy to spend hundreds of billions in response to terrorist threats, but the reality is that the resources needed to disrupt a modern economy are small… The challenge is not to provide a high-tech response to terrorism but to build a global society that is environmentally sustainable and equitable – one that restores hope for everyone. Such an effort would do more to combat terrorism than any increase in military expenditures or any new weapons systems, however advanced.” Plan B 4.0 P. 265. Martin Luther King’s Nobel Lecture 1964

Karen Armstrong “Religion is at its best when it helps us to ask questions and holds us in a state of wonder – and arguably at its worst when it tries to answer them authoritatively and dogmatically.” P.108 “Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life”. 


 From Prof. Richard Falk’s Peace Lecture, 7 Nov. 2014:
 “On the legacies of World War I it is certainly appropriate to note that for the first time in history the impetus to form a global institutional mechanism with the overriding mission of preventing future wars entered the mainstream, at least rhetorically.”

  “The terrifying turmoil now going on in the Middle East can be traced back to some fundamentally wrong decisions made in the peace diplomacy that followed the war, and cannot be properly understood or addressed without appreciating its World War I roots. ‘
 “There is no doubt that the unresolved Palestinian quest for self-determination has caused frequent wars, as well as inflicted on the Palestinian people both the catastrophic dispossession of 1948, the nakba, and a brutal occupation that has continued since 1967, increasingly assuming an apartheid structure of military administration. The United States has assumed the role earlier played by Britain in protecting Israel’s interests in what has been a hostile environment regardless of Israel’s frequent violation of international law and elemental morality, above all, its unwillingness to cooperate in reaching agreement with Palestinians based on equality of rights as the foundation for a sustainable and just peace.”

 “The kind of war making that occurred in World War I and took new technological forms in World War II is a virus that continues to lie dormant in the body politic. It is exhibited by the refusal to seek the abolition of nuclear weaponry or the globalizing of the rule of law, and by the insistence that our side in every war is essentially innocent and good and our adversary is evil, even barbaric.”

From Richard Rohr’s book “Eager To Love”:
“It is important to know that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but in fact, certitude and the demand for certitude.” P. 172

 “The common variety of church life in most denominations could be called ‘fast-food’ religion instead of deeply nutritious meals that feed and change people at deep unconscious levels… Christianity has largely reflected current cultural values, and even bourgeois values, during most of its history. Alfred North Whitehead, however, put it somewhat unkindly: ‘Modern religion has tended to degenerate into a decent formula whereby people can embellish an otherwise comfortable life.’ I wish that were not true.” P. 195

“We all know love’s absence as hell, and its presence goes by the name of heaven.” P. 263

“Only love can move across boundaries and across cultures. Love is a very real energy, a spiritual life force that is much more powerful than ideas or mere thoughts. Love is endlessly alive.” P. 267

Ends and Means: “As soon as means which would ensure an end are shown to be evil, the end will show itself as unrealizable.” Milovan Djilas

2 comments:

  1. I really like the quote from Karen Armstrong. It says perfectly and succinctly something I've been trying to find the words to express for a while now.

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    1. Yes, I agree. Karen Armstrong has a gift for expressing things in a way that leads to new thinking that has a healing element in it. Her voice is much needed in this troubled world.

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