Audre Lorde Quotes

The good people of this world are very far from being satisfied with each other & my arms are the best peacemakers.

What’s so civil about war anyway?

Love is a rare herb that makes a friend even of a sworn enemy and this herb grows out of nonviolence.

Violence brings only temporary victories; violence, by creating many more social problems than it solves, never brings permanent peace.

Every war, when viewed from the undistorted perspective of life’s sanctity, is a “civil war” waged by humanity against itself.

I consider violence an uneconomical way of attaining an end. There are always better substitutes, though they may sometimes be a little less direct.

Peace is not so much a political mandate as it is a shared state of consciousness that remains elevated and intact only to the degree that those who value it volunteer their existence as living examples of the same. Peace ends with the unraveling of individual hope and the emergence of the will to worship violence as a healer of private and social disease.

War represents the supreme failure of nations to resolve their differences. From a strictly pragmatic standpoint, it is the most inefficient waste of lives and resources ever conceived.

May the God of peace arouse in all an authentic desire for dialogue and reconciliation. Violence cannot be overcome with violence. Violence is overcome with peace.

We who claim to love peace and justice must always be careful that we do not use our righteousness to provoke the violent, and in this way bring about the conflict for which we, too, like other men, are hungering in secret, and with suppressed barbarity.

even when peaceful cooperation is the obvious thing, the only thing that will keep any of us alive- There are still people who won't make that choice

Every victory accomplished with weapons is a funeral that should be mourned.

The level of violence on the planet today is no longer sustainable.

When our hatred is violent, it sinks us even beneath those we hate.

Nonviolence becomes meaningless if violence is permitted for self-defence.

If the time comes when our culture tires of the endless homicidal feuds, despairs of the use of force and war as a means of bringing peace, becomes discontent with the half-lives that its members are living - only then will our culture seriously look for alternatives.

We say peace and the echo comes back from the other side, war. We dont want wars even when we win.

You can't talk about peace nor agreement while terror is used as the main argument.

It seems to me that there are two great enemies of peace - fear and selfishness.

I wish heroes didn't exist. Whenever we need a hero, it's because there's a problem that needs to be solved; it's because two groups of people, or two countries, are hurting one another, so a hero is needed to save us. If everyone were at peace, if everyone were happy, why would we need heroes? The world is better off without heroes.

I make war on the living, not the dead.

If we do not want to die together in war, we must learn to live together in peace.

The young bloods of the South: sons of planters, lawyers about towns, good billiard-players and sportsmen, men who never did any work and never will... They are splendid riders, first-rate shots and utterly reckless. These men must all be killed or employed by us before we can hope for peace.

By using violence to subjugate one another we are using violence against our own souls.

Root out the violence in your life, and learn to live compassionately and mindfully. Seek peace. When you have peace within, real peace with others is possible.