Abbe Pierre Quotes

Europe must learn to live in and with the world, not to dominate it nor to assume it is superior or more virtuous.

The forces that are driving mankind toward unity and peace are deep-seated and powerful. They are material and natural, as well as moral and intellectual.

For all the tribulations in our lives, for all the troubles that remain in the world, the decline of violence is an accomplishment that we can savor - and an impetus to cherish the forces of civilization and enlightenment that made it possible.

Internationalism is a community theory of society which is founded on economic, spiritual, and biological facts. It maintains that respect for a healthy development of human society and of world civilization requires that mankind be organized internationally.

I'm suggesting that, ironically, the secret to becoming a world 'hyperpower' is tolerance. If you look at history, you see great powers being very tolerant in their rise to global dominance.

The diffusion of a universalist culture and of a pedagogy of peace appears more than ever to be the path that we must follow for the salvation of all nations on earth.

It is true that men themselves made this world of nations... but this world without doubt has issued from a mind often diverse, at times quite contrary, and always superior to the particular ends that men had proposed to themselves.

The world is far more interconnected today. Hence the need to understand each other is greater than ever before.

If you look at the history of technology over a couple hundred years, it's all about time compression and making the globe smaller. It's had positive effects, all the ones that we know. So we're much less likely to have the kind of terrible misunderstandings that led to World War I, for example.

Nations, like small communities, are in danger of becoming provincial, and must become so, unless they exchange commodities, theories, thoughts, and ideals. Isolation is the soil of ignorance, and ignorance is the soil of egotism; and nations, like individuals who live apart, mistake provincialism for perfection, and hatred of all other nations for patriotism.

… only today, or yesterday at the earliest, after the long millenniums of man's life on this planet, has he acquired the technical skill, the command over the forces of nature, the physical power to produce enough and more for all his children upon the face of the earth.

It is common to think of our own time as standing on the apex of human history.

The Arab population does not want to turn inward and be isolated.

Consort with all the peoples, kindreds and religions of the world with the utmost truthfulness, uprightness, faithfulness, kindliness, good-will and friendliness

Why did Allah create human beings different from one another? The development of the world, the enrichment of life, and the progress of Man and society can only take place when there is such diversity.

Nations like individuals do not always see alike or think alike, and international cooperation and progress are not helped by any nation assuming that it has a monopoly of wisdom or of virtue.

Just beyond the horizon of current events lie two possible political futures -- both bleak, neither democratic. The first is a retribalization of large swaths of humankind by war and bloodshed: a threatened Lebanonization of national states in which culture is pitted against culture, people against people, tribe against tribe -- a Jihad in the name of a hundred narrowly conceived faiths against every kind of interdependence, every kind of artificial social cooperation and civic mutuality. The second is being borne in on us by the onrush of economic and ecological forces that demand integration and uniformity and that mesmerize the world with fast music, fast computers, and fast food -- with MTV, Macintosh, and McDonald's, pressing nations into one commercially homogenous global network: one McWorld tied together by technology, ecology, communications, and commerce. The planet is falling precipitantly apart and coming reluctantly together at the very same moment

Each and every civilization in the world is in complete concordance with its people and their condition of living. If a civilization loses this equilibrium it will be lost itself. The inharmonious civilizations die because of their lack of harmony and those who survive are in complete harmony with the changing conditions. The best way of coping with these ever-increasing changes is to come together with the other civilizations.

Global disorder is here to stay, so the challenge is to make it work as much as possible.

Must we conclude that no enlightened self-interest will ever impel nations to look on intervals of peace as other than periods of recuperation for war? I, for one, think not.

Let us mingle with other nations as one of them and not stand as one apart. Let us seek their friendship not their hate.

If we can reach unity between all the components of the people, the canals of terrorism will dry up.

This [the advent of radio] was the first time in the history of mankind that people in different places heard the same thing at the same time.

If my ancestors had been Muslims in a country conquered by Christian armies, instead of Christians in a country conquered by the forces of Islam, I do not think that they would have allowed to live in their towns and villages, retaining their own religion, for over a thousand years.

The great powers of the world may have done wonders in giving the world an industrial look, but the great gift still has to come from Africa - giving the world a more human face.