Thich Nhat Hanh Quotes
The terrorists, they have the wrong perception. They believe that the other group is trying to destroy them as a religion, as a civilization. So they want to abolish us, to kill us before we can kill them. And the antiterrorist may think very much the same way - that these are terrorists and they are trying to eliminate us, so we have to eliminate them first. Both sides are motivated by fear, by anger, and by wrong perception.
Hanh, Thich Nhat. Creating True Peace: Ending Violence in Yourself, Your Family, Your Community, and the World. Free Press, 2003, p. 21.
While this was a common attitude for years before, the horrors of World War II produced a general revulsion to war and an awareness that war between two nations spills over to other states in the region and in an era of globalization, effects countries in other parts of the world. So there has been a tendency to use diplomacy endlessly, even after "things have gone too far". Historically, when things reached that point, the parties did fight it out, and when one was weakened sufficiently, negotiations and diplomacy could then be fruitful.
He had a lifelong hatred toward the Internal Revenue Service. Finally he crashed his single engine airplane into the IRS offices, killing an IRS agent and committing suicide in a different version of suicide bombing.
Thích Nhất Hạnh is a Vietnamese Thiền Buddhist monk, peace activist, and founder of the Plum Village Tradition.
