Petra Kelly Quotes

The vision I see is not only a movement of direct democracy, of self- and co-determination and non-violence, but a movement in which politics means the power to love and the power to feel united on the spaceship Earth... In a world struggling in violence and dishonesty, the further development of non-violence - not only as a philosophy but as a way of life, as a force on the streets, in the market squares, outside the missile bases, inside the chemical plants and inside the war industry - becomes one of the most urgent priorities.

We don't believe in planners and deciders making the decisions on behalf of Americans.

Political sovereignty is but a mockery without the means of meeting poverty and illiteracy and disease. Self-determination is but a slogan if the future holds no hope.

Popular sovereignty has to be given by a people to itself, and this is the important meaning of self-determination.

Regardless of religion or race or ethnic background we are all human and we are all on this planet together. So what better reason do you need to not tolerate any form of violence against another human being?

I'm standing up for the right of self-determination. I'm standing up for our territory. I'm standing up for our people. I'm standing up for international law. I'm standing up for all those territories - those small territories and peoples the world over - who, if someone doesn't stand up and say to an invader 'enough, stop', would be at risk.

Violence is not inevitable. I mean, the only inevitable form of violence is the kind that we understand, the only legitimate (if there can ever be legitimate violence) and that's self-defense.

As we begin to comprehend that the earth itself is a kind of manned spaceship hurtling through the infinity of space ~ it will seem increasingly absurd that we have not better organized the life of the human family.

All of women's aspirations--whether for education, work, or any form of self-determination--ultimately rest on their ability to decide whether and when to bear children. For this reason, reproductive freedom has always been the most popular item in each of the successive feminist agendas--and the most heavily assaulted target of each backlash.

I think the Montgomery bus boycott initiated an era of self-determination.

When will we learn, when will the people of the world get up and say, Enough is enough. God created us for fellowship. God created us so that we should form the human family, existing together because we were made for one another. We are not made for an exclusive self-sufficiency but for interdependence, and we break the law of our being at our peril.

Our character is our will; for what we will we are.

Gender assignment is a "construction" and yet many genderqueer and trans people refuse those assignments in part or in full. That refusal opens the way for a more radical form of self-determination, one that happens in solidarity with others who are undergoing a similar struggle.

Most Arabs and Muslims feel that the United States hasn't really been paying much attention to their desires. They think it has been pursuing its policies for its own sake and not according to many of the principles that it claims are its own - democracy, self-determination, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, international law.

The thing that I think was very brave of my younger self was that he decided he would be an idiot. Just persevere. That feels brave to me: deciding that I'm going to damn well be this person that I've set my heart on being.

Self-ruled Taiwan cannot be expected to accept such an affront to the legitimacy of its government and the self-determination of the Taiwanese people.

Ambition means tying your well-being to what other people say or do. Self-indulgence means tying it to the things that happen to you. Sanity means tying it to your own actions.

To counter the fixation on a rhetoric of victimhood, black folks must engage in a discourse of self-determination.

Effort is between you, and you, and nobody else. So that team that thinks it's ready to see you, they think what they've seen on film, they ain't saw what film shows, because every day is a new day. Every moment is a new moment. So now you've got to go out and show them that I'm a different creature now, than I was five minutes ago, cause I'm pissed off for greatness. Cause if you ain't pissed off for greatness, that just means you're okay with being mediocre, and ain't no man in here okay with just basic.

We are the Captains of Spaceship Earth...we have the capacity to overcome our limits.

Hitler had a plausible case to argue when he claimed that the Anschluss was only the application of the Wilsonian principle of self-determination.

As a person committed to human rights and international law and the right of self-determination, I would like to see the occupation end. And then it is up to the Palestinians themselves to decide what they want.

You can just imagine if everyone on earth did have one day where we just put all our minds together regardless where the force is, as long as it's positive, and just meditate for even a hour that day. And just live nice with them nice meditation. I mean, now, the climate would be nice, the smog would a leave

The acceptance of vertical differentiation with the built-in principle of self-determination must apply on as many levels as possible.

The seven of us on board [the Space Shuttle] represented five different religions. But we were all agreed - it just doesn't make sense how people on earth treat each other. It doesn't make any difference what language we speak. It doesn't make any difference what country we come from. It certainly doesn't make any difference what the color of our skin is. We are all children of God traveling on spaceship earth together.