Quotes4study

Let us now pledge all our efforts to obtain and consolidate the benefits of peace. Under its auspices, the protection of the laws and of the authorities will be sufficient for all the inhabitants of the Republic. May the people and the government respect the rights of all. Between individuals, as between nations, peace means respect for the rights of others.

Benito Juarez

Though I have been trained as a soldier, and participated in many battles, there never was a time when, in my opinion, some way could not be found to prevent the drawing of the sword. I look forward to an epoch when a court, recognized by all nations, will settle international differences.

Ulysses S. Grant

For my name and memory, I leave it to men's charitable speeches, to foreign nations, and to the next ages.

FRANCIS BACON. 1561-1626.     _From his Will._

>Nations, like stars, are entitled to eclipse. All is well, provided the light returns and the eclipse does not become endless night. Dawn and resurrection are synonymous. The reappearance of the light is the same as the survival of the soul.

Victor Hugo in Les Misérables

Everyone has the right to own property, individually and in association with others. [Article 17(1) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights , December 10, 1948.]

United Nations

_State super vias et interrogate de semitis antiquis, et ambulate in eis. Et dixerunt: Non ambulabimus, sed post cogitationem nostram ibimus._ They have said to the nations: Come to us, we will follow the opinions of the new authors, reason shall be our guide, we will be as the other nations who follow each their natural light. Philosophers have....

Blaise Pascal     The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal

Droit des gens=--Law of nations.

French.

Take it to the Streets “Pray continually”(1 Thessalonians 5:17). I’ve enjoyed walking since my youth and continue to enjoy it today as my number one cardiovascular activity. I find walking to be the most flexible and relaxing exercise. No special equipment or skills are needed – just a good pair of shoes and sensible clothing. It can be done anywhere and anytime with a friend or by myself. There can also be both spiritual and physical benefits by combining prayer with walking. What walking accomplishes in building a strong body, prayer achieves in building spiritual strength. Your body requires exercise and food, and it needs these things regularly. Once a week won’t suffice. Your spiritual needs are similar to your physical needs, and so praying once a week is as effective as eating once a week. The Bible tells us to pray continually in order to have a healthy, growing spiritual life. Prayer walking is just what it sounds like — simply walking and talking to God. Prayer walking can take a range of approaches from friends or family praying as they walk around schools, neighbourhoods, work places, and churches, to structured prayer campaigns for particular streets and homes. I once participated in a prayer walk in Ottawa where, as a group, we marched to Parliament Hill and prayed for our governments, provinces, and country. In the Bible, there are many references to walking while thinking and meditating on the things of God. Genesis 13:17 says, “Go, walk through the length and breadth of the land, for I am giving it to you.” The prophet Micah declared, “All the nations may walk in the name of their gods, we will walk in the name of the Lord our God for ever and ever.” (Micah 4:5) And in Joshua 14:9 it says, “So on that day Moses swore to me, ‘The land on which your feet have walked will be your inheritance and that of your children forever, because you have

Kimberley Payne

Wherever the bright sun of heaven shall shine, His honour and the greatness of his name Shall be, and make new nations.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 1564-1616.     _King Henry VIII. Act v. Sc. 5._

The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells Wakan-Tanka, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us. This is the real peace, and the others are but reflections of this. The second peace is that which is made between two individuals, and the third is that which is made between two nations. But above all you should understand that there can never be peace between nations until there is known that true peace, which, as I have often said, is within the souls of men.

Black Elk

Many are the advantages to be derived from a careful study of other religions, but the greatest of all is that it teaches us to appreciate more truly what we possess in our own. Let us see what other nations have had and still have in the place of religion, let us examine the prayers, the worship, the theology even, of the most highly civilised races, and we shall then understand more thoroughly what blessings are vouchsafed to us in being allowed to breathe from the first breath of life the pure air of a land of Christian light and knowledge. We are too apt to take the greatest blessings as matters of course, and even religion forms no exception. We have done so little to gain our religion, we have suffered so little in the cause of truth, that however highly we prize our own Christianity, we never prize it highly enough until we have compared it with the religions of the rest of the world.

Friedrich Max Müller     Thoughts on Life and Religion

How ready some people are to admire in a great man the exception rather than the rule of his conduct! Such perverse worship is like the idolatry of barbarous nations, who can see the noonday splendour of the sun without emotion, but who, when he is in eclipse, come forward with hymns and cymbals to adore him.

_Canning._

The great cause of revolutions is this: that, while nations move onward, constitutions stand still.

_Macaulay._

The real science of political economy is that which teaches nations to desire and labour for the things that lead to life; and which teaches them to scorn and destroy the things that lead to destruction.

_Ruskin._

What we call Christianity embraces several fundamental doctrines, but the most important of them all is the recognition of the Divine in man, or, as we call it, the belief in the Divinity of the Son. The belief in God, let us say in God the Father, or the Creator and Ruler of the world, had been elaborated by the Jews, and most of the civilised and uncivilised nations of the world had arrived at it. But when the Founder of Christianity called God His Father, and not only His Father, but the Father of all mankind, He did no longer speak the language of either Jews or Greeks. To the Jews, to claim Divine sonship for man would have been blasphemy. To the Greeks, Divine sonship would have meant no more than a miraculous, a mythological event. Christ spoke a new language, a language liable, no doubt, to be misunderstood, as all language is; but a language which to those who understood it has imparted a new glory to the face of the whole world. It is well known how this event, the discovery of the Divine in man, which involves a complete change in the spiritual condition of mankind, and marks the great turning-point in the history of the world, has been surrounded by a legendary halo, has been obscured, has been changed into mere mythology, so that its real meaning has often been quite forgotten, and has to be discovered again by honest and fearless seeking. Christ had to speak the language of His time, but He gave a new meaning to it, and yet that language has often retained its old discarded meaning in the minds of His earliest, nay sometimes of His latest disciples also. The Divine sonship of which He speaks was not blasphemy as the Jews thought, nor mythology as so many of His own followers imagined, and still imagine. Father and Son, divine and human, were like the old bottles that could hardly hold the new wine; and yet how often have the old broken bottles been preferred to the new wine that was to give new life to the world.

Friedrich Max Müller     Thoughts on Life and Religion

The Niobe of nations! there she stands.

LORD BYRON 1788-1824.     _Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Canto iv. Stanza 79._

That the Jews if they transgressed were to be punished like strangers. Deut. viii. 19. "If thou at all forget the Lord thy God, and walk after other gods, I testify against you this day that ye shall surely perish as the nations which God has destroyed before you."

Blaise Pascal     The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal

In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Individuals must be modest, but modesty degrades nations.

_Gioberti._

If we reflect on the number of men we have seen and know, and consider how little we have been to them and they to us, what must our feelings be?= (_wie wird uns da zu Muthe_). =We meet with the man of genius= (_Geistreich_) =without conversing with him, with the scholar without learning from him, with the traveller without gaining information from him, the amiable man without making ourselves agreeable to him. And this, alas! happens not merely with passing acquaintances; society and families conduct themselves similarly towards their dearest members, cities towards their worthiest citizens, peoples towards their most excellent princes, and nations towards their most eminent men.

_Goethe._

>Nations are less disposed to make revolutions in proportion as personal property is augmented and distributed among them, and as the number of those possessing it is increased. [ Democracy in America , p. 460.]

Tocqueville, Alexis de.

For my name and memory I leave to men's charitable speeches, to foreign nations, and to the next ages.

_Bacon._

The Jews who were called to subdue the nations and their kings were slaves of sin, and the Christians whose calling has been to be servants and subjects, are free children.

Blaise Pascal     The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal

All religions and sects in the world have had natural reason for a guide. Christians alone have been obliged to take their rules from without themselves, and to acquaint themselves with those which Jesus Christ left to men of old time to be transmitted to the faithful. This constraint is wearisome to these good fathers. They desire like the rest of the world to have liberty to follow their imaginations. In vain we cry to them, as the prophets to the Jews of old: "Enter into the Church, enquire of the ways which men of old have left to her, and follow those paths." They have answered, as did the Jews, "We will not walk in them, but we will follow the thoughts of our hearts;" and they have said, "We will be as the nations round about us."

Blaise Pascal     The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal

Isaiah lxvi. 18. "But I know their works and their thoughts: I come that I may gather all nations and tongues, and they shall see my glory.

Blaise Pascal     The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal

~Martyrs.~--Even in this world they will have their judgment-day, and their names, which went down in the dust like a gallant banner trodden in the mire, shall rise again all glorious in the sight of nations.--_Mrs. Stowe._

Maturin M. Ballou     Pearls of Thought

History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.

Abba Eban (born 2 February 1915

The final frontier is perhaps the most difficult, but it's also the most important — and that's the frontier of the human spirit. For too long, people have allowed differences on the surface — differences of color, ethnicity, and gender — to tear apart the common bonds they share. And the human spirit suffers as a result. Imagine a world in which we saw beyond the lines that divide us, and celebrated our differences, instead of hiding from them. Imagine a world in which we finally recognized that, fundamentally, we are all the same. And imagine if we allowed that new understanding to build relations between people and between nations.

Wesley Clark

The Jews were blessed in Abraham. "I will bless those that bless thee." But all nations are blessed in his seed.

Blaise Pascal     The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal

The nations of our time cannot prevent the conditions of men from becoming equal, but it depends upon themselves whether the principle of equality is to lead them to servitude or freedom, to knowledge or barbarism, to prosperity or wretchedness. [ Democracy in America . New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994, Vol. II, p. 334.]

Tocqueville, Alexis de.

Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations,--entangling alliances with none; the support of the State governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns, and the surest bulwarks against anti-republican tendencies; the preservation of the general government in its whole constitutional vigour, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad; . . . freedom of religion; freedom of the press; freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus; and trial by juries impartially selected,--these principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us, and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation.

THOMAS JEFFERSON. 1743-1826.     _First Inaugural Address. March 4, 1801._

The question of questions (for men and nations) is--not how far they are from heaven, but whether they are going to it. (So in art) it is not the wisdom or the barbarism that you have to estimate, not the skill or the rudeness, but the tendency.

_Ruskin._

Certainly had he known it, he would not have established the maxim, most general of all current among men, that every one must conform to the manners of his own country; the splendour of true equity would have brought all nations into subjection, and legislators would not have taken as their model the fancies and caprice of Persians and Germans instead of stable justice. We should have seen it established in all the States of the world, in all times, whereas now we see neither justice nor injustice which does not change its quality upon changing its climate. Three degrees of latitude reverse all jurisprudence, a meridian decides what is truth, fundamental laws change after a few years of possession, right has its epochs, the entrance of Saturn into the Lion marks for us the origin of such and such a crime. That is droll justice which is bounded by a stream! Truth on this side of the Pyrenees, error on that.

Blaise Pascal     The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal

And who (in time) knows whither we may vent The treasure of our tongue? To what strange shores This gain of our best glory shall be sent T' enrich unknowing nations with our stores? What worlds in the yet unformed Occident May come refin'd with th' accents that are ours?

SAMUEL DANIEL. 1562-1619.     _Musophilus. Stanza 163._

Working together, we can build a world in which the rule of law — not the rule of force — governs relations between states. A world in which leaders respect the rights of their people, and nations seek peace, not destruction or domination. And neither we nor anyone else should live in fear ever again.

Wesley Clark

In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds On half the nations, and with fear of change Perplexes monarchs.

JOHN MILTON. 1608-1674.     _Paradise Lost. Book i. Line 597._

Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in cooperation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms, Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge, Now, therefore, The General Assembly, Proclaims this Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations...

From the Preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ~ Adopted and proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly, 10 December 1948

Yet spirit immortal, the tomb cannot bind thee, But like thine own eagle that soars to the sun Thou springest from bondage and leavest behind thee A name which before thee no mortal hath won. Tho' nations may combat, and war's thunders rattle, No more on thy steed wilt thou sweep o'er the plain: Thou sleep'st thy last sleep, thou hast fought thy last battle, No sound can awake thee to glory again.

LEONARD HEATH.     _The Grave of Bonaparte._

This people is not peculiar only by their antiquity, but also remarkable by their duration, which has been unbroken from their origin till now. For while the nations of Greece and Italy, of Lacedæmon, Athens and Rome, and others who came after, have long been extinct, these still remain, and in spite of the endeavours of many powerful princes who have a hundred times striven to destroy them, as their historians testify, and as we can easily understand by the natural order of things during so long a space of years, they have nevertheless been preserved, and extending from the earliest times to the latest, their history comprehends in its duration all our histories.

Blaise Pascal     The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal

Wherever there is war, there must be injustice on one side or the other, or on both. There have been wars which were little more than trials of strength between friendly nations, and in which the injustice was not to each other, but to the God who gave them life. But in a malignant war there is injustice of ignobler kind at once to God and man, which must be stemmed for both their sakes.--_Ruskin._

Maturin M. Ballou     Pearls of Thought

_Holiness._--_Effundam spiritum meum._--All nations had been in unbelief and lust; the whole world was now ablaze with love. Princes quitted their state, maidens suffered martyrdom. This power sprang from the advent of Messiah, this was the effect and these the tokens of his coming.

Blaise Pascal     The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal

The frenzy of nations is the statesmanship of fate.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

Maturin M. Ballou     Pearls of Thought

All the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month. It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.

Kurt Vonnegut (born 11 November 1922

To some any attempt to trace back the name and concept of Jehovah to the same hidden sources from which other nations derived their first intimation of deity may seem almost sacrilegious. They forget the difference between the human concept of the Deity and the Deity itself, which is beyond the reach of all human concepts. But the historian reads deeper lessons in the growth of these human concepts, as they spring up everywhere in the minds of men who have been seekers after truth--seeking the Lord if haply they might feel after Him and find Him--and when he can show the slow but healthy growth of the noblest and sublimest thoughts out of small and apparently insignificant beginnings, he rejoices as the labourer rejoices over his golden harvest; nay, he often wonders what is more truly wonderful, the butterfly that soars up to heaven on its silvery wings, or the grub that hides within its mean chrysalis such marvellous possibilities.

Friedrich Max Müller     Thoughts on Life and Religion

La libertad es la juventud eterna de las naciones=--Liberty is the eternal youth of the nations.

_Gen. Foy._

That the idol temples would be overthrown, and that among all nations and in all places of the world men would offer to God a pure sacrifice, not of beasts.

Blaise Pascal     The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal

The prophecies which represent him poor, represent him master of the nations.--Is. lii. 16, etc liii. Zech. ix. 9.

Blaise Pascal     The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal

Commerce changes the fate and genius of nations.

_T. Gray._

[H]ere is an educational bombshell: Take from all of today’s industrial nations all their industrial machinery and all their energy-distributing networks, and leave them all their ideologies, all their political leaders, and all their political organizations, and I can tell you that within six months, two billion people will die of starvation, having gone through great pain and deprivation along the way. [ Utopia or Oblivion. ] However, if we leave the industrial machinery and their energy-distribution networks and leave them also all the people who have routine jobs operating the industrial machinery and distributing its products, and we take away from all the industrial countries all their ideologies and all the politicians and political machine workers, people would keep right on eating. Possibly getting on a little better than before. [ Utopia or Oblivion. ]

Fuller, Buckminster.

Too few own the wealth of nations. Too many own nothing. [Banner on CESJ Website, Dawn Kurland Brohawn, Director of Communications,1995].

Center for Economic and Social Justice.

Haggai ii. 3. "You who compare this second house with the glory of the first and despise it. Yet now take courage, O Zerubbabel, saith the Lord, and take courage O Jesus the high priest, and take courage, all ye people of the land, and cease not to work. The word that I covenanted with you when you came out of the land of Egypt stands yet: and my spirit shall be in the midst of you: Lose not hope. For thus saith the Lord of hosts: Yet one little while, and I will move the heaven and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land,"--a mode of speech to denote a great and extraordinary change. "And I will move all nations: and the desired of all nations shall come: and I will fill this house with glory: saith the Lord.

Blaise Pascal     The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal

Different good, by art or nature given, / To different nations, makes their blessings even.

_Goldsmith._

Modern civilisation rests upon physical science; take away her gifts to our own country, and our position among the leading nations of the world is gone to-morrow; for it is physical science only that makes intelligence and moral energy stronger than brute force.

T. H. Huxley     Aphorisms and Reflections from the Works of T. H. Huxley

And now, if we gaze from our native shores over the vast ocean of human speech, with its waves rolling on from continent to continent, rising under the fresh breezes of the morning of history, and slowly heaving in our own more sultry atmosphere, with sails gliding over its surface, and many an oar ploughing through its surf, and the flags of all nations waving joyously together, with its rocks and wrecks, its storms and battles, yet reflecting serenely all that is beneath and above and around it; if we gaze and hearken to the strange sounds rushing past our ears in unbroken strains, it seems no longer a wild tumult, but we feel as if placed within some ancient cathedral, listening to a chorus of innumerable voices: and the more intensely we listen, the more all discords melt away into higher harmonies, till at last we hear but one majestic trichord, or a mighty unison, as at the end of a sacred symphony. Such visions will float through the study of the grammarian, and in the midst of toilsome researches his heart will suddenly beat, as he feels the conviction growing upon him that men are brethren in the simplest sense of the word--the children of the same father--whatever their country, their language, and their faith.

Friedrich Max Müller     Thoughts on Life and Religion

The world in all doth but two nations bear,-- The good, the bad; and these mixed everywhere.

ANDREW MARVELL. 1620-1678.     _The Loyal Scot._

Hark! the herald angels sing, "Glory to the new-born King; Peace on earth and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled!" Joyful, all ye nations, rise. Join the triumph of the skies. With th'angelic hosts proclaim Christ is born in Bethlehem!

Charles Wesley ~ (born 18 December 1707, and song for the Christmas season

Justice and equity are twin Guardians that watch over men. From them are revealed such blessed and perspicuous words as are the cause of the well-being of the world and the protection of the nations.

Bahá'u'lláh

His death eclipsed the gayety of nations, and impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure.

SAMUEL JOHNSON. 1709-1784.     _Life of Edmund Smith_ (alluding to the death of Garrick).

>Nations, like individuals, are born, proceed through a predestined growth, and die. One comes to its end at an early period and in an untimely way; another, not until it has gained maturity. One is cut off by feebleness in its infancy, another is destroyed by civil disease, another commits political suicide, another lingers in old age. But for every one there is an orderly way of progress to its final term, whatever that term may be.

_Draper._

The finest nations in the world--the English and the American--are going all away into wind and tongue.

_Carlyle._

The earth was unintelligible to the ancients because looked upon as a solitary being, without a peer in the whole universe; but it assumed a new and true significance as soon as it rose before the eyes of man as one of many planets, all governed by the same laws, and all revolving around the same centre. It is the same with the human soul, and its nature stands before our mind in quite a different light since man has been taught to know and feel himself as a member of a great family--as one of the myriads of wandering stars all governed by the same laws, and all revolving around the same centre, and all deriving their light from the same source. 'Universal History' has laid open new avenues of thought, and it has enriched our language with a word which never passed the lips of Socrates, or Plato, or Aristotle--_Mankind_. Where the Greek saw barbarians, we see brethren; where the Greek saw nations, we see mankind, toiling and suffering, separated by oceans, divided by language, and severed by national enmity,--yet evermore tending, under a divine control, towards the fulfilment of that inscrutable purpose for which the world was created, and man placed in it, bearing the image of God. History therefore, with its dusty and mouldering pages, is to us as sacred a volume as the book of nature. In both we read, or we try to read, the reflex of the laws and thoughts of a Divine Wisdom. We believe that there is nothing irrational in either history or nature, and that the human mind is called upon to read and to revere in both the manifestations of a Divine Power.

Friedrich Max Müller     Thoughts on Life and Religion

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