In 1999, we will remember the twentieth century as the bloodiest
and the best in the history of man. One hundred twenty million
people have been killed in 130 wars in this century - more than all
those killed in war before 1900. But at the same time, more
technological and material progress has been made over the last
hundred years than ever before. The twentieth century will be
remembered as a century of war and wonder. We must make the
twenty-first a century of peace.
-Richard M. Nixon
Each time a man stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
-Robert F. Kennedy, South Africa -1966
I went into the 60s with this poem [by Julia Ward Howe] as a guide and I still post it every Mother's Day [see below]. I've even considered posting it every day. I have doubts that people want to hear this any more today than they did when she wrote it.
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Julia Ward Howe, author of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic,
proposed Mother's Day as a day for women to join together in
the pursuit of peace and disarmament. Sounds like a good
idea to me.
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Mother's Day Proclamation 1870
Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."
>From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.
Julia Ward Howe
Each time a man stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
-Robert F. Kennedy, South Africa -1966
Questioner: You say that we should revolt against society, and at same
time you say that we should not have ambition. Is not the
desire to improve society an ambition?
Krishnamurti: I have very carefully explained what I mean by revolt,
but I shall use two different words to make it much clearer. To revolt
within society in order to make it a little better, to bring about
certain reforms, is like the revolt of prisoners to improve their life
within the prison walls; and such revolt is no revolt at all, it is
just mutiny. Do you see the difference? Revolt within society is like
the mutiny of prisoners who want better food, better treatment within
the prison; but revolt born of understanding is an individual breaking
away from society, and that is creative revolution.
Now, if you as an individual break away from society, is that action
motivated by ambition? If it is, then you have not broken away at all,
you are still within the prison, because the very basis of society is
ambition, acquisitiveness, greed. But if you understand all that and
bring about a revolution in your own heart and mind, then you are no
longer ambitious, you are no longer motivated by envy, greed,
acquisitiveness, and therefore you will be entirely outside of a society
which is based on those things. Then you are a creative individual and
in your action there will be the seed of a different culture.
So there is a vast difference between the action of creative
revolution, and the action of revolt or mutiny within society. As long
as you are concerned with mere reform, with decorating the bars and
walls of the prison, you are not creative. Reformation always needs
further reform, it only brings more misery, more destruction. Whereas,
the mind that understands this whole structure of acquisitiveness, of
greed, of ambition and breaks away from it--such a mind is in constant
revolution. It is an expansive, a creative mind; therefore, like a
stone thrown into a pool of still water, its action produces waves, and
those waves will form a different civilization altogether."
-- Krishnamurti, Think On These Things, pp.
155-156
Tomorrow becomes necessary when we do not see very clearly today.
-- J Krishnamurti, "Is Thinking a Slave to Time?", 1974
Select this to read [the Whole Story].
