Aphorisms — English

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Conflict prevention

2011

Genocide and cultural ethnocide

Genocide is preceded by cultural ethnocide, or the gradual and deliberate erosion and manipulation of cultural values and practices by political authorities. The dissolution of this cultural foundation (...) makes people incapable of protecting themselves and their communities from the descent into the abyss of mass atrocities; it allows them to be manipulated to commit execrable acts counter to their own time-tested values and traditions.

31st March 1968 (Speech), 9th April 1968 (US Congressional Record)

It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence

It is no longer a choice, my friends, between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence. And the alternative to disarmament, the alternative to a greater suspension of nuclear tests, the alternative to strengthening the United Nations and thereby disarming the whole world, may well be a civilization plunged into the abyss of annihilation, and our earthly habitat would be transformed into an inferno that even the mind of Dante could not imagine."

31st March 1968 (Speech), 9th April 1968 (US Congressional Record)

Remaining Awake Through a triple Revolution

There can be no gainsaying of the fact that a great revolution is taking place in the world today. In a sense it is a triple revolution: that is, a technological revolution, with the impact of automation and cybernation; then there is a revolution in weaponry, with the emergence of atomic and nuclear weapons of warfare; then there is a human rights revolution, with the freedom explosion that is taking place all over the world." (...)

26 April 1999

To increase the quality of life

Education is the single most powerful means to improve the quality of life, the single most powerful weapon against poverty and intolerance.

Education builds a culture of peace;it empowers human beings, both young and adult, to be effective in their chosen sphere of activity ... Education, in its essence, opens doors to both personal and social development."