We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.
We need to decide that we will not go to war, whatever reason is conjured up by the politicians or the media, because war in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children.
The challenge remains. On the other side are formidable forces: money, political power, the major media. On our side are the people of the world and a power greater than money or weapons: the truth.
But remember, this power of the people on top depends on the obedience of the people below. When people stop obeying, they have no power.
If those in charge of our society – politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television – can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves.
There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.
What we have is a more sophisticated form of imperialism, which is economic. But lurking in the background, always ready to go, is an armed force.
When we organize with one another, when we get involved, when we stand up and speak out together, we can create a power no government can suppress.
I had volunteered for the Air Force and was an enthusiastic bombardier. While dropping bombs on Europe, I generally didn’t understand what I was doing.
The term ‘just war’ is an internal contradiction. War is inherently unjust, and the great challenge of our time is how to deal with evil, tyranny and oppression without killing huge numbers of people.
The only hope lies in the fact that the American people – like people everywhere – are basically decent people with common sense.
Are terrorists going to be deterred – are terrorists going to be scared if we react violently? No. They love it. That’s what they dote on. They dote on violence. They dote on having more reasons to commit more terrorism.
But by this time I was acutely conscious of the gap between law and justice. I knew that the letter of the law was not as important as who held the power in any real-life situation.
When the United States fought in Vietnam, it was organized modern technology versus organized human beings, and the human beings won.
What matters most is not who is sitting in the White House, but “who is sitting in” – and who is marching outside the White House, pushing for change.
The fact that war belongs to the past, does not mean it has to be part of the future.
Capitalism has always been a failure for the lower classes. It is now beginning to fail for the middle classes.
In the United States today, the Declaration of Independence hangs on schoolroom walls, but foreign policy follows Machiavelli.
It must surely be a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit that even a small number of those men and women in the hell of the prison system survive it and hold on to their humanity.
I wonder how the foreign policies of the United States would look if we wiped out the national boundaries of the world, at least in our minds, and thought of all children everywhere as our own.