All violence is the result of people tricking themselves into believing that their pain derives from other people and that consequently those people deserve to be punished. .....

There is a great streak of violence in every human being.  If it is not channeled and understood, it will break out in war or in madness..........

We challenge the culture of violence when we ourselves act in the certainty that violence is no longer acceptable, that it's tired and outdated no matter how many cling to it in the stubborn belief that it still works and that it's still valid.............

What broke in a man when he could bring himself to kill another......

There have been periods of history in which episodes of terrible violence occurred but for which the word violence was never used.... Violence is shrouded in justifying myths that lend it moral legitimacy, and these myths for the most part kept people from recognizing the violence for what it was.  The people who burned witches at the stake never for one moment thought of their act as violence; rather they thought of it as an act of divinely mandated righteousness.  The same can be said of most of the violence we humans have ever committed.......

Violence in the voice is often only the death rattle of reason in the throat............

 In violence we forget who we are.....

It is clear that the way to heal society of its violence and lack of love is to replace the pyramid of domination with the circle of equality and respect...........

It's not the bullet with my name on it that worries me.  It's the one that says "To whom it may concern."....

I will not carry a gun, I'll carry your books, I'll carry a torch, I'll carry a tune, I'll carry on, carry over, carry forward.............

Play allows us to develop alternatives to violence and despair.... 

He who loves the bristle of bayonets only sees in the glitter what beforehand he feels in his heart.  It is avarice and hatred; it is that quivering lip, that cold, hating eye, which built magazines and powder-houses....

The moment a man claims a right to control the will of a fellow being by physical force, he is at heart a slaveholder......

Man's destructive hand spares nothing that lives; he kills to feed himself, he kills to clothe himself, he kills to adorn himself, he kills to attack, he kills to defend himself, he kills to instruct himself, he kills to amuse himself, he kills for the sake of killing.....

How many does it take to metamorphose wickedness into righteousness?  One man must not kill.  If he does, it is murder.... But a state or nation may kill as many as they please, and it is not murder.  It is just, necessary, commendable, and right.  Only get people enough to agree to it, and the butchery of myriads of human beings is perfectly innocent.  But how many does it take............?

Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit.  You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him..........

Nonviolence doesn't always work - but violence never does.....

Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary........

He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster......

How strange that Nature does not knock, and yet does not intrude......

Man's heart away from nature becomes hard. .....

How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains....

 

The human spirit needs places where nature has not been rearranged by the hand of man.....

I can enjoy society in a room; but out of doors, nature is company enough for me......

With innovation and technology, seems we have forgotten to cherish the true beauty the world has to offer.....

Forests, lakes, and rivers, clouds and winds, stars and flowers, stupendous glaciers and crystal snowflakes - every form of animate or inanimate existence, leaves its impress upon the soul of man.....

A wise man can do no better than to turn from the churches and look up through the airy majesty of the wayside trees with exultation, with resignation, at the unconquerable unimplicated sun.....

If the sight of the blue skies fills you with joy, if a blade of grass springing up in the fields has power to move you, if the simple things of nature have a message that you understand, rejoice, for your soul is alive.....

There is not a creature unacquainted with gratification, in some shape or another. All derive it from the circumstances amid which they exist, which fact quietly suggests to us that the purest and most lasting pleasures are to be found at our very feet,— that they are not necessarily the fruit of toil and outlay, but that they flow to us out of the very nature of things, if we will but be content with what is simple and genuine....

 Sunshine has no budget, the sea no red tape.......

The world is a sunny success.....

If the mind, that rules the body, ever so far forgets itself as to trample on its slave, the slave is never generous enough to forgive the injury, but will rise and smite the oppressor.....

No mind, however loving, could bear to see plainly into all the recesses of another mind.....

A mental stain can neither be blotted out by the passage of time nor washed away by any waters.....

Men are not prisoners of fate, but prisoners of their own minds......

Pain of mind is worse than pain of body.....

Body and mind, like man and wife, do not always agree to die together.....

Don't let it be all in your head, nor all in your body.....

Sometimes it's harder to attain inner silence than outer silence.  The dog stopped barking and the kids have gone to bed, but your mind has a lot to talk about and it knows you can't pretend you're not at home. ....

Ever wonder what crime you committed that you are confined to a small enclosure above your sinuses, under permanent skull arrest.....?

Here in your mind you have complete privacy. Here there's no difference between what is and what could be............

The power of the mind is your power. Use it. Don't let it use you....

The vacation we often need is freedom from our own mind.....

I've concluded, after many years, that my mind works by process of elimination.  Problem is, it hasn't eliminated anything yet..............

It is sweet to let the mind unbend on occasion. .....