Cloud Cuckoo Land

Only when the last tree has died and the last river has been poisoned and the last fish has been caught will we realise that we cannot eat money.

We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children

How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them? Every part of the Earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every clear and humming insect is holy in the memory and experience of my people. The perfumed flowers are our sisters, the deer, the horse, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the juices in the meadows, the body heat of the pony, and the man, all belong to the same family.

The best way to fight terrorism is to invest in education. Instead of sending weapons, send teachers.

What a pity the majority of people on this planet do not respect these ideas as if they were worthy of greater consideration. Yes it can be seen from historical accounts that peace in even those days was rare, but it wasn’t the native Indians that found it incomprehensible to be respectful to others was it? The desire to conquer the lands of others, to take their resources at any cost by any means was not initiated by that creed they lived by. Sadly it seems to have been promulgated by the greed of the kind of mentality that went about enforcing with violence, the idea that one man is inherently better than another. This was pretty well the attitude of the British Empire and all others that came before. We had a King, a Queen, a religious ideology that made our god more important than others and therefore a licence to spread our views throughout the globe, irrelevant of what was there before. By violence and arrogance we shoved our rightfulness down everyone’s throats. And if they didn’t appreciate that, then we just obliterated them and recorded a history that made us seem victorious with god’s backing.

So can we see that violence and fear, not peace and love has shaped the world into what we have today?

Malala Yousafzai

The Indian statesman Gandhi once said:

If we are to reach real peace in this world and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with children; and if they will grow up in their natural innocence, we won't have to struggle; we won't have to pass fruitless idle resolutions, but we shall go from love to love and peace to peace, until at last all the corners of the world are covered with that peace and love for which consciously or unconsciously the whole world is hungering.

Peace between countries must rest on the solid foundation of love between individuals.

The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world's problems.

To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is man's injustice to woman. If by strength is meant brute strength, then, indeed, is woman less brute than man. If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man's superior. Has she not greater intuition, is she not more self-sacrificing, has she not greater powers of endurance, has she not greater courage? Without her, man could not be. If nonviolence is the law of our being, the future is with woman. Who can make a more effective appeal to the heart than woman?

When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won.
There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall.. think of it, always.

Your action expresses your priorities.

Terrorism and deception are weapons not of the strong, but of the weak.

The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything

Einstein also famously said:

You can't use an old map to explore a new world.

The power of imagination is the ultimate creative power, no doubt about that. While knowledge defines all we currently know and understand, imagination points to all we might yet discover and create. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Your imagination is your preview of life's coming attractions

Great spirits have always encountered opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly.

I believe that Gandhi’s views were the most enlightened of all the political men in our time. We should strive to do things in his spirit: not to use violence in fighting for our cause, but by non-participation in anything you believe is evil.