Betty Williams
(1943-)

Irish Peace Activist
1976 Nobel Peace Prize Winner

birthdate: May 22
birthplace:
Belfast, Northern Ireland

QUOTES

Declaration of the Peace People:

  • We have a simple message for the world from this movement for peace.
  • We want to live and love and build a just and peaceful society.
  • We want for our children, as we want for ourselves, lives at home, at work and at play to be lives of joy and peace.
  • We recognize that to build such a life demands of all of us dedication, hard work and courage.
  • We recognize that there are many problems in our society which are a source of conflict and violence.
  • We recognize that every bullet fired and every exploding bomb makes that work more difficult.
  • We reject the use of the bomb and the bullet and all the techniques of violence.
  • We dedicate ourselves to working with our neighbors, near and far, day in and day out, to building that peaceful society in which the tragedies we have known are a bad memory and a continuing warning.

Compassion is more important than intellect in calling forth the love that the work of peace needs, and intuition can often be a far more powerful searchlight than cold reason.

We believe in taking down the barriers, but we also believe in the most energetic reconciliation among peoples by getting them to know each other, talk each other's languages, understand each other's fears and beliefs, getting to know each other physically, philosophically, and spiritually. It is much harder to kill your near neighbor than the thousands of unknown and hostile aliens at the other end of a nuclear missile. We have to create a world in which there are no unknown, hostile aliens at the other end of any missiles.

To those who say that we are naïve, utopian idealists, we say that we are the only realists, and that those who continue to support militarism in our time are supporting the progress towards total self-destruction of the human race.

I'm trying to show by my actions that you can make a far better world if you just care enough. That's all you have to do. It's no big deal. One act of kindness a day can do it.

Governments do not have the answers. Indeed quite the reversal. A lot of times they not only do not have the answers, they themselves are the problem. If we are committed to helping our world’s children, then we must begin to create solutions from the bottom up.

In a world that we know can feed itself, upwards of
40,000 children die very day from conditions of malnutrition. Surely we must question why we are allowing this carnage to continue

 

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