"There is a Law that man should love his neighbor as himself. In a few hundred years it should be as natural to mankind as breathing or the upright gait; but if he does not learn it he must perish."
-- Alfred Adler

"United we stand, divided we fall."
-- Aesop (620 -560 B.C.)

* We have the ability to achieve, if we master the necessary goodwill, a common global society blessed with a shared culture of peace that is nourished by the ethnic, national and local diversities that enrich our lives. -- Mahnaz Afkhami

"Peace requires everyone to be in the circle – wholeness, inclusion."
-- Isabel Allende

* It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength. -- Maya Angelou

* "We may have different religions, different languages, different colored skin, but we all belong to one human race." -- Kofi Annan

* "There are no nations! There is only humanity. And if we don't come to understand that right soon, there will be no nations, because there will be no humanity." -- Isaac Asimov

You cannot contribute anything to the ideal condition of mind and heart known as Brotherhood, however much you preach, posture, or agree, unless you live it. ~
-- Faith Baldwin

It is thus tolerance that is the source of peace, and intolerance that is the source of disorder and squabbling.
-- Pierre Bayle

* In world history, those who have helped to build the same culture are not necessarily of one race, and those of the same race have not all participated in one culture. -- Ruth Fulton Benedict The peoples of the earth are one family. -- Ruth Fulton Benedict

"Diversity is the magic. It is the first manifestation, the first beginning of the differentiation of a thing and of simple identity. The greater the diversity, the greater the perfection." ~ Thomas Berry

When you're finally up on the moon, looking back at the earth, all these differences and nationalistic traits are pretty well going to blend and you're going to get a concept that maybe this is really one world and why the hell can't we learn to live together like decent people?
-- Frank Borman

"Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none."
-- Edmund Burke

* We are of course a nation of differences. Those differences don’t make us weak. They’re the source of our strength. -- Jimmy Carter

* We ought to think that we are one of the leaves of a tree, and the tree is all humanity. We cannot live without the others, without the tree. -- Pablo Casals The love of one's country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border? -- Pablo Casals

* "We live now in a global village and we are in one single family. It’s our responsibility to bring friendship and love from all different places around the world and to live together in peace." -- Jackie Chan

Global Family Day provides a way in which every man, woman, and child in the United States can help to reduce suffering at home, repair our damaged image abroad, and help us remember that in the end, all people belong to the same human family. -- John Conyers

Let us have but one end in view, the welfare of humanity; and let us put aside all selfishness in consideration of language, nationality, or religion.
-- John Comenius, 17th century philosopher

* Internal peace is an essential first step to achieving peace in the world. How do you cultivate it? It's very simple. In the first place by realizing clearly that all mankind is one, that human beings in every country are members of one and the same family. - The Dalai Lama

* Years ago I recognized my kinship with all living things, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on the earth. I said then and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free. -- Eugene V. Debs

* "We need to dissolve the lie that some people have a right to think of other people as their property. And we need at last to form a circle that includes us all, in which all of us are seen as equal. -- Barbara Deming

The wise man belongs to all countries, for the home of a great soul is the whole world
-- Democritus

* "I know there is strength in the differences between us. I know there is comfort where we overlap.” -- Ani DiFranco

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent … any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
-- John Donne

* "Human diversity makes tolerance more than a virtue; it makes it a requirement for survival." ~ René Dubos

As we get deeper, we move closer and closer to other people; we feel closer to life as a whole.
-- Eknath Easwaran

Our task must be to free ourselves... by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty. -- Albert Einstein

"There is the sky, which is all men's together..."
-- Euripides (412 B.C.)

* “...the world is a giant community now. This excuse of distance, time, doesn’t work...We’re all so connected. We can’t spend every second of our lives worrying about another family miles away but we somehow have to factor it in where we can." -- Ralph Fiennes

"I keep my ideals, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart."
-- Anne Frank

* We are not going to be able to operate our spaceship earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody or nobody. -- R. Buckminster Fuller

* "I don't believe in charity. I believe in solidarity. Charity is vertical, so it's humiliating. It goes from the top to the bottom. Solidarity is horizontal. It respects the other and learns from the other. I have a lot to learn from other people." -- Eduardo Galeano

* All humanity is one undivided and indivisible family "All humanity is one undivided and indivisible family, and each one of us is responsible for the misdeeds of all the others. I cannot detach myself from the wickedest soul." "It is easy enough to be friendly to one's friends. But to befriend the one who regards himself as your enemy is the quintessence of true religion. The other is mere business." -- Mohandas K. Gandhi

* "My country is the world; my countrymen are mankind." -- William Lloyd Garrison

* Peace is not unity in similarity but unity in diversity, in the comparison and conciliation of differences -- Mikhail Gorbachev

* We are eternally linked not just to each other but our environment. -- Herbie Hancock

* We cannot afford to be separate. . . . We have to see that all of us are in the same boat. -- Dorothy Height

I can not, and will not judge, by what my eyes may see. For the skin on a man shall not reveal his true identity.
-- Robert M. Hensel

In the dark, equality for all of mankind couldn't seem brighter.
-- Robert M. Hensel

"The minute we become an integrated whole, we look through the same eyes and we see a whole different world together."
-- Azizah Al-Hibri

* "Let America be America, where equality is in the air we breathe." -- Langston Hughes

"Toleration is the best religion."
-- Victor Hugo

All conflict is about difference; whether the difference is race religion, or nationality… -- John Hume * Difference is of the essence of humanity. Difference is an accident of birth and it should therefore never be the source of hatred or conflict. The answer to difference is to respect it. Therein lies a most fundamental principle of peace: respect for diversity. -- John Hume

"As we grow in awareness of one another – whether two people beginning a romance or two disparate and far-removed strangers taking an interest in the other's culture – a wonderful thing begins to happen: we begin to care for the other as if the other is part of us. This is the magic of life that our ancient teachers have bid us to see; the invisible filaments of interconnectedness that bind us together in love and appreciation."
-- Scott A. Hunt

This is peace with dignity. This is peace with commitment. This is our gift to our peoples and the generations to come…It will be real, as we open our hearts and minds to each other. -- King Hussein of Jordan

"It is in the shelter of each other that the people live."
-- Irish proverb

* Our flag is red, white and blue, but our nation is a rainbow- red, yellow, brown, black and white- and we're all precious in God's sight. ... -- Jesse Jackson

"My hope is for us to come together not only embracing shared beliefs and values, but acknowledging our differences in ways that promote respect and appreciation. To ask for a shared vision is a fair and legitimate human proposal; what is not fair and legitimate is to dictate the ways on how we get there. If we are to emerge from the long shadows that can engulf us, we must talk with each other, come to understand each other, and renew ourselves and our perceptions of each other."
-- Alma Abdul-Hadi Jadallah

* Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it. -- Thomas Jefferson

"We are so bound together that no man can labor for himself alone. Each blow he strikes in his own behalf helps to mold the universe."
-- Jerome K. Jerome

The social progress, order, security and peace of each country are necessarily connected with the social progress, order, security and peace of all other countries.
-- Pope John XXIII

"As man draws nearer to the stars, why should he not also draw nearer to his neighbor?"
-- Lyndon B. Johnson

What divides us pales in comparison to what unites us.
-- US Senator Edward Kennedy

* "Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal." -- John F. Kennedy

* Ultimately, America's answer to the intolerant man is diversity, the very diversity which our heritage of religious freedom has inspired. -- Robert F. Kennedy

"The Holy Prophet Mohammed came into this world and taught us: 'That man is a Muslim who never hurts anyone by word or deed, but who works for the benefit and happiness of God's creatures. Belief in God is to love one's fellow men.'"
-- Abdul Ghaffar Khan

* "We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now." -- Martin Luther King, Jr "We must learn to live together as brothers, or we are going to perish together as fools." -- Martin Luther King, Jr We have learned to fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers. -- Martin Luther King, Jr "The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood." -- Martin Luther King, Jr

I look forward confidently to the day when all who work for a living will be one with no thought to their separateness as Negroes, Jews, Italians or any other distinctions. This will be the day when we bring into full realization the American dream -- a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few; a dream of a land where men will not argue that the color of a man's skin determines the content of his character; a dream of a nation where all our gifts and resources are held not for ourselves alone, but as instruments of service for the rest of humanity; the dream of a country where every man will respect the dignity and worth of the human personality.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr

* I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal." I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr

* "What we need to do is learn to respect and embrace our differences until our differences don’t make a difference in how we are treated." -- Yolanda King

* "Don't become too narrow. Live fully. Meet all kinds of people. You'll learn something from everyone. Follow what you feel in your heart." -- Yuri Kochiyama

"The American ideal is not that we all agree with each other, or even like each other, every minute of the day. It is rather that we will respect each other's rights, especially the right to be different, and that, at the end of the day, we will understand that we are one people, one country, and one community, and that our well-being is inextricably bound up with the well-being of each and every one of our fellow citizens." -- C. Everett Koop

"There will be peace on earth when there is peace among the world religions."
-- Hans Küng

mitakuye oyasin (we are all related)
~ Lakota

Know that although in the eternal scheme of things you are small, you are also unique and irreplaceable, as are all your fellow humans everywhere in the world.
-- Margaret Laurence

* Imagine no possessions I wonder if you can No need for greed or hunger A brotherhood of man Imagine all the people Sharing all the world -- John Lennon And so Happy Christmas for black and for white, for yellow and red, let's stop all the fight. -- John Lennon

"Either men will learn to live like brothers, or they will die like beasts."
-- Max Lerner

You may call for peace as loudly as you wish, but where there is no brotherhood there can in the end be no peace."
-- Max Lerner (The Gifts of the Magi, 1949)

The prophecy of a world moving toward political unity is the light which guides all that is best, most vigorous, most truly alive in the work of our time.
-- Walter Lippman

All your strength in is your union. All your danger is in discord. Therefore be at peace henceforward, And as brothers live together.
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

* Our cause is the cause of equality between nations and peoples. Only thus can the brotherhood of man be firmly established. -- Chief Albert John Lutuli

* Although we are in different boats you in your boat and we in our canoe we share the same river of life. -- Chief Oren Lyons, Onandaga Nation

* Our cultural strength has always been derived from our diversity of understanding and experience. -- Yo-Yo Ma * When you learn something from people, or from a culture, you accept it as a gift, and it is your lifelong commitment to preserve it and build on it. -- Yo-Yo Ma * “When we enlarge our view of the world, we deepen our understanding of our own lives." -- Yo-Yo Ma

* It's like everybody's sitting there and they have some kind of veil over their face, and they look at each other through this veil that makes them see each other through some stereotypical kind of viewpoint. If we're ever gonna collectively begin to grapple with the problems that we have collectively, we're gonna have to move back the veil and deal with each other on a more human level. -- Wilma Mankiller

"The crest and crowning of all good,
Life's final star, is Brotherhood."
-- Edwin Markham

"There is a destiny which makes us brothers;
None goes his way alone."
-- Edwin Markham

Understand the differences; Act on the commonalities.
-- Andrew Masondo, African National Congress

There are a number of attributes of species and populations that are not of any particular selective advantage to any single individual in a population but that are of great advantage to the population as a whole.
-- Ernst Mayr

* "If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse gift will find a fitting place." -- Margaret Mead

"We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects."
-- Herman Melville

* "I resolutely believe that respect for diversity is a fundamental pillar in the eradication of racism, xenophobia and intolerance. There is no excuse for evading the responsibility of finding the most suitable path toward the elimination of any expression of discrimination against indigenous peoples." -- Rigoberta Menchú

* "The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another, and all involved in one another." -- Thomas Merton

"Love thy neighbor."
-- Thales of Miletus (640 - 546 B.C.)

* It is hardly possible to overrate the value, for the improvement of human beings, of things which bring them into contact with persons dissimilar to themselves and with modes of thought and action unlike those with which they are familiar... It is indispensable to be perpetually comparing [one's] own notions and customs with the experience and example of persons in different circumstances... There is no nation which does not need to borrow from others. -- John Stuart Mill

The peace I am thinking of is the dance of an open mind when it engages another equally open one.
-- Toni Morrison

Identity is a concept of our age that should be used very carefully. All types of identities, ethnic, national, religious, sexual or whatever else, can become your prison after a while. The identity that you stand up for can enslave you and close you to the rest of the world.
-- Murathan Mungan

* "When strangers start acting like neighbors...communities are reinvigorated." -- Ralph Nader

* We are a gentle angry people We are a land of many colors We are gay and straight together We are a peaceful loving people And we are singing, singing for our lives. -- Holly Near

* All the nations and peoples are too closely knit together today for any one of them to imagine that it can live apart. Peace has been said to be indivisible, so is freedom, so is prosperity now, and so also is disaster in this one world that can no longer be split into isolated fragments." -- Jawaharlal Nehru

* We have a stake in one another ... what binds us together is greater than what drives us apart, and ... if enough people believe in the truth of that proposition and act on it, then we might not solve every problem, but we can get something meaningful done for the people with whom we share this Earth. -- Barack Obama There is not a liberal America and a conservative America - there is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and latino America and asian America - there's the United States of America. -- Barack Obama

We will remember that we are not as divided as our politics suggests; that we are one people; we are one nation and together, we will begin the next great chapter in the American story with three words that will ring from coast to coast, from sea to shining sea:-- Yes. We. Can.
-- Barack Obama

* "The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion." -- Thomas Paine.

* Share our similarities, celebrate our differences." -- M. Scott Peck

The social progress, order, security and peace of each country are necessarily connected with the social progress, order, security and peace of all other countries.
-- Pope John XXIII

"If you wish to be brothers, let the arms fall from your hands. One cannot love while holding offensive arms."
-- Pope Pius VI

We must realize the truth of ourselves --- we are one human family. One a part of the other. My old work horse Teddy and the fancy registered horse visiting us had no trouble eating out of the same dish. We must discover the same. -- Sister Lucy Poulin

"Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity."
-- Psalms. CXXXIII: 1

"All people are a single nation."
-- Qu-ran

* Technology is driving us together. In many ways we are becoming like one family. With the global threats resulting from science and technology, the whole of humankind now needs protection. We have to extend our loyalty to the whole of the human race. -- Joseph Rotblat

Whatever system of governance is eventually adopted, it is important that it carries the people with it. We need to convey the message that safeguarding our common property, humankind, will require developing in each of us a new loyalty: a loyalty to mankind. It calls for the nurturing of a feeling of belonging to the human race. We have to become world citizens.
-- Joseph Rotblat

* There can be hope only for a society which acts as one big family, not as many separate ones. -- Anwar Sadat

There is only one man in the world and his name is All Men. There is only one woman in the world and her name is All Women. There is only one child in the world and the child’s name is All Children.
-- Carl Sandburg

* if you can just see all the children of the world as your own, all the mothers of the world as you are, we can make a huge difference. * "If you walk down the street and see someone in a box, you have a choice. That person is either the other and you're fearful of them, or that person is an extension of your family." -- Susan Sarandon

"Live and let live."
-- Scottish proverb

States are more like people than they are like anything else: they exist by purpose, reason, suffering, and joy. And peace between states is also like peace between people. It involves the willing renunciation of purpose, in the mutual desire not to do, but to be.
-- Roger Scruton

* The best hope for peace in the world lies in the simple but far-reaching recognition that we all have many different associations and affiliations, and we need not see ourselves as being rigidly divided by a single categorization of hardened groups, which confront each other. -- Amartya Sen

Any classification according to a singular identity polarizes people in a particular way, but if we take note of the fact that we have many different identities - related not just to religion but also to language, occupation and business, politics, class and poverty, and many others - we can see that the polarization of one can be resisted by a fuller picture. So knowledge and understanding are extremely important to fight against singular polarization.
-- Amartya Sen

But once we recognize that many ideas that are taken to be quintessentially Western have also flourished in other civilizations, we also see that these ideas are not as culture-specific as is sometimes claimed. We need not begin with pessimism, at least on this ground, about the prospects of reasoned humanism in the world. -- Amartya Sen

* We are members one of another; so that you cannot injure or help your neighbor without injuring or helping yourself. -- George Bernard Shaw

* "The primary threat to nature and people today comes from centralising and monopolising power and control. Not until diversity is made the logic of production will there be a chance for sustainability, justice and peace. Cultivating and conserving diversity is no luxury in our times: it is a survival imperative." ~ Vandana Shiva * Uniformity is not nature's way; diversity is nature's way. ~ Vandana Shiva

cultural differences should not separate us from each other, but rather cultural diversity brings a collective strength that can benefit all of humanity. -- Robert Alan Silverstein intercultural dialogue is the best guarantee of a more peaceful, just and sustainable world. -- Robert Alan Silverstein Okay, we are different it's true. And I don't like to do all the things that you do. But here's one thing to think through, You're a lot like me and I'm a lot like you! -- Robert Alan Silverstein

"I am not an Athenian, nor a Greek, but a citizen of the world."
-- Socrates

* Just imagine how boring life would be if we were all the same. My idea of a perfect world is one in which we really appreciated each other's differences: Short, tall; Democrat, Republican; black, white; gay, straight--a world in which all of us are equal, but definitely not the same. -- Barbra Streisand

 

"The age of chivalry has gone; the age of humanity has come."
-- Charles Sumner

* "Our expanding ethnic diversity of this century, a time when we will all be minorities, offers us an invitation to create a larger memory of who we are as Americans and to re-affirm our founding principle of equality. Let's put aside fears of the "disuniting of America" and warnings of the "clash of civilizations." As Langston Hughes sang, "Let America be America, where equality is in the air we breathe." -- Ronald Takaki

How can diverse Americans become "one people"? I believe that one path is for us to pursue the study of the past that includes all of us, making all of us feel connected to one another as "we the people," working and living in a nation, founded and "dedicated" (to use Lincoln's language) to the "proposition" that "all men are created equal."
-- Ronald Takaki

The nation was founded and “dedicated,” to use Lincoln’s language in the “Gettysburg Address,” to equality as a “self-evident truth.” But this very principle of equality, as Lincoln also noted, was a “proposition.” To make it a reality remained “the unfinished work” of Americans.
-- Ronald Takaki

* "We have to sit down, have a meal together, pray together and then actually talk together. Then we realize that, yes, although we have some differences they are not impassable differences." -- Pauline Tangiora

* The war we have to wage today has only one goal and that is to make the world safe for diversity. ~ U Thant

* "My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together." -- Archbishop Desmond Tutu

* The universal brotherhood of man is our most precious possession. -- Mark Twain

"We are all full of weakness and errors; let us mutually pardon each other our follies -- it is the first law of nature."
-- Voltaire

It just seems clear to me that as long as we are all here, it's pretty clear that the struggle is to share the planet, rather than divide it. ~Alice Walker * I think we have to own the fears that we have of each other, and then, in some practical way, some daily way, figure out how to see people differently than the way we were brought up to. ~Alice Walker "It's so clear that you have to cherish everyone. I think that's what I get from these older black women, that every soul is to be cherished, that every flower is to bloom." ~Alice Walker

* We can find common ground only by moving to higher ground -- Jim Wallis

"In a sense, each of us is an island. In another sense, however, we are all one. For though islands appear separate, and may even be situated at great distances from one another, they are only extrusions of the same planet, Earth."
-- J. Donald Walters

"There are realities we all share, regardless of our nationality, language, or individual tastes. As we need food, so do we need emotional nourishment: love, kindness, appreciation, and support from others. We need to understand our environment and our relationship to it. We need to fulfill certain inner hungers: the need for happiness, for peace of mind -- for wisdom."
-- J. Donald Walters

In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress. -- Booker T. Washington

* "Our true nationality is mankind." -- H.G. Wells

For those who have seen the Earth from space, and for the hundreds and perhaps thousands more who will, the experience most certainly changes your perspective. The things that we share in our world are far more valuable than those which divide us.
-- Donald Williams

"As a woman I have no country. As a woman my country is the whole world."
-- Virginia Woolf

* The oneness of human beings is the basic ethical thread that holds us together. -- Muhammad Yunus

 

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