QUOTES
Everyone
thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
Every
man, in refusing to take part in military service or to pay taxes to a government
which uses them for military purposes, is, by this refusal, rendering a great
service to God and man, for he is thereby making use of the most efficacious means
of furthering the progressive movement of mankind toward that better social order
which it is striving after and must eventually attain."
"For
him who has not refused, the advantages will consist in this, that, having submitted
to all the humiliations and having executed all the cruelties demanded of him,
he may, if he is not killed, receive red, golden, tin-foil decorations over his
fool's garments, and he may at best command hundreds of thousands of just such
bestialized men as himself, and be called a field-marshal, and receive a lot of
money. But the advantages of him who refuses will consist in this, that he will
retain his human dignity, will earn the respect of good men, and, above all else,
will know without fail that he is doing God's work, and so an incontestable good
to men."
"He
who attacks another and insults him, engenders in another the sentiment of hatred,
the root of all evil. To offend another, because he offended us, for the specious
reason of removing an evil, means to repeat an evil deed, both against him and
against ourselves."
Men
are so accustomed to maintaining external order by violence that they cannot conceive
of life being possible without violence.
The
improvement of life was only accomplished to the extent to which it was based
on a change of consciousness, that is, to the extent to which the law of violence
was replaced in men's consciousness by the law of love.
“There
is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth”
