Economic harmonies, par. 10.4.
“Being oppressed means the absence of choices”
“True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice.”
In a 1955 response to an accusation that he was "disturbing the peace" by his activism during the Montgomery Bus Boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, as quoted in Let the Trumpet Sound : A Life of Martin Luther King, Jr (1982) by Stephen B. Oates
1950s
“True peace is not merely the absence of war, it is the presence of justice.”
“Shadow is not the absence of light, merely the obstruction of the luminous rays by an opaque body.”
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), III Six books on Light and Shade
Context: Shadow is not the absence of light, merely the obstruction of the luminous rays by an opaque body. Shadow is of the nature of darkness. Light is of the nature of a luminous body; one conceals and the other reveals. They are always associated and inseparable from all objects. But shadow is a more powerful agent than light, for it can impede and entirely deprive bodies of their light, while light can never entirely expel shadow from a body, that is from an opaque body.
Source: On Peace
Letter to Ottoline Morrell, 17 December, 1920
1920s
Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (1979). 132.
Context: Selection does not work by cutthroat competition between individuals, but by favouring whatever behavior is useful to the group. People with crude notions of "Darwinism" make an intriguing blunder here. They refuse the mere fact of competing, that is, of needing to share out a resource with the motive of competitiveness or readiness to quarrel.
2009, Nobel Prize acceptance speech (December 2009)
Context: Peace is not merely the absence of visible conflict. Only a just peace based on the inherent rights and dignity of every individual can truly be lasting.
It was this insight that drove drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights after the Second World War. In the wake of devastation, they recognized that if human rights are not protected, peace is a hollow promise.
Radio and Television Report to the American People on the Developments in Eastern Europe and the Middle East (October 31, 1956). Source: Eisenhower Presidential Library. Archived https://web.archive.org/web/20210125121539/https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/eisenhowers/quotes from the original https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/eisenhowers/quotes on January 25, 2021.
1950s
Source: Dying Earth (1950-1984), Cugel's Saga (1983), Chapter 5, section 1, "The Seventeen Virgins"
