 All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do. |
| War is so unjust and ugly that all who wage it must try to stifle the voice of conscience within themselves. |
| We must not only cease our present desire for the growth of the state, but we must desire its decrease, its weakening. |
| I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means - except by getting off his back. |
| The two most powerful warriors are patience and time. |
| War on the other hand is such a terrible thing, that no man, especially a Christian man, has the right to assume the responsibility of starting it. |
| Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us. |
| Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them. |
| If you want to be happy, be. |
| A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. |
| The changes in our life must come from the impossibility to live otherwise than according to the demands of our conscience not from our mental resolution to try a new form of life. |
| True life is lived when tiny changes occur. |
| It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness. |
| In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you. |
| The chief difference between words and deeds is that words are always intended for men for their approbation, but deeds can be done only for God. |
| Without knowing what I am and why I am here, life is impossible. |
| Boredom: the desire for desires. |
| Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold. |
| Music is the shorthand of emotion. |
| If there existed no external means for dimming their consciences, one-half of the men would at once shoot themselves, because to live contrary to one's reason is a most intolerable state, and all men of our time are in such a state. |
