Core Writtings

Peace
Aristotle:
We make war that we may live in peace.

Spinoza:
Peace is not the absence of war; it is a virtue; a state of mind; a disposition for benevolence; confidence; and justice.

Benjamin Franklin:
There never was a good war or a bad peace.

Dwight D. Eisenhower:
We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom.

George Bernard Shaw:
Peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous.

George W. Bush:
No, I know all the war rhetoric, but it's all aimed at achieving peace.

George Washington:
There is nothing so likely to produce peace as to be well prepared to meet the enemy.

Wisdom
Cicero:
The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer:
To understand reality is not the same as to know about outward events. It is to perceive the essential nature of things. The best-informed man is not necessarily the wisest. Indeed there is a danger that precisely in the multiplicity of his knowledge he will lose sight of what is essential. But on the other hand, knowledge of an apparently trivial detail quite often makes it possible to see into the depth of things. And so the wise man will seek to acquire the best possible knowledge about events, but always without becoming dependent upon this knowledge. To recognize the significant in the factual is wisdom.

Proverbs 17:28:
Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding.

Sophocles:
Wisdom is the supreme part of happiness.

Stephen Covey:
Whatever is at the center of our life will be the source of our security, guidance, wisdom, and power.

Leadership
Peter Drucker:
The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say "I." And that's not because they have trained themselves not to say "I." They don't think "I." They think "we"; they think "team." They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don't sidestep it, but "we" gets the credit. This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done.

Dwight D. Eisenhower:
You do not lead by hitting people over the head - that's assault, not leadership.

H. Ross Perot:
Inventories can be managed, but people must be led.

Isaac Newton:
If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulder of giants.

James Callaghan:
A leader must have the courage to act against an expert's advice.

John Quincy Adams:
If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.

Robert Greenleaf:
Good leaders must first become good servants.

Truth
Abraham Lincoln:
Truth is generally the best vindication against slander.

Blaise Pascal:
We know the truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart.

Galileo:
All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.

Marcus Aurelius:
If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.

Courage
Clare Booth Luce:
Courage is the ladder on which all the other virtues mount.

Justice
Hierocles:
We ought always to deal justly, not only with those who are just to us, but likewise to those who endeavor to injure us; and this, for fear lest by rendering them evil for evil, we should fall into the same vice.

Baltasar Gracian:
Without courage, wisdom bears no fruit.

Dorothy Thompson:
Courage, it would seem, is nothing less than the power to overcome danger, misfortune, fear, injustice, while continuing to affirm inwardly that life with all its sorrows is good; that everything is meaningful even if in a sense beyond our understanding; and that there is always tomorrow.

Helen Keller:
We could never learn to be brave and patient if there were only joy in the world.

Theodore Bikel:
All too often arrogance accompanies strength, and we must never assume that justice is on the side of the strong. The use of power must always be accompanied by moral choice.

Abraham Lincoln:
I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.

Aristotle:
Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.

Dolores Ibarruri:
It is better to die on your feet than live on your knees.

Isocrates:
The noblest worship is to make yourself as good and as just as you can.

Holocaust Museum, Washington, DC:
Thou shalt not be a victim. Thou shalt not be a perpetrator. Above all, thou shalt not be a bystander.

Power
Elizabeth Dole:
We have learned that power is a positive force if it is used for positive purposes.

Goethe:
Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men.

William E. Gladstone :
We look forward to the time when the Power of Love will replace the Love of Power. Then will our world know the blessings of peace.

Thomas Jefferson:
I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.

Conscience
Abraham Lincoln:
To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.

Izaak Walton:
The person that loses their conscience has nothing left worth keeping.

James Freeman Clarke:
Conscience is the root of all true courage; if a man would be brave let him obey his conscience.

John Calvin:
The torture of a bad conscience is the hell of a living soul.

Robert G. Ingersoll:
Courage without conscience is a wild beast.

Character
Albert Einstein:
Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value.

Eleanor Roosevelt:
People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built.

Faith Baldwin:
Character builds slowly, but it can be torn down within incredible swiftness.

Helen Keller:
Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.

James A. Froude:
You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:
People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

Action
Albert Einstein:
The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.

Arnold Toynbee:
Apathy can be overcome by enthusiasm, and enthusiasm can only be aroused by two things: first, an ideal, with takes the imagination by storm, and second, a definite intelligible plan for carrying that ideal into practice.

Benjamin Disraeli:
Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.

Benjamin Franklin:
There are no gains without pains.

Eleanor Roosevelt:
You must do the things you think you cannot do.

Epictetus:
In a word, neither death, nor exile, nor pain, nor anything of this kind is the real cause of our doing or not doing any action, but our inward opinions and principles.

Goethe:
Knowing is not enough; we must apply!

Yoda:
Do, or do not. There is no try.