“There will never be enduring peace unless and until human beings come to accept a philosophy of life more adequate to the cosmic and psychological facts than the insane idolatries of nationalism and the advertising man’s apocalyptic faith in Progress towards a mechanized New Jerusalem.”
– Aldous Huxley, Introduction to Bhagavad-Gita translated by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood (London, 1944).
“I see before me white men, Black men and yellow men working assiduously for the peace of the world; for the bringing together of this thing called human brotherhood; I see them working through their organizations. They have been working during the last fifty years. Some worked to bring about the emancipation, because they saw the danger of perpetual slavery. They brought about the liberation of 4,000,000 Black people. They passed away, and others started to work, but the opposition against them is too strong; the opposition against them is weighing them down. The world has gone mad; the world has become too material; the world has lost its spirit of kinship with God, and man can see nothing else but prejudice, avarice and greed. Avarice and greed will destroy the world, and I am appealing to white, Black and yellow whose hearts, whose souls are touched with the true spirit of humanity, with the true feeling of human brotherhood, to preach the doctrine of human love, more to preach it louder, to preach it longer, because there is great need for it in the world at this time.”
– Marcus Garvey, The Handwriting Is on the Wall, speech to the Second International Convention of Negroes of the World, at Liberty Hall, Harlem, August 31, 1921.
“In future days which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.
“The first is freedom of speech and expression — everywhere in the world.
“The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way — everywhere in the world.
“The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants — everywhere in the world.
“The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor — anywhere in the world.
“That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called ‘new order’ of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.
“To that new order we oppose the greater conception — the moral order. A good society is able to face schemes of world domination and foreign revolutions alike without fear.
“Since the beginning of our American history we have been engaged in change, in a perpetual, peaceful revolution, a revolution which goes on steadily, quietly, adjusting itself to changing conditions without the concentration camp or the quicklime of the ditch. The world order which we seek is the cooperation of free countries, working together in a friendly, civilized society. . . .
“To that high concept there can be no end save victory.”
– Franklin D. Roosevelt, Four Essential Human Freedoms, State of the Union Address, January 6, 1941.
