WIST Quotations

Roosevelt, Eleanor -- Column (1954-04-16), “My Day”

Dave — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 19:18:50 +0000

I think the women of this country, if they face the fact of the present situation, will agree with me that this is a time for action — not for war, but for mobilization of every bit of peace machinery. It is also a time for facing the fact that you cannot use a weapon, even though it is the weapon that gives you greater strength than other nations, if it is so destructive that it practically wipes out large areas of land and great numbers of innocent people.

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) First Lady of the US (1933–1945), politician, diplomat, activist
Column (1954-04-16), “My Day”
(Source)

On the Hydrogen Bomb.

Roosevelt, Franklin Delano -- Speech (1941-01-06) to Congress, Annual Message (State of the Union), “Four Freedoms,” Washington, D. C.

Dave — Wed, 05 Mar 2025 23:19:42 +0000

In the 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.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945) American lawyer, politician, statesman, US President (1933–1945)
Speech (1941-01-06) to Congress, Annual Message (State of the Union), “Four Freedoms,” Washington, D. C.
(Source)

FDR's first presentation of his "Four Freedoms" framework.

Arendt, Hannah -- Essay (1969-02-27), “Reflections on Violence,” The New York Review of Books

Dave — Tue, 25 Aug 2020 14:58:42 +0000

The chief reason warfare is still with us is neither a secret death-wish of the human species, nor an irrepressible instinct of aggression, nor, finally and more plausibly, the serious economic and social dangers inherent in disarmament, but the simple fact that no substitute for this final arbiter in international affairs has yet appeared on the political scene.

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) German-American philosopher, political theorist
Essay (1969-02-27), “Reflections on Violence,” The New York Review of Books
(Source)

Revised and collected in On Violence, ch. 1 (1970).

King, Martin Luther -- “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution,” National Cathedral, Washington, DC (31 Mar 1968)

Dave — Fri, 14 Oct 2016 21:38:05 +0000

It is no longer a choice, my friends, between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence. And the alternative to disarmament, the alternative to a greater suspension of nuclear tests, the alternative to strengthening the United Nations and thereby disarming the whole world, may well be a civilization plunged into the abyss of annihilation, and our earthly habitat would be transformed into an inferno that even the mind of Dante could not imagine.

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman, civil rights leader, social activist, preacher
“Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution,” National Cathedral, Washington, DC (31 Mar 1968)
(Source)