Petra Kelly Quotes

Peace is not just the absence of mass destruction, but a positive internal and external condition in which people are free so that they can grow to their full potential.

Like the mind-set that places men above women, whites above blacks, and rich above poor, the mentality that places humans above nature is a dysfunctional delusion.

We, the generation that faces the next century, can add the solemn injunction ''If we don't do the impossible, we shall be faced with the unthinkable.

We cannot feast on global resources while the world's poor struggle to survive on inhospitable lands. It is as simple as that. It is the rich who are making the world poorer. Environment and Poverty are one crisis, not two.

Uranium is the raw material of a power-elite who has taken Mother Earth's every living creature hostage.

The vision I see is not only a movement of direct democracy, of self- and co-determination and non-violence, but a movement in which politics means the power to love and the power to feel united on the spaceship Earth.

Practically every violent conflict or social change has proved that violence unleashes violence in return.

An industrial system predicated on the delusion of limitless expansion will, in time, consume its own basis of support.

Militarism is in direct competition with people's needs for food, health care, and environmental protection.

A truly free society must not include a peace which oppresses us. We must learn on our own terms what peace and freedom mean together. There can be no peace if there is social injustice and suppression of human rights, because external and internal peace are inseparable. Peace is not just the absence of mass destruction, but a positive internal and external condition in which people are free so that they can grow to their full potential.

We are at a point in human evolution when human solidarity on a global scale is absolutely vital for the survival of the human species. That means understanding that ... we are all co-inhabitants of this planet.

I have hope for the world, although it is ten minutes before Doomsday. Women all over the world are rising up and infusing the anti-nuclear and peace movements with a vitality and creativity never seen before.

The vision I see is not only a movement of direct democracy, of self- and co-determination and non-violence, but a movement in which politics means the power to love and the power to feel united on the spaceship Earth... In a world struggling in violence and dishonesty, the further development of non-violence - not only as a philosophy but as a way of life, as a force on the streets, in the market squares, outside the missile bases, inside the chemical plants and inside the war industry - becomes one of the most urgent priorities.

... the state is not absolute, and loyalty to the state cannot be absolute.

Our motto is, 'Be gentle and subversive.'

Overturning patriarchy does not mean replacing men's dominance with women's dominance. That would merely maintain the patriarchal pattern of dominance. We need to transform the pattern itself.