“Early Friends were very concerned about […] being truthful, but also [about] not giving credit to pagan gods and goddesses. For example, on Sunday, one might worship the sun. On Monday, one might worship the moon. […] But Friends didn’t believe in these gods. So why say their names?”
“Often in the course of running workshops or making presentations on global themes I have met people who care very deeply about the world’s ills, who feel that they would like to do something to promote global justice and world betterment, but who don’t know where to begin. They feel responsible, and perhaps even guilty that their lifestyle or their government may be contributing to the world’s problems, and yet they fear that they don’t know enough about the complexities of planetary issues to contribute anything more than their own good intentions.”
“Too long have wrongs and oppression existed without an acknowledged wrongdoer and oppressor. It was not until the slave holder was told ‘Thou art the man’ that a healthy agitation was brought about. Woman is told the fault is in herself, in too willingly submitting to her inferior condition, but like the slave, she is pressed down by laws in the making of which she has no voice, and crushed by customs which have grown out of such laws. She cannot rise therefore, while thus trampled in the dust. The oppressor does not see himself in that light until the oppressed cry for deliverance.”
“‘Politics’ cannot be relegated to some outer place, but must be recognised as one side of life, which is as much the concern of religious people and of a religious body as any other part of life. Nay, more than this, the ordering of the life of man in a community, so that he may have the chance of a full development, is and always has been one of the main concerns of Quakerism.”
“What we need is a program or movement based on what we believe in rather than on the things to which we are opposed… Negatives cannot cast out negatives. Fear will never rid the world of fear. We must begin to base our actions solely on what we know to be right, not on expediency.”
“The systems that we create as people, the systems of government and systems of power and the way that we distribute resources, are all inhabited by people. And at its most powerful, this prophetic work is about relationships.”
“[George] Fox, indeed, when he visited Barbados 1671, had advised Friends to deal mildly with their negroes and to make them free after thirty years’ servitude, and urged the holding of family meetings with them, while in 1688 the German Friends who had migrated to Pennsylvania addressed the Yearly Meeting there against the buying and keeping of slaves. But it was reserved, as we know, for John Woolman fully to awaken the conscience of Friends on this matter.”
“Non-conformity, Holy Disobedience, becomes a virtue and indeed a necessary and indispensable measure of spiritual self-preservation, in a day when the impulse to conform, to acquiesce, to go along, is the instrument which is used to subject men to totalitarian rule and involve them in permanent war. To create the impression at least of outward unanimity, the impression that there is no ‘real’ opposition, is something for which all dictators and military leaders strive assiduously. The more it seems that there is no opposition, the less worthwhile it seems to an ever larger number of people to cherish even the thought of opposition…”
“Love for a friend is not put to the test. There is nothing surprising in a friend loving a friend; there is no merit in it and it costs no effort. When love is bestowed on the so-called enemy, it is tested, it becomes a virtue and requires an effort, and hence it is an act of […] real bravery.”
“When a position is taken against a strong and violent adversary, it will be necessary to be firm as a rock, fully prepared to suffer any consequence rather than yield to evil… Firmness, like that displayed by the early Christians and Friends and followers of Gandhi, is impossible in the presence of fear or doubt. It comes only from faith – the deep conviction that the position for which one stands is part of the eternal truth; that being true, it will survive and can be brought into expression by those who will uphold it at all cost.”
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