Experience 25: BRAIN Selected Quotes from Nobel Prize Winners “The mediator's role combines those of a ship’s pilot, consulting medical doctor, midwife and teacher.” “The only people that can make peace are the parties to the conflict...” “Peace is a question of will.” Nobel Laureate: Martti Ahtisaari | Finland/Russia, Peace 2008 “Flaubert called himself a human pen; I would say that I am a human ear.” “I lived in a country where dying was taught to us from childhood. We were taught death. We were told that human beings exist in order to give everything they have, to burn out, to sacrifice themselves.” Nobel Laureate: Svetlana Alexievich | Belarus, Literature 2015 “In every great faith and tradition one can find the values of tolerance and mutual understanding” “The obstacles to democracy have little to do with culture or religion, and much more to do with the desire of those in power to maintain their position at any cost.” “Today's real borders are not between nations, but between powerful and powerless, free and fettered, privileged and humiliated.” Nobel Laureate: Kofi Annan | Ghana, Peace 2001 “Liberty performs miracles. To free men, everything is possible.” “Hope is the strongest driving force for a people. Hope which brings about change, which produces new realities, is what opens man's road to freedom.” Nobel Laureate: Oscar Arias Sanchez | Costa Rica, Peace 1987 “One can't tell writers what to do. The imagination must find its own path.” “Perhaps humankind cannot bear too much reality, but neither can it bear too much unreality, too much abuse of the truth.” Nobel Laureate: Saul Bellow | Canada/USA, Literature 1976 “Man is a being realized when there is a reciprocity of respect.” “Mutual respect is the basis of compromise.” “Let it be stated clearly that to make peace a reality, we must be flexible as well as wise. We must truly recognize our own faults and move to change ourselves in the interest of making peace.” Nobel Laureate: Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo | East Timor, Peace 1996 “Your theory is crazy, but it's not crazy enough to be true.” “A physicist is just an atom's way of looking at itself.” Nobel Laureate: Aage Niels Bohr | Denmark, Physics 1922 “…, the majority of the urbanites in the industrialized nations have forgotten the significance of the words they learned as youngsters, "Give us this day our daily bread.” “Where are the leaders who have the necessary scientific competence, the vision, the common sense, the social consciousness, the qualities of leadership, and the persistent determination to convert the potential benefactions into real benefactions for mankind in general and for the hungry in particular?” Nobel Laureate: Norman E. Borlaug | USA, Peace 1970 “It is clear that global challenges must be met with an emphasis on peace, in harmony with others, with strong alliances and international consensus.” “Despite theological differences, all great religions share common commitments that define our ideal secular relationships. I am convinced that Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, and others can embrace each other in a common effort to alleviate human suffering and to espouse peace.” Nobel Laureate: Jimmy Carter | USA, Peace 2002 “All autobiography is storytelling; all writing is autobiography.” “We are not by nature cruel.” Nobel Laureate: John M. Coetzee | South Africa/Australian, Literature 2003 “If we want to reap the harvest of peace and justice in the future, we will have to sow seeds of nonviolence, here and now, in the present.” “It's okay to be scared, but fear is different. Fear is when we let being scared prevent us from doing what love requires of us.” “We need radical thinking, creative ideas, and imagination.” Nobel Laureate: Mairead Corrigan Maquire | Northern Ireland/UK, Peace 1976 “I believe that democracy is the absolute value that makes for human dignity, as well as the only road to sustained economic development and social justice.” “A national economy lacking a democratic foundation is a castle built on sand.” Nobel Laureate: Kim Dae-jung | South Korea, Peace 2000 “The affairs of mankind are in incessant flux. No relationship - between individuals or communities or political parties or countries - remains the same from one day to the next. New situations are forever arising and demand constant attention.” “Peace does not simply mean the absence of conflict.” “Peace is a frame of mind - Peace is also a framework.” Nobel Laureate: Frederik Willem de Klerk | South Africa, Peace 1993 “The Koran swears by the pen and what it writes. Such a sermon and message cannot be in conflict with awareness, knowledge, wisdom, freedom of opinion and expression and cultural pluralism.” “A human being divested of all dignity, a human being deprived of human rights, a human being gripped by starvation, a human being beaten by famine, war and illness, a humiliated human being and a plundered human being is not in any position or state to recover the rights he or she has lost.” Nobel Laureate: Shirin Ebadi | Iran, Peace 2003 “It should not be a surprise then that poverty continues to breed conflict.” “Today, with globalization bringing us ever closer together, if we choose to ignore the insecurities of some, they will soon become the insecurities of all.” “There is no religion that was founded on intolerance – and no religion that does not value the sanctity of human life.” Nobel Laureate: Mohamed ElBaradei | Egypt, Peace 2005 “A theatre, a literature, an artistic expression that does not speak for its own time has no relevance.” “It is hard for power to enjoy or incorporate humour and satire in its system of control.” Nobel Laureate: Dario Fo| Italy, Literature 1997 “If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand.” “There's no such thing as a free lunch.” Nobel Laureate: Milton Friedman| USA, Economics 1976 “What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it.” “It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams.” Nobel Laureate: Gabriel Garcia Márquez | Colombia, Literature 1982 “We used our pains, broken bodies and scarred emotions to confront the injustices and terror of our nation.” “We must continue to unite in sisterhood to turn our tears into triumph, our despair into determination and our fear into fortitude. There is no time to rest until our world achieves wholeness and balance, where all men and women are considered equal and free.” “If women were part of decision-making in most societies, there would be less exclusive policies and laws that are blind to abuses women endure.” Nobel Laureate: Leymah Gbowee | Liberia 2011 “I see a tremendous amount of intricacy in the world and we have probably only begun to scratch at the surface of its intricacy.” Nobel Laureate: Roy J. Glauber | USA, Physics 2005 “Peace is movement towards globality and universality of civilization. Never before has the idea that peace is indivisible been so true as it is now.” “Peace is not unity in similarity but unity in diversity, in the comparison and conciliation of differences.” “And, ideally, peace means the absence of violence. It is an ethical value.” Nobel Laureate: Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev | Russia (USSR), Peace 1990 “The question of for whom do we write nevertheless plagues the writer, a tin can attached to the tail of every work published.” “Perhaps there is no other way of reaching some understanding of being than through art? “ Nobel Laureate: Nadine Gordimer | South Africa, Literature 1991 “We, the human species, are confronting a planetary emergency – a threat to the survival of our civilization that is gathering ominous and destructive potential even as we gather here.” “The world needs an alliance – especially of those nations that weigh heaviest in the scales where earth is in the balance.” “When we unite for a moral purpose that is manifestly good and true, the spiritual energy unleashed can transform us.” Nobel Laureate: Al Gore Jr. | USA, Peace 2007 “And there is nothing I like more than to meet books of mine – books that have long since flown the coop and been expropriated by readers – when I read out loud to an audience what now lies peacefully on the page. For both the young, weaned early from language, and the old, grizzled yet still rapacious, the written word becomes spoken, and the magic works again and again.” “It is a fact of life that writers have always and with due consideration and great pleasure spit in the soup of the high and mighty.“ Nobel Laureate: Günter Grass | Germany, Literature 1999 “For if we each selfishly pursue only what we believe to be in our own interest, without caring about the needs of others, we not only may end up harming others but also ourselves.” “Today, we are truly a global family. What happens in one part of the world may affect us all.” “Responsibility does not only lie with the leaders of our countries or with those who have been appointed or elected to do a particular job. It lies with each one of us individually. Peace, for example, starts with each one of us.” Nobel Laureate: Tenzin Gyatso (the 14th Dalai Lama) | Tibet/India Peace 2007 “I'm a firm believer in learning by heart.” “I have begun to think of life as a series of ripples widening out from an original center.” Nobel Laureate: Seamus Heaney | Ireland, Literature 1995 “All conflict is about difference, whether the difference is race, religion or nationality. Difference is of the essence of humanity.” “The answer to difference is to respect it.“ “No-one is asked to yield their cherished convictions or beliefs.