The bomb first was our weapon,
Then it became our diplomacy,
Next it became our economy,
Now it's become our culture.
We've become people of the bomb.
    - E.L. Doctorow, author and social critic

"Every gun that is made, every warship that is launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron."
    - President Dwight Eisenhower in 1953

"The trouble with violence is that it changes not too much, but too little."
    - Rev. William Slone Coffin

"Today, if we went into Iraq, like the president would like us to do, you know where you begin. You never know where you are going to end."
    - George F. Kennan, September 26, 2002

Readings of March 18, 2007