Petra Kelly Quotations

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.'

If there is a future, it will be Green.

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.

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...

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

European peace movement felt that the deployment of these missiles on European soil, on German soil would be a very great danger towards the Soviet Union in that those missiles could reach the Soviet Union, make it vulnerable within five to six minutes, that it could surgical strikes, strikes into the military infrastructure and that a strike into the military infrastructure could cause in fact World War III, an atomic world war and that this could also be used for first strike, for surgical search, first strike into the Soviet Union.

The profound political changes we need in order to heal our planet will not come about through fragmented problem solving or intellectual analyses that overlook the deepest yearnings and intuitions of the heart....As we begin to cultivate a rich inner life and experience our connection with all life, we realize how little of what society tells us we need is actually important for our well-being....Green politics must address the spiritual vacuum of industrial society.

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.

I belong to the initiators of the... and we had repeatedly also asked the dismantling of the SS-20 but we did not connect them - that was the difference. We didn't connect them because we felt that this was a step taken, an unnecessary step by the American side and added to by the NATO member countries.

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

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

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.

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.

The transformation of forests into deserts, fertile earth into sunbaked concrete, and running rivers into silted floodwaters show that only through care for the environment can the livelihoods of those most dependent on it be sustained. We cannot allow economic and environmental concerns to be played off against each other.

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

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.

Time and time again we forget all too easily that nonviolent action embraces a wide and imaginative range of behavior which can always be stepped up.

Power over must be replaced by shared power, by the power to do things, by the discovery of our own strength as opposed to a passive receiving of power exercised by others, often in our name.

These missiles [Cruise and Pershing II] represent a new generation of missiles whose deployment will help give NATO first-strike capability. With this first-strike strategy, the West believes it could attack Russian military installations with such effectiveness that serious retaliation would be impossible.

We call upon people everywhere to work for peace, to forget the quiet comfort of their homes, to leave behind their fears and feeling of powerlessness, their privileges and possessions, and join us as active participants and co-workers for peace.

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

Violent revolutions usually only mean a change of personnel at the top.

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.

I appeal to women not to let themselves become corrupted by male power. Emancipation is something more than a 'ticket' to serve in the army.

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.

Our motto is, 'Be gentle and subversive.'