Scilla Elworthy Quotes

We need to learn and to show others that there are tried and tested, powerful ways of containing and resolving conflict which do not require the use of force.

Anger is like gasoline. If you spray it around and somebody lights a match, you've got an inferno. [But] if we can put our anger inside an engine, it can drive us forward.

Real change comes when people are enabled to use their thinking and their energy in a new way, using a different system of thought, different language, and having fresh visions of the future.

I flew aeroplanes, parachuted, walked on my own across the Himalayas - you name it; if it was dangerous, I did it.

When faced with world problems - like hunger, overpopulation, nuclear weapons, the arms trade - you may be among those who are overwhelmed by a feeling of "Help! What on earth can I, just one person, do about this?" Take heart. That's a sane response. It's the basis for a whole new attitude to world problems, where change at the level of the individual is more and more recognised as essential to change in huge world systems.

To discover your mission and put it into action - instead of worrying on the sidelines - is to find peace of mind and a heart full of love.

Dialogue is a non-confrontational communication, where both partners are willing to learn from the other and therefore leads much farther into finding new grounds together

Change happens at the level of the individual

I have a little mantra: My fear grows fat on the energy I feed it. And if it grows very big, it probably happens.

More and more individuals worldwide are realizing that war does not solve conflict, nor resolve long-standing cycles of violence. As more of those who have this understanding communicate it to policy-makers and more particularly, start implementing it in their own lives and localities, change will start to happen.

There are astonishing stories of heroism not only in preventing bloodshed, but in building understanding which lasts.

If governments were kind, they'd realize that conficts are resolved and wars prevented not by armies but by ordinary people.

The arts can bring the heart to the aid of the head, the personal to the political.

If fear grows fat on the energy you feed it, you have to talk it down.