If we are ever going to have peace again, we will have to hate war for some better reasons than that we fear to lose our houses, or our refrigerators, or our cars, or our legs, or our lives. If we are ever to get peace, we have got to desire something more than reefers and anesthetics - but that is all we seem to want: anything to avoid the pain.

It is terrifying that the world doesn't wake up to this irony: that at a time when all our desire is nothing but to have pleasant sensations and avoid painful sensations, there should be almost more pain and suffering and brutality and horror, and more helplessness to do anything about it, than there ever was before!

-Thomas Merton- June 25th, 1940