Alva Myrdal Quotations

Many countries persecute their own citizens and intern them in prisons or concentration camps. Oppression is becoming more and more a part of the systems.

The misconception that a victory can be worth its price, has in the nuclear age become a total illusion.

My personal philosophy of life is one of ethics

There is a cultural factor promoting violence which nowadays undoubtedly is highly effective is the mass media. And particularly everything that enters our minds through pictorial media.

We can hope that men will understand that the interest of all are the same, that hope lies in cooperation. We can then perhaps keep PEACE.

The longing for peace is rooted in the hearts of all men. But the striving, which at present has become so insistent, cannot lay claim to such an ambition as leading the way to eternal peace, or solving all disputes among nations.

The age in which we live can only be characterized as one of barbarism. Our civilization is in the process not only of being militarized, but also being brutalized.

I personally believe that those who are leaders with political power over the world will be forced some day, sooner or later, to give way to common sense and the will of the people.

A great amount has been talked and written about what constitutes a sufficient balance and what really is meant by the concepts of "balance" and "deterrence".

I agree with the many who consider freezing all sorts of weapons systems a first step in a realistic disarmament policy.

The inventions and the great discoveries have opened up whole continents to reciprocal communication and interchange, provided we are willing.

I have always regarded global development as a struggle between the forces of good and evil. Not to be simplified as a struggle between Jesus and Satan, since I do not consider that the process is restricted to our own sphere of culture.

All mankind is now learning that these nuclear weapons can only serve to destroy, never become beneficial.

If only the authorities could be made to realize that the forces leading them on in the armament race are just insane.

More must be done in concrete terms in order to promote the cause of disarmament.

It does not just happen. It is disclosed by science that practically one-half of trained intellectual resources are being mobilized for murderous purposes.

It is frightening that in recent years such an increase has occurred in acts of terrorism, which have even reached peaceful countries such as ours. And as a "remedy", more and more security forces are established to protect the lives of individual men and women.

The world generally speaking is now drifting on a more and more devastating course towards the absurd target of extermination - or rather, to be more exact - of the northern hemisphere's towns, fields, and the people who have developed our civilization.

War is murder. And the military preparations now being made for a potential major confrontation are aimed at collective murder. In a nuclear age the victims would be numbered by the millions. This naked truth must be faced.

Where do these arms come from, these Saturday night specials that constitute the instrument of threats in bank robberies, or the hand grenades used by terrorists? How can their sales and their import be permitted?

First and foremost arms are tools in the service of rival nations, pointing at the possibility of a future war.

War and preparations for war have acquired a kind of legitimacy.

It is of the greatest importance that people and governments in many more countries than ours should realize that it is more dangerous to have access to nuclear arms than not to possess them.

Nobel was a genuine friend of peace. He even went so far as to believe that he had invented a tool of destruction, dynamite, which would make war so senseless that it would become impossible. He was wrong.

The economic and political roots of the conflicts are too strong for us to pretend to create a lasting state of harmonious understanding between men.

The issue of comparative performances can be regarded as settled to-day, both scientifically and practically. Though differences in attitudes between men and women still form a favorite topic of drawing-room conversation ... women's abilities are no longer seriously in doubt. These discussions rather seem to be a kind of rearguard action carried on after the main battle has been decided.

The smaller nations can in fact exercise greater influence on disarmament negotiations than they have hitherto done.

Because war and preparations for war have acquired legitimacy, and because of the tremendous proliferation of arms through production and export, so that they are now available more or less to all and sundry, right down to handguns and stilettos, the cult of violence has by now so permeated relations between people that we are compelled to witness as well an increase in everyday violence.

Our immediate striving must be aimed at preventing what, in the present situation, is the greatest threat to the very survival of mankind, the nuclear threat.

Though it is fairly easy to describe what constitutes a bad home, there is no simple definition of a good one. Conformity with the traditional pattern certainly is no guarantee of the happiest results.

marriage, home life, and children, ought to be enjoyed by men and women together. Nobody - and least of all the child - is served by the present tendency to put these things all on one side as 'Woman's World.

It's not worthy o human beings to give up.

If they [women] are to be integrated more fully into our society than has been the case so far, changes in individual attitudes of both men and women, adjustments in the labor market, and action by public authorities, will all be necessary.

As a group, housewives to-day suffer more from social isolation and loss of purpose than any other social group, except, perhaps, the old.

the patriarchal family, with its division of functions between a providing and protective father and a home-making, submissive mother, however satisfactory it may have been in its time, has outlived its day. Bread-winning is no longer a monopoly of men, and home-making should no longer be the monopoly of women.

I have, despite all disillusionment, never, never allowed myself to feel like giving up. This is my message today; it is not worthy of a human being to give up.