Where Can Peace Be Found? Quotes

“Opinions have no value, though the whole world is run on opinions. Opinions are limited. Your opinion, or my opinion, the opinions of the totalitarians, or the opinions of the church people and governments are all limited. Your judgments and opinions that give values are all limited. When you think about yourself from morning until night, as most people do, that is limited. When you say you are Swiss, or when you are proud to be British as though you are God’s chosen people, that is limited. So opinions are limited. When one sees that clearly, then one does not cling to opinions or the values that opinions have created, because your opinion against another opinion doesn’t bring about peace. That is what is happening in the world, one ideology against another ideology — communist, socialist, democrat, and so on. So please understand that if you are adhering to your opinion and I am sticking to mine, then we shall never meet.

There must be freedom from opinion and values so that we are actually not holding back our opinions and using them as axes to beat each other, to kill each other. Opinions are limited and therefore they must inevitably bring about conflict. If you hold on to your limited conclusions, and another holds his limited conclusions, experiences, then there must be conflict, wars, destruction. If you see that very clearly, then opinions become very superficial, they have no meaning. Don’t have opinions, but be free to inquire, and in that inquiry act. The very inquiry is action; it is not that you inquire first and then act, but in the process of inquiry you are acting.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, Where Can Peace Be Found?

“The world is broken up by tribalism—the British, the German, the Swiss, the Hindu, the Buddhist, are tribes. See the fact that they are tribes, glorified as nations, and that this tribalism is creating havoc in the world, bringing wars in the world. Each tribe thinks in its own culture opposed to other cultures. But tribalism is the root, not the culture. Observing the fact of that is the action that frees the brain from the condition of tribalism. You see actually, not theoretically or ideationally, the fact that tribalism glorified as nations is one of the causes of war. That is a fact. There are other causes of war, economics and so on, but one of the causes is tribalism. When you see that, perceive that, and see that cannot bring about peace, the very perception frees the brain from its conditioning of tribalism.

One of the factors of contention throughout the world is religion. You are a Catholic, I am a Muslim, based on ideas, propaganda of hundreds or thousands of years; the Hindu and the Buddhist ideas are of thousands of years. We have been programmed like a computer. That programming has brought about great architecture, great paintings, great music, but it has not brought peace to mankind. When you see the fact of that, you do not belong to any religion. When there are half a dozen gurus in the same place, they bring about misery, contradiction, conflict: “My guru is better than yours; my group is more sanctified than yours; I have been initiated, you have not.” You know all the nonsense that goes on. So when you see all this around you as an actual fact, then you do not belong to any group, to any guru, to any religion, to any political commitment of ideas.

In the serious urgency to live peacefully there must be freedom from all this because they are the causes of dissension, division. Truth is not yours or mine. It does not belong to any church, to any group, to any religion. The brain must be free to discover it. And peace can exist only when there is freedom from fallacy. You know, for most of us, to be so drastic about things is very difficult, because we have taken security in things of illusion, in things that are not facts, and it is very difficult to let them go. It is not a matter of exercising will, or taking a decision: “I will not belong to anything” is another fallacy. We commit ourselves to some group, to an idea, to religious quackery, because we think it is some kind of security for us. In all these things there is no security, and therefore there is no peace. The brain must be secure; but the brain, with its thought, has sought security in things that are illusory.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, Where Can Peace Be Found?

“Society, in which we all live, is corrupt, immoral, aggressive, destructive. This society has been going on in primitive or modified form for thousands of years upon thousands of years, but it is the same pattern being repeated. These are all facts, not opinion or judgment. Facing this enormous crisis, one asks not only what one is to do but also who is responsible, who has brought the chaos, the confusion, the utter misery of humanity. Is the economic crisis, the social crisis, the crisis of war, the building of enormous armaments, the appalling waste, outside of us? Inwardly, psychologically, we are also very confused; there is constant conflict, struggle, pain, anxiety.

We are together taking a journey into the whole structure that mankind has created, the disorder that human beings have brought about in this world. There is misery, chaos, confusion outwardly in society; and also inwardly, psychologically, in the psyche, the consciousness, there are pain and struggles. What are you going to do about all this? Turn to leaders, better politicians? This one isn’t good, but the next one will be better; and the next one still better. We keep this game going. We have looked to various so-called spiritual leaders, the whole hierarchy of the Christian world. They are as confused, as uncertain, as we are. If you turn to the psychologists or the psychotherapists, they are confused like you and me.

And there are all the ideologies: communist ideologies, Marxist ideologies, philosophical ideologies, the ideologies of the Hindus and the ideologies of those people who have brought Hinduism here, and you have your own ideologies. The whole world is fragmented, broken up, as we are broken up, driven by various urges, reactions, each one wanting to be important, each one acting in his own self-interest. This is actually what is going on in the world, wherever you go.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, Where Can Peace Be Found?

“One of our difficulties is that we like explanations rather than facts. We accept the explanations, the logic, the reasons of journalists and so on explaining why certain governments are behaving in certain ways. The description is not the fact. The painting of a mountain, however beautiful the painting may be, is not the mountain. All the pictures in the museums, some of them extraordinarily beautiful, are not what they represent. You read a novel with all the imaginings, romantic business, sex and so on, written by an excellent, well-known author, but that is not your life. Your life is here.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, Where Can Peace Be Found?

“We are human beings. We cannot exist without relationship. It is the most important thing in life. And in that relationship, which is based on imagebuilding, you have an image about her and she has an image about you because you have both lived together for twenty years, for ten days, or one day. You have already created an image. And those images have relationship. If I have a wife, I have lived with her sexually, she has nagged me, I have bullied her, I possess her and she likes being possessed. So I have created an image about her, and she has created an image about me. And our relationship is based on those images.

When there are images built by thought, built by various experiences and incidents translated by thought and retained as memory, how can there be love? You may love your God — but you don’t. You may love your scriptures through fear because you want to be saved. But where there is fear, there is no love. So the question arises whether it is possible not to create images. You have an image about yourself. Most people have images, but the most intimate image is between you and your wife, or between you and your husband, or your girlfriend. The root of conflict is there.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, Where Can Peace Be Found?