Scilla Elworthy
Scilla Elworthy
Scilla Elworthyis a peace builder, and the founder of the Oxford Research Group, a non-governmental organisation she set up in 1982 to develop effective dialogue between nuclear weapons policy-makers worldwide and their critics, for which she was nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize. She served as its executive director from 1982 until 2003, when she left that role to set up Peace Direct, a charity supporting local peace-builders in conflict areas. In 2003 she was awarded the Niwano...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionActivist
Date of Birth3 June 1943
CountryUnited States of America
If fear grows fat on the energy you feed it, you have to talk it down.
There are astonishing stories of heroism not only in preventing bloodshed, but in building understanding which lasts.
I have a little mantra: My fear grows fat on the energy I feed it. And if it grows very big, it probably happens.
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
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.
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.
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.