Robert Humphrey > Quotes

“If you try to change things constructively in the social sciences or try to reconcile conflicts, rather than take sides, you’ll be attacked through character assassination and every other means of skullduggery not excluding physical assault. It is inevitable and inescapable. It will disgust you to the point of befuddlement and, at times, rage. That beautiful beatitude in the Bible should be changed to read: Blessed are the peacemakers in heaven; because on Earth, they shall catch hell. Nonetheless, I’ll stress that the time is finally right, on our planet, for the expansive light of true civilization. Well-informed voices both prophesying and forcing that maturation, suddenly, are being heard everywhere.”
― Robert Humphrey, Values For A New Millennium: Activating the Natural Law to: Reduce Violence, Revitalize Our Schools, and Promote Cross-Cultural Harmony

“humans are not equal, then a dictatorship of the superior persons over the inferiors (fascism) is justifiable. Hence, the human equality principle cannot be rejected consistently with an averred belief in democracy. Those who plead the cause of freedom but reject human equality actually plead a different cause; consciously or unconsciously, they defend preferential status and a license to exploit others. As we saw in the peasants’ questionnaire-responses, equality is something deeper than logic, it is an irrepressible feeling in each person. America’s serious social problems, domestic and foreign, can be solved only through respect-in-action for the equality/freedom principle so that the domestic and global social situation fits human nature.”
― Robert Humphrey, Values For A New Millennium: Activating the Natural Law to: Reduce Violence, Revitalize Our Schools, and Promote Cross-Cultural Harmony

“Over the next three decades I conducted similar studies in a dozen countries, on all five major continents, in societies representing most of the world’s major religions. The overwhelming theme in every study was the same. The worldwide attitude, even though seldom voiced in the absence of an obviously sincere study, I now ascertain, expressed the conscious value that substantially controls all human relations, controls the existence of crime or tranquillity in domestic relations, and controls the probabilities of peace or war in international affairs. The answer was: Respect us as Equals. Did you anticipate this response? No one seemed to at that time. Currently, some school teachers guess it correctly in my seminars. Frankly, at that time, I was amazed. Most overseas Americans had been warning me that the local nationals hated us just as most overseas Americans held the foreigners in low esteem. Yet, obviously, this response, respect us, is basically pro-American (Isn’t it?). The most frequent responses making up that general category were these: Show us more respect View us as equals Treat us as equal human beings Respect our human equality Respect our women Respect our culture Don’t look down on us Don’t consider us (stuff) in the grass Don’t act like our bosses when you are not Don’t call us names Respect our lives Don’t consider our lives of less importance than your own”
― Robert Humphrey, Values For A New Millennium: Activating the Natural Law to: Reduce Violence, Revitalize Our Schools, and Promote Cross-Cultural Harmony

“You must be exposed to culture shock in depth before we can dig deeper toward a better understanding of the surprisingly controversial concept of respect for human equality. That is, in order for most persons to develop unshakable equal respect for all human beings, usually they must proceed through three ideological steps: Learn to appreciate, emotionally, the feeling of life’s equality in all of us; Be able to avoid a show of revulsion when exposed to the unattractive poor of the world. (Do you understand? I reiterate, poverty tends to be dirty, smelly, loud, unsanitary, and often dangerous.); But be able to remain understanding and respectful of the wealthy who suffer from culture shock even to the extent of having become haters of, or bigoted toward, the shunned persons. Violent revolution against them will continue to some degree, but it is foolish; too many innocent persons will be killed.”
― Robert Humphrey, Values For A New Millennium: Activating the Natural Law to: Reduce Violence, Revitalize Our Schools, and Promote Cross-Cultural Harmony

“Eventual success for us depended on nothing less than developing a better understanding of human nature including identification of the chief, violence-controlling, universal human values and the means to reinforce those values effectively.”
― Robert Humphrey, Values For A New Millennium: Activating the Natural Law to: Reduce Violence, Revitalize Our Schools, and Promote Cross-Cultural Harmony

“there, you’ve got to be able to meet the dirtiest, smelliest beggar-peasant, and as you walk past him, you’ve got to be able to speak to him, and make him know, just with your eyes, as you exchange glances, that you know he is a man who hurts like we do and hopes like we do and wants for his kids just like all of us Americans do. If you can do that, if most of us can do that, we can stay here until we want to leave. And we can win the worldwide ideological war, peacefully.”
― Robert Humphrey, Values For A New Millennium: Activating the Natural Law to: Reduce Violence, Revitalize Our Schools, and Promote Cross-Cultural Harmony

“Now, emphatically, be warned that to lead in this effort you must be tough-minded (thick skinned). If you try to change things constructively in the social sciences or try to reconcile conflicts, rather than take sides, you’ll be attacked through character assassination and every other means of skullduggery not excluding physical assault. It is inevitable and inescapable. It will disgust you to the point of befuddlement and, at times, rage. That beautiful beatitude in the Bible should be changed to read: Blessed are the peacemakers in heaven; because on Earth, they shall catch hell. Nonetheless, I’ll stress that the time is finally right, on our planet, for the expansive light of true civilization. Well-informed voices both prophesying and forcing that maturation, suddenly, are being heard everywhere.”
― Robert Humphrey, Values For A New Millennium: Activating the Natural Law to: Reduce Violence, Revitalize Our Schools, and Promote Cross-Cultural Harmony

“The basic conflict-resolving methodology was field-developed during a period of thirty years working in eight diverse cultures of the world. Its guiding principles were double-checked through research in twelve additional cultures. (Actually, the program was developed initially to put out fires in cross-cultural relations between overseas Americans and their foreign host-nationals in key hot spots of the world.)”
― Robert Humphrey, Values For A New Millennium: Activating the Natural Law to: Reduce Violence, Revitalize Our Schools, and Promote Cross-Cultural Harmony

“AND BOOKS OR MESSAGES THAT READ WELL, DON’T TEACH WELL. WHEREAS MATERIALS THAT TEACH WELL, DON’T READ FAST. RATHER, THEY FORCE YOU TO THINK. That takes time, not a favorite practice anymore for busy Americans.”
― Robert Humphrey, Values For A New Millennium: Activating the Natural Law to: Reduce Violence, Revitalize Our Schools, and Promote Cross-Cultural Harmony

“So I implore you, don’t try to read these instructions like a mere book. Go slowly; learn the method; build the necessary tolerance for confusion. Study the possible relationship between ideas when they seem to change direction completely. Study these lines of words for what they really are: the written directions to go and get pieces from everywhere to put together some important puzzles. Be patient every endless time that I pull back and review lead-in lessons for repetitive introductions to different follow-on points. They are needed by most.”
― Robert Humphrey, Values For A New Millennium: Activating the Natural Law to: Reduce Violence, Revitalize Our Schools, and Promote Cross-Cultural Harmony

“Since the foundation of the violence is innocent ignorance, that makes it easier to solve than if the basic problem were intentional wrongdoing, but it does not make it easy; easier, but still very difficult. Why so difficult? Because the ignorance at the foundation of the problem is shielded against correction by what we call the truth-resisting embarrassment syndrome. Often neither side of a social conflict wants the true underlying reason for the trouble admitted. Both insist on attributing the problem to more respectable, surface causes (if not, most naively of all, to intentional evil itself).”
― Robert Humphrey, Values For A New Millennium: Activating the Natural Law to: Reduce Violence, Revitalize Our Schools, and Promote Cross-Cultural Harmony

“Universal values exist and persist despite all the violations. There is a Natural Law in human affairs with automatic sanctions of unhappiness for it’s violations.”
― Robert Humphrey, Values For A New Millennium: Activating the Natural Law to: Reduce Violence, Revitalize Our Schools, and Promote Cross-Cultural Harmony

“The two wars that I have participated in were not horribly fascinating like the devil-protected, fiery gates at all. Rather, war is unspeakably disgusting. War is seeing poorly trained American boys committing atrocities—savagely cutting the ears off of injured enemy soldiers. It is stopping them and then wondering about being shot in the back. War is a young husband with his privates blown away and begging you for a grenade and you are tempted to give him one. War is the elderly, half-crazed peasant suffering from “interrogation wounds” lying in the mud beside his dead wife who had been sexually assaulted because he would not tell secrets that he probably did not possess. War is to see an American Marine cut in two by machine gun bullets; seeing him writhing in the dirt, trying to pull his own intestines out of the black, gritty sand and shove them back into the cavity that was his abdomen while pleading with his eyes for you to come out in front of the lines and help him; war is seeing that tortured silent plea just after seeing two of his buddies try, but be killed immediately by sinister, hissing sniper fire from nowhere. War is a young man, your own brother (say), with half his face shot away, while he is choking and drowning in his own vomit as it pulsates out of his throat. This is war. To veil it with the word, “hell,” is a manipulative lie, like calling it “heaven.” Face it; be able to discuss it for what it is—horrible death over and over—so that we are truly motivated to stop it.”
― Robert Humphrey, Values For A New Millennium: Activating the Natural Law to: Reduce Violence, Revitalize Our Schools, and Promote Cross-Cultural Harmony

“I asked the sergeant how we could prove a belief in equality despite our striking differences in wealth. He answered easily: “You got to be able to jump down off the truck into the sheep manure, go over there into that village of mud huts, walk down those narrow streets, and pick the dirtiest, stinkin’est village-peasant that you meet; and as you walk past him, you got to be able to make him know, just with your eyes, that you know that he is a man who hurts like we do, and hopes like we do, and wants for his kids just like we all do. That’s how you got to be able to do it. Nothin’ else ain’t going to work.”
― Robert Humphrey, Values For A New Millennium: Activating the Natural Law to: Reduce Violence, Revitalize Our Schools, and Promote Cross-Cultural Harmony

“But, in general, the natural laws of human behavior, that emanate from the life value, work with a degree of predictability that you can rely on for your problem-solving actions. AND THAT IS ALL YOU NEED FOR ANY SCIENCE. It is all you need to work successfully toward peace (conflict resolution and violence reduction).”
― Robert Humphrey, Values For A New Millennium: Activating the Natural Law to: Reduce Violence, Revitalize Our Schools, and Promote Cross-Cultural Harmony