Top 21 Quotes & Sayings by Scilla Elworthy

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American activist Scilla Elworthy.

Last updated on April 15, 2025.

Priscilla "Scilla" Elworthy is 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 Peace Prize. From 2005 she was adviser to Peter Gabriel, Desmond Tutu and Richard Branson in setting up The Elders. She is a member of the World Future Council and in 2012 co-founded Rising Women Rising World, a community of women on all continents who take responsibility for building a world that works for all.

American - Activist | Born: June 3, 1943

Source: Wikipedia

I have a little mantra: 'My fear grows fat on the energy I feed it. And if it grows very big, it probably happens.'

Scilla Elworthy

Like many traditional feminists, I became one of the boys, only better. For a while it gave me a buzz to win at their game, but ultimately, that kind of power just goes nowhere. Traditional feminism excludes men and so perpetuates conflict. I am not interested in warring about power.

Scilla Elworthy

This question: 'How do I deal with a bully without becoming a thug in return?' has been with me ever since I was a child.

Scilla Elworthy

If fear grows fat on the energy you feed it, you have to talk it down.

Scilla Elworthy

Nelson Mandela went to jail believing in violence, and 27 years later he and his colleagues had slowly and carefully honed the skills, the incredible skills, that they needed to turn one of the most vicious governments the world has known into a democracy. And they did it in a total devotion to non-violence.

Scilla Elworthy

Wherever there is injustice, there is anger, and anger is like gasoline - if you spray it around and somebody lights a matchstick, you have an inferno. But anger inside an engine is powerful: it can drive us forward and can get us through dreadful moments and give us power. I learnt this with my discussions with nuclear policy makers.

Scilla Elworthy

Consistently rated the most peaceable of all countries in the world by the Global Peace Index, Iceland has reduced its military expenditure to zero, has no armed forces, and has reduced the inequality gap between rich and poor.

Scilla Elworthy

To discover your mission and put it into action - instead of worrying on the sidelines - is to find peace of mind and a heart full of love.

Scilla Elworthy

Your 'hara' is here, where your uterus is if you're a woman, where the tummy sticks out if you're a man, the centre of gravity of the human body. It is the synthesis of our intellect, body and spirit, and by developing our consciousness of it, we can become incredibly rooted.

Scilla Elworthy

I flew aeroplanes, parachuted, walked on my own across the Himalayas - you name it; if it was dangerous, I did it.

Scilla Elworthy

Change happens at the level of the individual

Scilla Elworthy

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.

Scilla Elworthy

There are astonishing stories of heroism not only in preventing bloodshed, but in building understanding which lasts.

Scilla Elworthy

We need to learn and to show others that there are tried and tested, powerful ways of containing and resolving conflict which do not require the use of force.

Scilla Elworthy

More and more individuals worldwide are realizing that war does not solve conflict, nor resolve long-standing cycles of violence. As more of those who have this understanding communicate it to policy-makers and more particularly, start implementing it in their own lives and localities, change will start to happen.

Scilla Elworthy

I have a little mantra: My fear grows fat on the energy I feed it. And if it grows very big, it probably happens.

Scilla Elworthy

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.

Scilla Elworthy

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

Scilla Elworthy

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.

Scilla Elworthy