In countries where innocent people are dying, the leaders are following their blood rather than their brains.

We speak here of the challenge of the dichotomies of war and peace, violence and non-violence, racism and human dignity, oppression and repression and liberty and human rights, poverty and freedom from want.

When we dehumanise and demonise our opponents, we abandon the possibility of peacefully resolving our differences, and seek to justify violence against them.

Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones.

I shall never forget the grief and bitterness I felt on that terrible September morning when a bomb blew out the lives of those four little, innocent girls sitting in their Sunday-school class in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. I think of how a woman cried out, crunching through broken glass, "My God, we're not even safe in church!"

I used to be cruel to women, and physically-any woman. I was a hitter. I couldn't express myself and I hit. I fought men and I hit women. That is why I am always on about peace.