Pantheon of Heroes

We look for inspiration to these heroes of democracy and thought , and we hope they inspire you too. Below is our “Pantheon of Heroes” for world democracy, enjoy their wisdom. This page is currently being constructed and if you have any quotes or other heroes let us know.

Socrates

Socrates (469 BC–399 BC) was a Classical Greek philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, in reality he is an enigmatic figure known only through other people’s accounts. It is Plato‘s dialogues that have largely created today’s impression of him.

One of his most famous quotations is “I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.“

William Penn

William Penn (October 14, 1644 – July 30,1718) was an early leader of the Quakers, and founder and “Absolute Proprietor” of the Province of Pennsylvania, the English North American colony and the future U.S. state of Pennsylvania. He was known as an early champion of democracy and religious freedom and famous for his good relations and his treaties with the Lenape Indians. Under his direction, Philadelphia was planned and developed.

He wrote an essay entitled “Towards the Present and Future Peace in Europe” in 1692, arguing the need for a European Parliament. He summed up his argument neatly in a single sentence:“Peace is maintained by Justice, which is a Fruit of Government as Government is from Society, and Society from Consent.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau

Jean Jacques Rousseau (28 June 1712 – Ermenonville, 2 July 1778) was a major Swiss philosopher, writer, and composer of the Enlightenment, whose political philosophy influenced the French Revolution and the development of liberal, conservative, and socialist theory. With his Confessions, Reveries of a Solitary Walker, and other writings, he invented modern autobiography and encouraged a new focus on the building of subjectivity that bore fruit in the work of thinkers as diverse as Hegel and Freud. His novel Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse was one of the best-selling fictional works of the eighteenth century and of great importance to the development of romanticism.[1] He also made important contributions to music as a theorist and a composer, and was reburied alongside other French national heroes in the Panthéon in Paris, sixteen years after his death, in 1794.

"The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this imposter; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody." He wrote a book entitled “Perpetual Peace”, expounding the scheme of Abbe de Saint-Pierre for a European federation to preserve the peace.

Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant (April 22, 1724 – February 12, 1804) was an 18th-century German philosopher from the Prussian city of Königsberg (now Kaliningrad, Russia). He is regarded as one of the most influential thinkers of modern Europe and of the late Enlightenment.

He also wrote a book entitled “Perpetual Peace”, in which he declared ”At the tribunal of reason there is but one means of extricating states from the turbulent situation, in which they are constantly menaced by war; namely, to renounce, like individuals, the anarchic liberty of savages, in order to submit hemselves to coercive laws, and thus form a society of nations which would insensibly embrace all the nations of the earth.” “The law of nations shall be founded on a federation of free states.”

George Washington

George Washington(February 22, 1732 – December 14, 1799) served as the first President of the United States of America (1789–1797), and led the Continental Army to victory over the Kingdom of Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War(1775–1783).

In a letter to the Marquis de Lafayette, he wrote:”I am a citizen of the Great Republic of Humanity. We have sown a seed of liberty and union which will gradually spring up throughout the earth. One day, on the model of the United States of America, there will be created the United States of Europe.”

Baha'ullah

Bahá’u’lláh(November 12, 1817 –May 29, 1892), born Mírzá Persian, was the founder of the Bahá’í Faith.

A central precept of the Baha’i faith is its belief in a new world order in which the peoples of the world will be united to live together in peace and harmony.“The Earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens.”

Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein (14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist. He is best known for his theory of relativity and specifically mass–energy equivalence, expressed by the equation E = mc2. Einstein received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics “for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.“

"In my opinion the only salvation for civilization and the human race lies in the creation of a world government, with security of nations founded upon law. As long as sovereign states continue to have separate armaments and armament secrets, new world wars will be inevitable. There is no salvation for civilization, or even the human race, other than the creation of a world government. Mankind’s desire for peace can be realized only by the creation of a world government. With all my heart I believe that the world’s present system of sovereign nations can only lead to barbarism, war, and inhumanity."

Jean Monnet

Jean Omer Marie Gabriel Monnet (November 9, 1888 –March 16, 1979) is regarded by many as a chief architect of European Unity. Never elected to public office, Monnet worked behind the scenes of American and European governments as a well-connected and pragmatic internationalist. He prepared what later became known as the “Schuman Plan”, which led to the formation of the European Coal and Steel Community, later to develop into the European Union.

“There is no future for the people of Europe other than in union.”Building Union among people not cooperation between states” There is no real peace in Europe, if the states are reconstituted on a basis of national sovereignty. (…) They must have larger markets. Their prosperity is impossible, unless the States of Europe form themselves in a European Federation.

William R Pace

William R. Pace is the Executive Director of the World Federalist Movement-Institute for Global Policy, the umbrella organization for the world federalist movement. He has served as the Convenor of the Coalition for an International Criminal Court since its founding in 1995 and is a co-founder and steering committee member of the International Coalition for the Responsibility to Protect. He has been actively engaged in international justice, rule of law, environmental law, and human rights issues for the past 30 years.

Each government has a responsibility to protect its population from genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, recognizing that the conscience of humanity continues to be deeply shocked by unimaginable atrocities in various parts of the world. ..

The Court plays a central role in peace-building processes as the only permanent international criminal court within an evolving system of international criminal justice, not least through the Court’s contribution to guaranteeing lasting respect for, and the enforcement of, international justice

Andreas Bummel

Andreas Bummel (born 1976 in Cape Town) is co-founder and Director of Democracy Without Borders (formerly Committee for a Democratic U.N.) in Germany, and has dedicated his life to the international campaign for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly. Since 1998 he has been a member of the Council of the World Federalist Movement-Institute for Global Policy in New York. In 2012, he was elected as a fellow by the World Academy of Art and Science in recognition of his work on a world parliament.

“Be it war, poverty, extreme social inequality, climate change or environmental destruction: Nation-states are not up to the global challenges of our time. Doing the right thing is not so much an issue of having the right policies; rather, it is an issue of having the right political structures. Achieving a peaceful, just and sustainable world civilization requires an evolutionary leap forward towards a federal global government. The creation of a democratic world parliament is the centerpiece of this project.”

Bob Brown

Bob Brown is a public figure in Australia as politician, medical doctor, wilderness campaigner, former Senator and former Parliamentary Leader of the Australian Greens Party. In 2012, he delivered the third annual Green Oration in Hobart, calling for a global parliament, and moved a motion to endorse the idea at the third Global Greens Congress in Senegal that year. In his autobiography “Optimism” he includes several chapters on his call for a global parliament.

“For comprehensive Earth action, an all-of-the-Earth representative democracy is required. That is, a global parliament ..

let us create a global democracy and parliament under the grand idea of one person, one vote, one value, one planet.”