Scilla Elworthy Biography | Motivation Quotes | Inspirational Quotations

Scilla Elworthy’s Biography:

Scilla Elworthy was born on June 3, 1943 in Galashiels, Scotland. Scilla Elworthy attended Berkhamsted School for Girls on a Herts County Scholarship. Scilla Elworthy worked in refugee camps in France and Algiers during her vacations. After completed her studies, she travelled round West Africa to South Africa. She was involved in marketing between 1966 and 1969 for various boutiques, introducing the Mary Quant range.  She received her PhD in political Science from Bradford University in 1993.  Scilla Elworthy married Murray McLean, a South African entrepreneur in 1970. She has a child Jess McLean; she is the step mother of Leigh, Shirley, Pippa, Sophie and Jay and grandmother of Perl May Mary and Wolfetone.  Scilla Elworthy chaired Kupugani, a South African nutrition education organisation from 1970-1976. She established the Minority Rights Group in France in 1977 and she researched and delivered their report on female genital mutilation, leading to the World Health Organisation to eradicate the practice in 1977.

Scilla Elworthy became a consultant on women’s issues to UNESCO in 1979-81; she researched and wrote UNESCO’s contribution to the 1980 United Nations Mid-decade Conference on women: ‘The role of women in peace research, peace education and the improvement of relations and between nations.” Scilla Elworthy founded the Oxford Research Group an NGO in 1982 to develop effective dialogue between nuclear weapons policy-makers worldwide and their critics. She was nominated three times Nobel Peace prize for this work. She was awarded the Niwano Peace Prize in 2003. She stepped down as executive director of Oxford Research Group (ORG) in 2003 to found a new charity, Peace Direct; which supports local peace –builders in dispute areas. Scilla launched a production at the Royal Opera House theatre in London entitled Transforming 11 September in 2002. She provided the basic material for Max Stafford Clark’s production of Talking to Terrorists at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 2004. Scilla Elworthy worked with a group of young social entrepreneurs at the DO School in Hamburg to raise awareness of the work of peace builders worldwide in 2013 to 2014. Scilla latest book is Pioneering the Possible: awakened leadership for a world that works (North Atlantic Books, 2014) and 1,100,000 people were viewed her TED talk on non-violence.

Scilla Elworthy Motivational Quotations:

• “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.”

• “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.”

Download The Mobile App: Highly Secured Electronic Diary

• “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.”

•  “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.”

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

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

•  “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.”

• “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.”

•  “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.”

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