quotations about peace
We wish peace, but we wish the peace of justice, the peace of righteousness. We wish it because we think it is right and not because we are afraid.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
Inaugural Address, March 4, 1905
A peaceful man must fight
For that which peace demands,--
Freedom and faith, honor and right,
Defend with heart and hands.
HENRY VAN DYKE
"The Peaceful Warrior"
Without inner peace, outer peace is impossible. We all wish for world peace, but world peace will never be achieved unless we first establish peace within our own minds.
GESHE KELSANG GYATSO
Transform Your Life
Better to keep peace than to gain a victory.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
You have peace ... when you make it with yourself.
MITCH ALBOM
The Five People You Meet in Heaven
Peace. What a beautiful concept. What a rare commodity.
DARRELL HUCKABY
"Peace is all too rare a commodity these days", Online Athens, March 12, 2016
Though the heart wear the garment of its sorrow
And be not happy like a naked star,
Yet from the thought of peace some peace we borrow,
Some rapture from the rapture felt afar.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
"Premonition", A Hermit of Carmel
Cannot swords be turned to plowshares? Can we and all nations not live in peace? In our obsession with antagonisms of the moment, we often forget how much unites all the members of humanity. Perhaps we need some outside, universal threat to make us recognize this common bond. I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world. And yet, I ask you, is not an alien force already among us? What could be more alien to the universal aspirations of our peoples than war and the threat of war?
RONALD REAGAN
address to United Nations general assembly, September 21, 1987
I devoutly believe in the reign of peace and in the gradual advent of some sort of socialistic equilibrium. The fatalistic view of the war function is to me nonsense, for I know that war-making is due to definite motives and subject to prudential checks and reasonable criticisms, just like any other form of enterprise. And when whole nations are the armies, and the science of destruction vies in intellectual refinement with the science of production, I see that war becomes absurd and impossible from its own monstrosity. Extravagant ambitions will have to be replaced by reasonable claims, and nations must make common cause against them.
WILLIAM JAMES
The Moral Equivalent of War
Peace ... is a morbid condition, due to a surplus of civilians, which war seeks to remedy.
CYRIL CONNOLLY
The Condemned Playground
Can you conceive of anything that so represents the glory, and truth, and marvelousness of God's nature as the idea of peace?
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
Military power serves the cause of security by making prohibitive the cost of any aggressive attack. It serves the cause of peace by holding up a shield behind which the patient constructive work of peace can go on.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
State of the Union Address, January 9, 1958
Unless we find repose within ourselves, it is vain to seek it elsewhere.
HOSEA BALLOU
Edge-Tools of Speech
Peace is more important than all justice; and peace was not made for the sake of justice, but justice for the sake of peace.
MARTIN LUTHER
On Marriage
The soul, at peace, reflects the peace without,
Forgetting grief as sunset skies forget
The morning's transient shower.
EMMA LAZARUS
"Afternoon"
Peace is the only battle worth waging.
ALBERT CAMUS
"After Hiroshima: Between Hell and Reason", Combat, August 8, 1945
Peace is not something we work for. When we try our whole lives to build our own sphere of peace, we will always fall short. That is because peace is nothing more than a gift of God's grace. We do not earn peace, but God gives peace anyway.
PATRICK MABILOG
"Jesus promises peace, but why can't I feel it?", Christian Today, April 6, 2016
Lead them beside still waters because you know how badly they need still waters.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
The Night of the Iguana
Peace is not merely the absence of visible conflict. Only a just peace based on the inherent rights and dignity of every individual can truly be lasting.
BARACK OBAMA
Nobel Lecture, December 10, 2009
None of the abstract concepts comes closer to fulfilled utopia than that of eternal peace.
THEODOR WIESENGRUND ADORNO
Minima Moralia