quotations about peace
Peace, gentlemen, it is well known, does not come of its own accord, and neither does freedom. Peace has enemies. Peace must be won by the sword.
JOHN LE CARRÉ
The Mission Song
The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.
GEORGE W. BUSH
2nd Inaugural Address, January 20, 2005
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
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
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
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
At the heart of happiness lies peace. It is the last and the highest attainment of the soul.
HUGH BLACK
Happiness
All true conflict should aim at peace.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
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
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"
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
You have peace ... when you make it with yourself.
MITCH ALBOM
The Five People You Meet in Heaven
Lead them beside still waters because you know how badly they need still waters.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
The Night of the Iguana
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
Better to keep peace than to gain a victory.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
One of the greatest dangers to peace lies in the economic pressure to which people find themselves subjected. One of the most practical things to be done in the world is to seek arrangements under which such pressure may be removed, so that opportunity may be renewed and hope may be revived.
CALVIN COOLIDGE
Inaugural Address, March 4, 1925
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
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
Peace ... is a morbid condition, due to a surplus of civilians, which war seeks to remedy.
CYRIL CONNOLLY
The Condemned Playground
None of the abstract concepts comes closer to fulfilled utopia than that of eternal peace.
THEODOR WIESENGRUND ADORNO
Minima Moralia