Peace can mean inner peace or civil peace. Peace is the absence of violence or war, and even the absence of uncomfortable disturbances. Peace implies a calmness or tranquility, so peace goes beyond a mere absence of active violence and war; tranquility requires a stable system that is fair and just to all, or living a life that is in harmony with others and the wider world. Peace also carries a connotation of unity and lawfulness. Here are some of the comments of the world’s thinkers on the subject of peace.
Peace has to be created, in order to be maintained. It is the product of Faith, Strength, Energy, Will, Sympathy, Justice, Imagination, and the triumph of principle. It will never be achieved by passivity and quietism.
Peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of creative alternatives for responding to conflict — alternatives to passive or aggressive responses, alternatives to violence.
They have not wanted Peace at all; they have wanted to be spared war — as though the absence of war was the same as peace.
I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a method of settling international disputes.
We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom.
To achieve peace we must recognize the historic truth that we can no longer live apart from the rest of the world. We must also recognize the fact that peace, like freedom, is not won once and for all. It is fought for daily, in many small acts, and is the result of many individual efforts. [ … ] We should remember that the United Nations is not a cure-all. It is only an instrument capable of effective action when its members have a will to make it work.
It isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn’t enough to believe in it. One must work at it.
While you are proclaiming peace with your lips, be careful to have it even more fully in your heart.
If you don’t know the guy on the other side of the world, love him anyway because he’s just like you. He has the same dreams, the same hopes and fears. It’s one world, pal. We’re all neighbors.
If civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships — the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together, in the same world at peace.
Peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous.
To witness that calm rhythm of life revives our worn souls and recaptures a feeling of belonging to the natural world.
No, I know all the war rhetoric, but it’s all aimed at achieving peace.
There is nothing so likely to produce peace as to be well prepared to meet the enemy.
I have come into this world to see this: the sword drop from men’s hands even at the height of their arc of rage because we have finally realized there is just one flesh we can wound.
Peace is not the absence of war but the presence of justice.
I do not want the peace that passeth understanding. I want the understanding which bringeth peace.
Peace on earth will come to stay,
When we live Christmas every day.
As peacemakers we must resist resolutely all the powers of war and destruction and proclaim that peace is the divine gift offered to all who affirm life.
A peace which depends upon fear is nothing but a suppressed war.
Naturally the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.
Religion and science both profess peace (and the sincerity of the professors is not being doubted), but each always turns out to have a dominant part in any war that is going or contemplated.
Whatever may be the tensions and the stresses of a particular day, there is always lurking close at hand the trailing beauty of forgotten joy or unremembered peace.
You can’t shake hands with a clenched fist.
You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist.
We kind o’ thought Christ went agin war an’ pillage.
It’s time for us to turn to each other, not on each other.
Anyone can love peace, but Jesus didn’t say, ‘Blessed are the peace-lovers.’ He says ‘peacemakers.’ He is referring to a life vocation, not a hobby on the sidelines of life.
We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.
We cannot be both the world’s leading champion of peace and the world’s leading supplier of the weapons of war.
I’m a nonviolent soldier. In place of weapons of violence, you have to use your mind, your heart, your sense of humor, every faculty available to you because no one has the right to take the life of another human being.
The life of ‘peace’ is both an inner journey toward a disarmed heart and a public journey toward a disarmed world. This difficult but beautiful journey gives infinite meaning and fulfillment to life itself because our lives become a gift for the whole human race. With peace as the beginning, middle, and end of life, life makes sense.
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
It is an unfortunate fact that we can secure peace only by preparing for war.
Peace is a daily, a weekly, a monthly process, gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers, quietly building new structures.
Peace is not achieved by controlling nations, but mastering our thoughts.
Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will live as one.
If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there’d be peace.
If someone thinks that love and peace is a cliche that must have been left behind in the Sixties, that’s his problem. Love and peace are eternal.
Democracy is not a state. It is an act, and each generation must do its part to help build what we called the Beloved Community, a nation and world society at peace with itself.
Not one of us can rest, be happy, be at home, be at peace with ourselves, until we end hatred and division.
The greatest personalities that ever existed have been those who united human beings and put them on the road toward cooperation and effectiveness and peace. Those whom the world has held highest have helped to unite and not sever interconnectedness. They have not been the destroyers of differences but the harmonizer of differences.
He only is advancing in life whose heart is getting softer, whose blood warmer, whose brain quicker, whose spirit is entering into living peace. And the men who have this life in them are the true lords or kings of the earth they, and they only.
Villager : An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.
Tevye : Very good. That way the whole world will be blind and toothless.
All will be well, all will be well, and all manner of things will be well.
Forgiveness empties the past of its power to empty the present of its peace.
Parents, choose your words wisely, carefully, thoughtfully. In the same way that violence begets violence and anger begets anger, kindness begets kindness and peace begets peace. Sow words of peace, words that build, words that show respect and belief and support.
Strong-willed children often grow into strong-willed adults who become world leaders, world shapers, and world changers. Parenting them peacefully is not only possible, it’s imperative because sowing peace in their hearts now while they’re in our care will grow a future of peace later when the world is in their care.
Peacemakers who challenge the prevailing concept of peace achieved by violence are often, ironically, called disturbers of the peace. That is only true if peace is defined as an uneasy ceasefire in a world dominated by the corrupt, a tenuous subjugation of the weak by the powerful, a hurting humanity suffering silently en mass for the profit of the bloated few. If, though, peace is defined as freedom, equality, safety, health, opportunity, and a voice for all, then we, the peacemakers, aren’t disturbers of the peace. We are purveyors of peace because we are disturbers of the status quo.
While conscience is our friend, all is at peace; however once it is offended, farewell to a tranquil mind.
