Peacekeepers Quotes

• Peace is a fulltime job. It's protecting civilians, overseeing elections, and disarming ex-combatants. Peace, like war, must be waged.

  George Clooney

  Jobs, War, Election

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• It is my conviction that there is no way to peace - peace is the way.

  Nhat Hanh

  Peace, Truth, Yoga

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• Working with the UN's diplomacy and development arms, we can prevent minor differences from escalating into wars. When conflicts do break out, UN peacekeepers should play a role in defusing and settling them. Without giving up our sovereignty, we can help the UN with better training and better command and control in order to develop more effective peacekeeping forces.

  Bill Bradley

  Giving Up, War, Command And Control

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• Lovers of freedom, lovers of social justice, disarmers, peacekeepers, civil disobeyers, democrats, civil-rights activists, and defenders of the environment are legions in a single multiform cause, and they will gain strength by knowing it, taking encouragement from it, and when appropriate and opportune, pooling their efforts.

  Jonathan Schell

  Strength, Encouragement, Knowing

  Jonathan Schell (2005). “The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People”

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• On this International Day of UN Peacekeepers, let us pay tribute to the men and women from countries across the world who serve selflessly, tirelessly and fearlessly in UN peacekeeping operations. Let us remember the heroes who have laid down their lives in lands far from their own in the service of peace. And let us reaffirm our commitment to building a world free from the scourge of war.

  Kofi Annan

  Country, War, Hero

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• There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.

  A. J. Muste

  Peace, War, Ubuntu

  Quoted in N.Y. Times, 16 Nov. 1967

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• The Peacekeepers had a tradition that every problem had a solution. It was a nice slogan. Wasn't true, but it sounded good.

  Jack McDevitt

  Nice, Problem, Tradition

  "Chindi". Book by Jack McDevitt, 2002.

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• We'll let our friends be the peacekeepers and the great country called America will be the pacemakers.

  George W. Bush

  Country, Humor, America

  "Interventionist approach will be the first casualty of new regime" by Julian Borger, www.theguardian.com. December 13, 2000.

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• We send our [peacekeepers] off to some disputed zone, full of local intrigue and power blocs and uncertainty and danger, and they are supposed to save lives not with their weapons, but through their competence and their character. And they do it.

  Romeo LeBlanc

  Character, Weapons, Save A Life

  Speech on the occasion of the presentation of the insignia of the Order of Military Merit, February 05, 1997.

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• Nonviolent Peaceforce ...is building a large-scale professional force of well-trained unarmed peacekeepers ... This nonviolent peacekeeping provides an alternative to which we may say YES when we say NO to war.

  Mel Duncan

  War, Alternatives, May

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• The UN should arrange, as US forces leave, for an international group of peacekeepers and negotiators from the Arab countries to bring together Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, and work out a solution for self-governance that would give all three groups a share in political power. Simultaneously, the UN should arrange for shipments of food and medicine, from the United States and other countries, as well as engineers to help rebuild the country.

  Howard Zinn

  Country, Self, Medicine

  "How can America get out of Iraq?" by Noam Chomsky, Jonathan Schell, Howard Zinn, William Polk, www.theguardian.com. May 12, 2004.

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• The vote on the Peacekeeper is also a vote on Geneva. Rejecting the Peacekeeper will knock the legs out from under the negotiating table. (On importance of the MX missile)

  Ronald Reagan

  Legs, Tables, Vote

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• I do believe that the United Nations needs to have more exacting, more enhanced professional standards for the military peacekeepers that are deployed.

  Alex J. Morrison

  Military, Believe, Needs

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• Most of the Peacekeepers turn a blind eye to the few of us who hunt because they're as hungry as we are for fresh meat as anyone. In fact, they're among our best customers.

  Suzanne Collins

  Eye, Meat, Facts

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• United Nations peacekeepers are going all over the world spreading AIDS even while they're trying to bring peace. What a supreme irony.

  Richard Holbrooke

  Trying, World, Irony

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• There is a Silence that is totally impersonal.
  It is not the fruit of anybody’s work.
  Peace is there, but there is no peacekeeper.
  This Peace is only known when the noise of the person is not present.
  In the absence of the 'person' there are no distractions.
  Only the ever-pure Awareness prevails.
  The Ultimate is nobody’s achievement at all.

  Mooji

  Silence, Achievement, Noise

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• She’d survived the Drowned Cities because she wasn’t anything like Mouse. When the bullets started flying and warlords started making examples of peacekeeper collaborators, Mahlia had kept her head down, instead of standing up like Mouse. She’d looked out for herself, first. And because of that, she’d survived.

  Paolo Bacigalupi

  Cities, Flying, Example

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• I think fundamentally the bigger question is, what are we expecting peacekeepers to do? Are they actually, as the traditional conception would have it, keeping peace, in which case they're not there to actively intervene and stop violence? When we send them into these places, do we expect they will respond forcefully?

  Rebecca Hamilton

  Thinking, Violence, Expecting

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• For all the civilians saved thanks to the presence of peacekeepers, there have been those who were lost - the United Nations personnel who sacrificed their lives for a noble cause. Even as we mourn our fallen colleagues, we are all uplifted by their unflinching commitment and are inspired to strive even harder for the collective cause so eloquently envisaged in the United Nations Charter: a world free from the scourge of war.

  Jan Eliasson

  War, Commitment, Noble

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• The realization that I’d have nothing to take home had finally sunk in. My knees buckled and I slid down the tree trunk to its roots. It was too much. I was too sick and weak and tired, oh, so tired. Let them call the Peacekeepers and take us to the community home, I thought. Or better yet, let me die right here in the rain.

  Suzanne Collins

  Rain, Tired, Home

  Suzanne Collins (2011). “The Hunger Games Trilogy”, p.43, Scholastic Inc.

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• Under the international agreements, the Russian peacekeepers are committed to protect the population of South Ossetia.

  Vladimir Putin

  Agreement, Population, Protect

  Source: russialist.org

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• Today I weep for my country. No more is the image of America one of strong, yet benevolent peacekeeper. ... Around the globe, our friends mistrust us, our word is disputed, our intentions are questioned. We flaunt our superpower status with arrogance....After war has ended the United States will have to rebuild much more than the country of Iraq. We will have to rebuild America's image around the globe.

  Robert Byrd

  Country, Strong, War

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• The United States must reach out to the world community with a new plan to stabilize Iraq, bring U.N. peacekeepers in, and bring U.S. troops home.

  Dennis Kucinich

  Home, Iraq, Community

  Official press release, Washington, D.C., December 14, 2003.

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• Again, we saw in Bosnia - we had U.N. peacekeepers tied to trees, being taken hostage. The fact is they don't have the type of deliberate and authoritative rule that I think is needed to get the job done.

  Peter King

  Jobs, Taken, Thinking

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• It never occurred to me that anyone would name a nuclear missile "Peacekeeper". It never occurred to me that thousands of people would be killed in the name of "peace-keeping".

  Assata Shakur

  Names, People, Nuclear Missiles

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