Peacemaking Quotes - Page 4

• Throughout history, fairly arbitrary lines drawn on maps have determined who prospers and who needs, who eats and who starves, who attacks and who is attacked, who lives long and who dies young. Oh, we have been slaves to those lines for so long.

  Gavin de Becker

  Long, Needs, Arbitrary

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• When engaged in safe occupations, and living in healthy countries, men are much more apt to be frugal, than in unhealthy, or hazardous occupations, and in climates pernicious to human life. Sailors and soldiers are prodigals. . . . War and pestilence have always waste and luxury, among the other evils that follow in their train.

  John Rae

  Country, War, Men

  John Rae (1834). “Statement of Some New Principles on the Subject of Political Economy: Exposing the Fallacies of the System of Free Trade, and of Some Other Doctrines Maintained in the "Wealth of Nations."”, p.123

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• Wars damage the civilian society as much as they damage the enemy. Soldiers never get over it.

  Paul Fussell

  War, Soldier, Enemy

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• Feelings of guilt dominate our work as peacemakers we cannot last long. But when we have opened each other's eyes to the great human gifts among all people we can indeed make peacemaking a way of being.

  Henri Nouwen

  Gratitude, Eye, Mutual Support

  "Peacework: Prayer, Resistance, Community".

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• Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable.

  H. R. McMaster

  World, Bullets, Problem

  "We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint". www.nytimes.com. April 26, 2010.

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• WE MUST DEVISE A SYSTEM IN WHICH PEACE IS MORE REWARDING THAN WAR.

  Margaret Mead

  Life, War

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• Today we must abandon competition and secure cooperation. This must be the central fact in all our considerations of international affairs; otherwise we face certain disaster. Past thinking and methods did not prevent world wars. Future thinking must prevent wars...The stakes are immense, the task colossal the time is short. But we may hope- we must hope- that man's own creation, man's own genius, will not destroy him.

  Albert Einstein

  War, Past, Men

  "The Real Problem is in the Hearts of Man" by Michael Amrine, New York Times Magazine, June 23, 1946.

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• When the real history of mankind is fully disclosed, will it feature the echoes of gunfire or the shaping sound of lullabies? The great armistices made by military men or the peacemaking of women in homes and in neighborhoods? Will what happened in cradles and kitchens prove to be more controlling than what happened in congresses? When the surf of the centuries has made the great pyramids so much sand, the everlasting family will still be standing, because it is a celestial institution, formed outside telestial time.

  Neal A. Maxwell

  Military, Real, Home

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• The souls of emperors and cobblers are cast in the same mold...The same reason that makes us wrangle with a neighbor creates a war betwixt princes.

  Michel de Montaigne

  War, Equality, Soul

  "Essais" by Michel de Montaigne, Book II, Ch. 12, 1595.

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• War is harmful, not only to the conquered but to the conqueror. Society has arisen out of the works of peace; the essence of society is peacemaking. Peace and not war is the father of all things. Only economic action has created the wealth around us; labor, not the profession of arms, brings happiness. Peace builds, war destroys.

  Ludwig von Mises

  War, Father, Essence

  Ludwig von Mises (2016). “Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist”, p.44, VM eBooks

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• The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five.

  Carl Sagan

  Two, Race, Enemy

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• The incentive to peacemaking is love, but it degenerates into appeasement whenever justice is ignored. To forgive and to ask for forgiveness are both costly exercises. All authentic Christian peacemaking exhibits the love and justice-and so the pain-of the cross.

  John Stott

  Christian, Pain, Exercise

  John Stott (2012). “The Cross of Christ”, p.289, InterVarsity Press

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• How ironic for peacemaking efforts to discover that hatred is stronger for many than love; that the longing to achieve power through military victories makes so many men lose their reason, forget all shame, and betray history.

  Oscar Arias

  Military, Men, Effort

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• We should consider the possibility that many, and perhaps even all of Jesus' hell-fire or end-of-the-universe statements refer not to postmortem [after death] judgment but to the very historic consequences of rejecting his kingdom message of reconciliation and peacemaking. The destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 67-70 seems to many people to fulfill much of what we have traditionally understood as hell.

  Brian D. McLaren

  Jesus, Fire, People

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• I'm sure that someday children in schools will study the history of the men who made war as you study an absurdity. They'll be shocked, just as today we're shocked with cannibalism.

  Golda Meir

  Children, War, School

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• I don't hate my enemies. After all, I made 'em.

  Red Skelton

  Hate, Enemy, Ems

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• Without any coherent international blueprint the White House has bombed its way around the globe, while dropping troops far and wide for ill-defined peacemaking duties. This policy has gutted the American military which now must be rebuilt.

  Tom DeLay

  Military, White, House

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• My life has been devoted to peacemaking.

  Feisal Abdul Rauf

  Has Beens, Devoted

  "Larry King Live" with Soledad O'Brien, transcripts.cnn.com. September 8, 2010.

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• The Way of the Warrior has been misunderstood. It is not a means to kill and destroy others. Those who seek to compete and better one another are making a terrible mistake. To smash, injure, or destroy is the worst thing a human being can do. The real Way of a Warrior is to prevent such slaughter – it is the Art of Peace, the power of love.

  Morihei Ueshiba

  Art, Real, Mistake

  "Adjusting Though Reflex: Romancing Zen". Book by Rodger Hyodo, p. 76, 2010.

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• Peace, if it ever exists, will not be based on the fear of war, but on the love of peace. It will not be the abstaining from an act, but the coming of a state of mind. In this sense the most insignificant writer can serve peace, where the most powerful tribunals can do nothing.

  Julien Benda

  Powerful, War, Mind

  Julien Benda (2011). “The Treason of the Intellectuals”, p.184, Transaction Publishers

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• The intellectual and moral satisfaction that I failed to gain from the utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill, the revolutionary methods of Marx and Lenin, the social contract theory of Hobbes, the "back to nature" optimism of Rousseau, and the superman philosophy of Nietzsche, I found in the nonviolent resistance philosophy of Gandhi. I came to feel that this was the only morally and practically sound method open to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Philosophy, Struggle, People

  Martin Luther King (Jr.) (1964). “A Martin Luther King Treasury”

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• I know that in embarking on non-violence I shall be running what might be termed a mad risk. But the victories of truth have never been won without risks.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Running, Mad, Risk

  Mahatma Gandhi, Dennis Dalton (1996). “Gandhi: Selected Political Writings”, p.77, Hackett Publishing

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