Guns go home with the soldiers, but landmines are designed to kill - mindlessly, out of control, for years.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the difference between weapons used in war and those that remain dangerous long after conflicts are over.
Jody Williams' quote draws attention to the tragic reality of landmines and their long-lasting impact on communities. While soldiers may return home after a war, landmines remain hidden dangers that can indiscriminately kill or maim for years, serving as a reminder of the unintended consequences of warfare and the need for greater accountability in arms proliferation.
In practice
In a public speech about disarmament, one could use this quote to emphasize the dangers of lingering weapons.
Landmines distinguish themselves because once they have been sown, once the soldier walks away from the weapon, the landmine cannot tell the difference between a soldier or a civilian - a woman, a child, a grandmother going out to collect firewood to make the family meal.
I think thereβs a mythology that if you want to change the world, you have to be sainted, like Mother Teresa or Nelson Mandela or Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Ordinary people with lives that go up and down and around in circles can still contribute to change.
I believe that worrying about the problems plaguing our planet without taking steps to confront them is absolutely irrelevant. The only thing that changes this world is taking action.
What I consider to be peace [is] a sustainable peace in which the majority of people on this planet have access to enough resources to live dignified lives.
Sorrow has the fortunate peculiarity that it preys upon itself. It dies of starvation. Since it is essentially an interruption of habits, it can be replaced by new habits. Constituting, as it does, a void, it is soon filled up by a real horror vacuum.
She could never be a saint, but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick.
[I]f vice and corruption prevail, liberty cannot subsist; but if virtue have the advantage, arbitrary power cannot be established.
Hold everything earthly with a loose hand, but grasp eternal things with a death-like grip
I've always wanted to sail to the South Seas, but I can't afford it. What these men can't afford is not to go. They are enmeshed in the cancerous discipline of security. And in the worship of security we fling our lives beneath the wheels of routine β and before we know it our lives are gone.
Beneath the makeup and behind the smile I am just a girl who wishes for the world.
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