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.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the indiscriminate nature of landmines and the tragedies they cause to innocent lives.
Jody Williams emphasizes the tragic reality of landmines, which do not differentiate between combatants and non-combatants. Once set, these weapons pose a persistent threat, potentially endangering civilians like women and children, thereby illustrating a broader commentary on the consequences of war and the indiscriminate suffering it inflicts on society.
In practice
In a speech about the impact of war on civilians, this quote can highlight the ongoing dangers posed by unexploded ordnance.
I think there’s 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.
Guns go home with the soldiers, but landmines are designed to kill - mindlessly, out of control, for years.
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.
I was absolutely convinced that I wouldn't win the Nobel Prize. My impression was that the Nobel Prize in Literature was given to people more or less affiliated with, let's say, socialist ideas, and that was not my case.
We must always remember that God is Love. "A fool indeed is he who, living on the banks of the Ganga, seeks to dig a little well for water. A fool indeed is the man who, living near a mine of diamonds, spends his life in searching for beads of glass." God is that mine of diamonds. We are fools indeed to give up God for legends of ghosts or flying hobgoblins. It is a disease, a morbid desire.
Liberty is the most jealous and exacting mistress that can beguile the brain and soul of man. She will have nothing from him who will not give her all. She knows that his pretended love serves but to betray. But when once the fierce heat of her quenchless, lustrous eyes have burned into the victim's heart, he will know no other smile but hers.
I went to India and was quite taken with it. There's a feeling there that things are holy first and useful second.
When we were told that by freedom we understood free enterprise, we did very little to dispel this monstrous falsehood. Wealth and economic well-being, we have asserted, are the fruits of freedom, while we should have been the first to know that this kind of happiness has been an unmixed blessing only in this country, and it is a minor blessing compared with the truly political freedoms, such as freedom of speech and thought, of assembly and association, even under the best conditions.
For, as I think I have said, I can only meditate when I am walking. When I stop I cease to think; my mind only works with my legs.
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