WE MUST DEVISE A SYSTEM IN WHICH PEACE IS MORE REWARDING THAN WAR.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the necessity of creating a society where peaceful solutions are more valuable and beneficial than engaging in conflict.
Margaret Mead's quote highlights the critical need for societal structures that prioritize and reward peace over war. It calls for innovative approaches to conflict resolution and the establishment of incentives that encourage cooperation and harmonious living rather than violence and strife, suggesting that a lasting peace can only be achieved when it becomes advantageous for individuals and communities to choose it over war.
In practice
During a peace summit, this quote can be used to emphasize the need for peaceful negotiations.
Earth Day is the first holy day which transcends all national borders, yet preserves all geographical integrities, spans mountains and oceans and time belts, and yet brings people all over the world into one resonating accord, is devoted to the preservation of the harmony in nature and yet draws upon the triumphs of technology, the measurement of time, and instantaneous communication through space.
Prayer does not use up artificial energy, doesn't burn up any fossil fuel, doesn't pollute. Neither does song, neither does love, neither does the dance.
Instead of being presented with stereotypes by age, sex, color, class, or religion, children must have the opportunity to learn that within each range, some people are loathsome and some are delightful.
We won't have a society if we destroy the environment.
EARTH DAY uses one of humanity's great discoveries, the discovery of anniversaries by which, throughout time, human beings have kept their sorrows and their joys, their victories, their revelations and their obligations alive, for re-celebration and re-dedication another year, another decade, another century, another eon.
American society is very like a fish society. . . . Among certain species of fish, the only thing which determines order of dominance is length of time in the fishbowl. The oldest resident picks on the newest resident, and if the newest resident is removed to a new bowl, he, as oldest resident, will pick on the newcomers.
Ultimately, peace is just not about politics. It's about attitudes; about a sense of empathy; about breaking down the divisions that we create for ourselves in our own minds and our own hearts that don't exist in any objective reality, but that we carry with us generation after generation. And I know, because America, we, too, have had to work hard over the decades, slowly, gradually, sometimes painfully, in fits and starts, to keep perfecting our union.
We must create world-wide law and law enforcement as we outlaw world-wide war and weapon
But if the life will not be easy, it will be rich and satisfying. For every young American who participates in the Peace Corps-who works in a foreign land-will know that he or she is sharing in the great common task of bringing to man that decent way of life which is the foundation of freedom and a condition of peace.
Peace is not just the absence of war. Like a cathedral, peace must be constructed patiently and with unshakable faith.
My constant prayer, my number one foreign goal, is to bring peace to Israel. And in the process to Israel's neighbours.
When I pray for peace, I pray not only that the enemies of my own country may cease to want war, but above all that my country will cease to do the things that make war inevitable.
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