You lose nothing through peace. You can lose everything through war.
Interpretation
Choosing peace ensures the preservation of what you have, while war brings the risk of losing everything.
This quote by Pope Pius XII emphasizes the idea that embracing peace leads to stability and security. In contrast, engaging in war is fraught with danger and can result in total loss, making the case for prioritizing peaceful solutions over conflict.
In practice
In a speech advocating for diplomacy, this quote underscores why negotiation is preferable to military action.
If a worker is deprived of hope to acquire some personal property, what other natural stimulus can be offered him that will inspire him to hard work, labor, saving and sobriety today, when so many nations and men have lost everything and all they have left is their capacity for work?
To live without risk is to risk not living.
It might be said that society speaks through the clothing it wears. Through its clothing it reveals its secret aspirations and uses it, at least in part, to build or destroy its future.
The faith of the Church is this: That one and identical is the Word of God and the Son of Mary Who suffered on the Cross, Who is present in the Eucharist, and Who rules in Heaven
True science discovers God in an ever-increasing degree β as though God were waiting behind every door opened by science.
Let no Christian therefore, whether philosopher or theologian, embrace eagerly and lightly whatever novelty happens to be thought up from day to day, but rather let him weigh it with painstaking care and a balanced judgment, lest he lose or corrupt the truth he already has, with grave danger and damage to his faith.
They assert that their program is purely peaceful. . . . We want them to demonstrate clearly in the actions they propose that they have truly abandoned any nuclear weapons ambition.
Choose the human race over the nuclear race. Bury the weapons and don't burn the people.
Not many countries establish a prize for peace. The Seoul Peace Prize has its roots in the 1988 Summer Olympics when this country opened its doors to people and athletes from more than 160 countries. Korea did so in part because it believes in the power of sports for peace and development.
Our capacity to make peace with another person and with the world depends very much on our capacity to make peace with ourselves.
In Israel, there is a peace camp that can convene 200,000 people in central square of this city, on very short notice, and there is a major movement among academics, politicians, thinkers, and public leaders for peace, even at a painful price. On the Palestinian side, you can find them individually here and there, but there is no public movement.
True peace can rarely be imposed from the outside; it must be born within and between communities through meetings and dialogue and then carried outward.
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