Peace, like charity, begins at home.
Interpretation
True peace starts within our own lives and relationships before it can be extended to the world.
The quote emphasizes that the foundation of peace is cultivated in our personal lives and surroundings. Just as charity, or caring for others, must originate from a place of love and stability at home, peace must also be nurtured within our own hearts and communities. Only when we find and practice peace in our immediate environments can we hope to extend that peace outward to the broader world.
In practice
During a community meeting about conflict resolution, one might say this quote to emphasize the importance of resolving personal disputes first.
There has been one persistent theme through all Axis propaganda. This theme has been that Americans are admittedly rich, that Americans have considerable industrial power - but that Americans are soft and decadent, that they cannot and will not unite and work and fight. ... Let them tell that to the Marines!
The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.
A war of ideas can no more be won without books than a naval war can be won without ships. Books, like ships, have the toughest armor, the longest cruising range, and mount the most powerful guns.
Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.
Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
A world turned into a stereotype, a society converted into a regiment, a life translated into a routine, make it difficult for either art or artists to survive. Crush individuality in society and you crush art as well. Nourish the conditions of a free life and you nourish the arts, too.
Peace is a day-to-day problem, the product of a multitude of events and judgments. Peace is not an 'is,' it is a 'becoming.'
Peace does not mean an absence of conflicts; differences will always be there. Peace means solving these differences through peaceful means; through dialogue, education, knowledge; and through humane ways.
No more wars, no more bloodshed. Peace unto you. Shalom, salaam, forever.
When it becomes a bloody reality, we have to come together and look at what can be done to return to the order of peace, ... There is no alternative to it.
In my view of the present aspect of affairs, there is no need of bloodshed and war. There is no necessity for it. I am not in favor of such a course, and I may say in advance, there will be no blood shed unless it be forced upon the government. The government will not use force unless force is used against it.
We have the ability to achieve, if we master the necessary goodwill, a common global society blessed with a shared culture of peace that is nourished by the ethnic, national and local diversities that enrich our lives.
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