Peace has to be created, in order to be maintained. It is the product of Faith, Strength, Energy, Will, Sympathy, Justice, Imagination, and the triumph of principle. It will never be achieved by passivity and quietism.
Interpretation
Peace must be actively pursued and nurtured through strong values and actions.
This quote emphasizes that peace is not a passive state that can be obtained without effort; it requires active engagement and the cultivation of various virtues such as faith, strength, and justice. Dorothy Thompson suggests that achieving a lasting peace relies on a proactive approach, involving imagination and steadfast principles, rather than simply waiting for peace to occur or accepting the status quo.
In practice
In a speech on international relations, one might use this quote to highlight the importance of active diplomacy.
Courage, it would seem, is nothing less than the power to overcome danger, misfortune, fear, injustice, while continuing to affirm inwardly that life with all its sorrows is good; that everything is meaningful even if in a sense beyond our understanding; and that there is always tomorrow.
When liberty is taken away by force it can be restored by force. When it is relinquished voluntarily by default it can never be recovered.
It is not the fact of liberty but the way in which liberty is exercised that ultimately determines whether liberty itself survives.
Age is not measured by years. Nature does not equally distribute energy. Some people are born old and tired while others are going strong at seventy.
Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live.
The more we elevate people's lives - the more we treat people with dignity and respect and honor their rights and freedoms - the more we discourageand even preventterrorism.
International exchanges are not a great tide to sweep away all differences, but they will slowly wear away at the obstacles to peace as surely as water wears away a hard stone.
No price is too great to pay for inner peace. Peace is the harmonious control of life. It is vibrant with life-energy. It is a power that easily transcends all our worldly knowledge. Yet it is not separate from our earthly existence. If we open the right avenues within, this peace can be felt here and now.
We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living.
War will stop when we no longer praise it, or give it any attention at all. Peace will come wherever it is sincerely invited.
I am convinced that the women of the world, united without any regard for national or racial dimensions, can become a most powerful force for international peace and brotherhood.
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