If peace is equated simply with the absence of war, it can become abject pacifism that turns the world over to the most ruthless.
Interpretation
Peace is more than just the lack of conflict; it requires active effort to maintain justice and order.
Henry A. Kissinger's quote emphasizes that true peace cannot merely be defined as the absence of war or conflict. If society sees peace only as such, it risks becoming complacent and vulnerable to exploitation by those who do not uphold moral standards. Therefore, peace should involve active engagement in justice and ethical governance to ensure a stable and harmonious society.
In practice
This quote can be used during a peace conference to remind attendees of the complexities of achieving true peace.
Every civilization that has ever existed has ultimately collapsed. History is a tale of efforts that failed, or aspirations that werenβt realized. So, as a historian, one has to live with a sense of the inevitability of tragedy.
Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God.
It was a Greek tragedy. Nixon was fulfilling his own nature. Once it started it could not end otherwise.
The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.
What political leaders decide, intelligence services tend to seek to justify.
If I should ever be captured, I want no negotiation - and if I should request a negotiation from captivity they should consider that a sign of duress.
How could anybody confuse truth with beauty, I thought as I looked at him. Truth came with sunken eyes, bony or scarred, decayed. Its teeth were bad, its hair gray and unkempt. While beauty was empty as a gourd, vain as a parakeet. But it had power. It smelled of musk and oranges and made you close your eyes in a prayer.
Goodness is about character - integrity, honesty, kindness, generosity, moral courage, and the like. More than anything else, it is about how we treat other people.
In a free society, government has the responsibility of protecting us from others, but not from ourselves.
An independent Ireland would see its own independence in jeopardy the moment it saw the independence of Britain seriously threatened. Mutual self-interest would make the peoples of these two islands, if both independent, the closest possible allies in a moment of real national danger to either.
The Byronic hero, incapable of love, or capable only of an impossible love, suffers endlessly. He is solitary, languid, his condition exhausts him. If he wants to feel alive, it must be in the terrible exaltation of a brief and destructive action.
We worship God through our questions.
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