We have contingency plans for war, but none for peace.
Interpretation
We often prepare for conflict but neglect to plan for maintaining peace.
This quote highlights the tendency of societies and organizations to prioritize strategies for war and conflict, while failing to devise effective plans for achieving and sustaining peace. It suggests a critical flaw in our approach to governance and international relations, emphasizing the need for proactive measures to promote harmony and resolve disputes before they escalate into violence.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech about foreign policy to highlight the importance of peacekeeping efforts.
Our surest protection against assault from abroad has been not all our guards, gates and guns, or even our two oceans, but our essential goodness as a people. Our richest asset has been not our material wealth but our values.
The damage done to this country by its own misconduct in the last few months and years, to its very heart and soul, is far greater and longer lasting than any damage that any terrorist could possibly inflict upon us.
Public opinion rarely considers the needs of the next generation or the history of the last. It is frequently hampered by myths and misinformation, by stereotypes and shibboleths, and by an inate resistance to innovation.
Disease increases in proportion to the increase in the number of doctors in a place.
Poverty in itself does not make men into a rabble; a rabble is created only when there is joined to poverty a disposition of mind, an inner indignation against the rich, against society, against the government.
I look upon an increase in the power of the State with the greatest fear because, although while apparently doing good by minimizing exploitation, it does the greatest harm to mankind by destroying individuality which lies at the heart of all progress.
People who know there is a god and people who know there isn't live in exactly the same world. Same number of hours in the day, same weather, same football results. They both love their children and die of the same diseases.
Fear of the future is worse than one's present fortune.
Here I am, safely returned over those peaks from a journey far more beautiful and strange than anything I had hoped for or imagined - how is it that this safe return brings such regret?
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