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The world will never have lasting peace so long as men reserve for war the finest human qualities. Peace, no less than war, requires idealism and self-sacrifice and a righteous and dynamic faith.
John Foster Dulles
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Interpretation

What this quote means

True peace requires the same level of dedication and virtues typically reserved for war.

John Foster Dulles suggests that achieving lasting peace demands qualities such as idealism, self-sacrifice, and unwavering faith—qualities often associated with warfare. He argues that if humans continue to reserve their noblest attributes for conflict, true and enduring peace will remain elusive. It implies that peace is not merely the absence of war, but an active pursuit that involves commitment and moral strength.

Themes

PeaceWarIdealismSelf-SacrificeFaith

In practice

Example use cases

This quote could be used in a speech advocating for peace initiatives in schools.

More from John Foster Dulles

The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it is the same problem you had last year.
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Mankind will never win lasting peace so long as men use their full resources only in tasks of war. While we are yet at peace, let us mobilize the potentialities, particularly the moral and spiritual potentialities, which we usually reserve for war.
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The mark of a successful organization isn't whether or not it has problems, its whether it has the same problems it had last year.
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Economic and military power can be developed under the spur of laws and appropriations. But moral power does not derive from any act of Congress. It depends on the relations of a people to their God. It is the churches to which we must look to develop the resources for the great moral offensive that is required to make human rights secure, and to win a just and lasting peace.
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The U.S. has no friends, only interests.
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I hope the day will never come when the American nation will be the champion of the status quo. Once that happens, we shall have forfeited, and rightly forfeited, the support of the unsatisfied, of those who are the victims of inevitable imperfections, of those who, young in years or spirit, believe that they can make a better world and of those who dream dreams and want to make their dreams to come true.
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