Quotes on Peacemaking

The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders...tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.

We look forward to the time when the Power of Love will replace the Love of Power. Then will our world know the blessings of peace.

You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist.

If you want peace, you don't talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.

Five enemies of peace inhabit with us - avarice, ambition, envy, anger, and pride; if these were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace.

You can't shake hands with a closed fist.

War is harmful, not only to the conquered but to the conqueror. Society has arisen out of the works of peace; the essence of society is peacemaking. Peace and not war is the father of all things. Only economic action has created the wealth around us; labor, not the profession of arms, brings happiness. Peace builds, war destroys.

When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.

WE MUST DEVISE A SYSTEM IN WHICH PEACE IS MORE REWARDING THAN WAR.

In a world so torn apart by rivalry, anger, and hatred, we have the privileged vocation to be living signs of a love that can bridge all divisions and heal all wounds.

Peace is the only battle worth waging.

The incentive to peacemaking is love, but it degenerates into appeasement whenever justice is ignored. To forgive and to ask for forgiveness are both costly exercises. All authentic Christian peacemaking exhibits the love and justice-and so the pain-of the cross.

The intellectual and moral satisfaction that I failed to gain from the utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill, the revolutionary methods of Marx and Lenin, the social contract theory of Hobbes, the "back to nature" optimism of Rousseau, and the superman philosophy of Nietzsche, I found in the nonviolent resistance philosophy of Gandhi. I came to feel that this was the only morally and practically sound method open to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom.

Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.

Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.

I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.

Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.

The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five.

There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.

You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.

Feelings of guilt dominate our work as peacemakers we cannot last long. But when we have opened each other's eyes to the great human gifts among all people we can indeed make peacemaking a way of being.