Quotations about Peace

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. ~William Ewart Gladstone


If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other. ~Mother Teresa


Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


One must look hard through history to find when a clear understanding of the truth moved anyone to fire the first shot. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


If they want peace, nations should avoid the pin-pricks that precede cannon shots. ~Napoleon Bonaparte


The more we sweat in peace the less we bleed in war. ~Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit


Let there be peace on earth
And let it begin with me.
~Seymour Miller & Jill Jackson, "Let There Be Peace on Earth," 1955


I take it that what all men are really after is some form of, perhaps only some formula of, peace. ~James Conrad


The real differences around the world today are not between Jews and Arabs; Protestants and Catholics; Muslims, Croats, and Serbs. The real differences are between those who embrace peace and those who would destroy it; between those who look to the future and those who cling to the past; between those who open their arms and those who are determined to clench their fists. ~William J. Clinton, 1997


The pacifist's task today is to find a method of helping and healing which provides a revolutionary constructive substitute for war. ~Vera Brittain, 1964


You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist. ~Attributed to both Golda Meir and Indira Gandhi


Peace hath higher tests of manhood
Than battle ever knew.
~John Greenleaf Whittier


Five great enemies to peace inhabit with us: avarice, ambition, envy, anger, and pride. If those enemies were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace. ~Francesco Petrarch


Yes, we love peace, but we are not willing to take wounds for it, as we are for war. ~John Andrew Holmes, Wisdom in Small Doses


If in this present age we were to go back to the old time of "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," there would be very few hon. gentlemen in this House who would not, metaphorically speaking, be blind and toothless. ~Mr. Graham, 1914, Canadian House of Parliament member, commonly attributed to Mahatma Gandhi as "An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind." (Thanks, Garson O'Toole!)


There is one armor that the world of men and women, as a world, has never yet put on. The churches have long bungled with its fastenings, but the world has gone unfended, and few have been those in whose hands the mystical sword of the spirit has shone with daily use. This armor, waiting to be worn, is the armor of brotherhood and sacrifice, the world of unselfishness, a conquering sword, with the power, where used, to unite the world in love. And there are none who may not put it on. ~M.A. DeWolfe Howe


I think that people want peace so much that one of these days government had better get out of their way and let them have it. ~Dwight Eisenhower


Lord, bid war's trumpet cease;
Fold the whole earth in peace.
~Oliver Wendell Holmes


We have all taken risks in the making of war. Isn't it time that we should take risks to secure peace? ~J. Ramsay MacDonald


We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom. ~Dwight D. Eisenhower


Right is more precious than peace. ~Woodrow Wilson


Maybe we should develop a Crayola bomb as our next secret weapon. A happiness weapon. A beauty bomb. And every time a crisis developed, we would launch one. It would explode high in the air - explode softly - and send thousands, millions, of little parachutes into the air. Floating down to earth - boxes of Crayolas. And we wouldn't go cheap, either - not little boxes of eight. Boxes of sixty-four, with the sharpener built right in. With silver and gold and copper, magenta and peach and lime, amber and umber and all the rest. And people would smile and get a little funny look on their faces and cover the world with imagination. ~Robert Fulghum


In the name of peace
They waged the wars
Ain't they got no shame
~Nikki Giovanni


Let us love the world to peace. ~Quoted in The Angels' Little Instruction Book by Eileen Elias Freeman, 1994


A warless world will come as men develop warless hearts. ~Charles Wesley Burns


We shall never be able to effect physical disarmament until we have succeeded in effecting moral disarmament. ~J. Ramsay MacDonald