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Quotations about peace
Note that not all quotations have been tagged, so the Search function may find additional quotations on this topic.
Wars begin when you will, but they do not end when you please.
Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) Italian politician, philosopher, political scientist
Florentine Histories, Book 3, ch. 2 (1521-5)
As commonly given, specific translation unknown. Alt. trans.:
- "It is in the power of any man to begin a war, but he cannot end it when he pleases." [tr. Lester (1843)]
- "People may go to war when they will, but cannot always withdraw when they like." [Bohn's Standard Library (1891)]
- "Wars begin at the will of anyone, but they do not end at anyone's will." [tr. Banield and Mansfield (1988), Book 3, ch. 7]
What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.
Viktor Frankl (1905-1997) German-American psychologist, writer
Man’s Search for Meaning, Part 2 (1946)
(Source)
I realize that all society rests upon force. But all the great creative actions, all the decent human relations, occur during the intervals when force has not managed to come to the front. These intervals are what matter. I want them to be as frequent and as lengthy as possible, and I call them “civilization”.
E. M. Forster (1879-1970) English novelist, essayist, critic, librettist [Edward Morgan Forster]
“What I Believe,” The Nation (16 Jul 1938)
(Source)
No man can tame a tiger into a kitten by stroking it. There can be no appeasement with ruthlessness. There can be no reasoning with an incendiary bomb.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945) US President (1933-1945)
“Fireside Chat” radio address (29 Dec 1940)
For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course, that’s Moses, not Jesus. I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere. “Blessed are the merciful” in a courtroom? “Blessed are the peacemakers: in the Pentagon? Give me a break!
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1922-2007) American novelist, journalist
A Man Without A Country, ch. 9 (2005)
(Source)
The Beatitudes (Matthew 5).
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead!
In peace, there’s nothing so becomes a man,
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood.William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Henry V, Act 3, sc. 1 [Henry] (1599)
(Source)
If you want to make peace, you don’t talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.
Moshe Dayan (1915-1981) Israeli military leader and politician
In Newsweek (17 Oct 1977)
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) Welsh poet and writer
“Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” (1947)
(Source)
First published in Botteghe Oscure (Nov 1951).
Fond as we are of our loved ones, there comes at times during their absence an unexplained peace.
Other Authors and Sources
Anne Shaw, But Such Is Life (1931)
It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.
Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855) British novelist [pseud. Currer Bell]
Jane Eyre, ch. 12 [Jane] (1847)
(Source)
There is no such thing as inner peace. There is only nervousness or death.
Make love not war.
Gershon Legman (1917-1999) American writer
Speech, Ohio University (Nov 1963)
The coining of the phrase was attested in correspondence between Fred R. Shapiro, The Yale Book of Quotations (2006), and Legman's widow, Judith Legman.
It had been boldly predicted by some of the early Christians that the conversion of the world would lead to the establishment of perpetual peace. In looking back, with our present experience, we are driven to the melancholy conclusion that, instead of diminishing the number of wars, ecclesiastical influence as actually and very seriously increased it.
William Lecky (1838-1903) Irish historian
History of European Morals, Vol. 2, ch. 4 (1869)
I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
“Christmas Bells,” st. 1
It is no longer a choice, my friends, between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence. And the alternative to disarmament, the alternative to a greater suspension of nuclear tests, the alternative to strengthening the United Nations and thereby disarming the whole world, may well be a civilization plunged into the abyss of annihilation, and our earthly habitat would be transformed into an inferno that even the mind of Dante could not imagine.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman, civil rights leader, orator
“Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution,” National Cathedral, Washington, DC (31 Mar 1968)
(Source)
Peace cannot be built on exclusion. That has been the price of the past 30 years.
Gerry Adams (b. 1948) Northern Irish politician, statesman [Gearóid Mac Ádhaimh]
Daily Telegraph (11 Apr 1998)
The best foreign policy is to live our daily lives in honesty, decency, and integrity; at home, making our own land a more fitting habitation for free men; and abroad, joining with those of like mind and heart, to make of the world a place where all men can dwell in peace.
Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969) American general, US President (1953-61)
Inaugural Gabriel Silver lecture, Columbia University (23 Mar 1950)
Eisenhower was President of Columbia University at the time. The quote was widely used in an "I Believe" advertisement for Eisenhower during the 1956 election.
(Sources 1 and 2)
Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind.
John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) US President (1961-63)
Speech, United Nations (23 Sep 1961)
Speech written by Theodore "Ted" Sorensen.
The only way to win the next world war is to prevent it.
Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969) American general, US President (1953-61)
Speech, Seattle (17 Oct 1956)
I have said time and again there is no place on this earth to which I would not travel, there is no chore I would not undertake if I had any faintest hope that, by so doing, I would promote the general cause of world peace.
Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969) American general, US President (1953-61)
News Conference (23 Mar 1955)
I like to believe that people, in the long run, are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.
Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969) American general, US President (1953-61)
Broadcast with Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, London (31 Aug 1959)
The peace we seek and need means much more than mere absence of war. It means the acceptance of law, and the fostering of justice, in all the world.
Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969) American general, US President (1953-61)
“Developments in Eastern Europe and the Middle East,” Broadcast Speech (31 Oct 1956)
Are there no ideals more stirring than those of martial glory? Is this generation conscious of calls to the service of native land in ways no more worthy than the way of taking a musket and killing somebody? You ask, in the language of Prof. James, for a moral equivalent for war. A patriot needs only look about to find numberless causes that ought to warm the blood and stir the imagination. The dispelling of ignorance and the fostering of education, the investigation of disease and the searching out of remedies that will vanquish the giant ills that decimate the race, the inculcation of good feeling in the industrial world, the cause of the aged, the cause of the men and women who had so little chance — tell me, has war anything that beckons as these things beckon with alluring and compelling power? Whoso wants to share the heroism of battle let him join the fight against ignorance and disease — and the mad idea that war is necessary.
Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) American industrialist and philanthropist
“A Plea for Peace,” New York Times (7 Apr 1907)
(Source)
In vast stretches of the earth, men awoke today in hunger. They will spend the day in unceasing toil. And as the sun goes down they will still know hunger. They will see suffering in the eyes of their children. Many despair that their labor will ever decently shelter their families or protect them against disease. So long as this is so, peace and freedom will be in danger throughout our world. For wherever free men lose hope of progress, liberty will be weakened and the seeds of conflict will be sown.
Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969) American general, US President (1953-61)
Speech, Tenth Colombo Plan Meeting, Seattle (10 Nov 1958)
History gives no countenance to the theory that popular governments are either more moral or more pacific than strong monarchies.
William Ralph Inge (1860-1954) English prelate [Dean Inge]
“Our Present Discontents,” Outspoken Essays: First Series (1919)
PETRI: We cannot make peace with people we detest.
KIRK: Stop trying to kill each other. Then worry about being friendly.
John Meredyth Lucas (1919-2002) American screenwriter
Star Trek, 3×13 “Elaan of Troyius” (20 Dec 1968)
Peace does not appear so distant as it did. I hope it will come soon, and come to stay; and so come as to be worth the keeping in all future time. It will then have been proved that, among free men, there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and that they who take such appeal are sure to lose their case, and pay the cost.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) American lawyer, politician, US President (1861-65)
Letter to James C. Conkling (26 Aug 1863)
(Source)
Mark where his carnage and his conquests cease!
He makes a solitude, and calls it — peace.George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824) English poet
Bride of Abydos, Canto 2, st. 20 (1813)
See Tacitus.
To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.
[Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium; atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.]
Tacitus (c.56-c.120) Roman historian, orator, politician [Publius or Gaius Cornelius Tacitus]
Agricola, ch. 30 (AD 98) [tr. Oxford Revised]
(Source)Speech about Rome by the Caledonian chieftain Calgacus to his assembled warriors.
- "They plunder, they slaughter, and they steal: this they falsely name Empire, and where they make a wasteland, they call it peace." [Loeb Classical Library edition]
- "To plunder, butcher, steal, these things they misname empire: they make a desolation and they call it peace." [tr. William Peterson]
- "They rob, kill and plunder all under the deceiving name of Roman Rule. They make a desert and call it peace."
The hope of the world is that wisdom can arrest conflict between brothers. I believe that war is the deadly harvest of arrogant and unreasoning minds.
Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969) American general, US President (1953-61)
Speech, National Education Association, Washington, D.C. (4 Apr 1957)
For it isn’t enough to talk of peace. One must believe it. And it isn’t enough to believe in it. One must work at it.
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) First Lady of the US (1933-45), politician, diplomat, activist
Voice of America (11 Nov 1951)
We will have to want peace, want it enough to pay for it, pay for it in our own behavior and in material ways. We will have to want it enough to overcome our lethargy and go out and find all those in other countries who want it as much as we do.
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) First Lady of the US (1933-45), politician, diplomat, activist
This Troubled World (1938)
We have borne patiently a great deal of wrong, on the consideration that if nations go to war for every degree of injury, there would never be peace on earth. But when patience has begotten false estimates of its motives, when wrongs are pressed because it is believed they will be borne, resistance becomes morality.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801-09)
Letter to Mme de Stael (1807) [ME 11:282]
Europe … have totally mistaken our character. Accustomed to rise at a feather themselves, and to be always fighting, they will see in our conduct, fairly stated, that acquiescence under wrong, to a certain degree, is wisdom, and not pusillanimity; and that peace and happiness are preferable to that false honor which, by eternal wars, keeps their people in eternal labor, want, and wretchedness.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801-09)
Letter to James Madison (23 Mar 1815) [ME 14:290]
(Source)
But to those who expect us to calculate whether a compliance with unjust demands will not cost us less than a war we must leave as a question of calculation for them also whether to retire from unjust demands will not cost them less than a war. We can do to each other very sensible injuries by war, but mutual advantages of peace make that the best interest of both.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801-09)
State of the Union Message (8 Nov 1804) [ME 3:369]
(Source)
We love peace, yet spurn a tame submission to wrong.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801-09)
Letter to the New York Tammany Society (1808)
My hope of preserving peace for our country is not founded in the greater principles of non-resistance under every wrong, but in the belief that a just and friendly conduct on our part will procure justice and friendship from others.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801-09)
Letter to the Earl of Buchan (1803) [ME 10:401]
Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it. But the temper and folly of our enemies may not leave this in our choice.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801-09)
Letter to C. W. F. Dumas (1786)
Peace means something different from “not fighting.” Those aren’t peace advocates, they’re “stop fighting” advocates. Peace is an active and complex thing and sometimes fighting is part of what it takes to get it.
Jo Walton (b. 1964) Welsh-Canadian writer and poet
(Attributed)
You may either win your peace or buy it: win it, by resistance to evil; buy it, by compromise with evil.
John Ruskin (1819-1900) English art critic, painter, writer, social thinker
The Two Paths, Lecture 5 (1859)
War would end if the dead could return.
Stanley Baldwin (1867-1947) British Conservative politician, Prime Minister
(Attributed)
Wars can be prevented just as surely as they can be provoked, and we who fail to prevent them must share the guilt for the dead.
Omar Bradley (1893-1981) American general
(Attributed)
Yes, we love peace, but we are not willing to take wounds for it, as we are for war.
John Andrew Holmes (1874-1937) American physician and writer
Wisdom in Small Doses (1927)
Always a friend to peace and believing it to promote eminently the happiness and prosperity of mankind, I am ever unwilling that it should be disturbed as long as the rights and interests of the nations can be preserved. But whensoever hostile aggressions on these require a resort to war, we must meet our duty and convince the world that we are just friends and brave enemies.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801-09)
Letter to Andrew Jackson (1806) [ME 19:156]
(Source)
War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.
One of the fondest expressions around is that we can’t be the world’s policeman. […] But guess who gets called when suddenly someone needs a cop?
Colin Powell (b. 1937) American military leader, Secretary of State
Interview, New York Times (1990)
The staircase that leads to God. What does it matter if it is make-believe, if we really climb it? What difference does it make who builds it, or if it is made of marble or word, of brick, stone, or mud? The essential thing is that it be solid and that in climbing it we feel the peace that is inaccessible to those who do not climb it.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist
Pensées (1838) [ed. Auster (1983)]
An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.
Winston Churchill (1874-1965) British statesman and author
(Attributed)
Churchill reportedly used used this phrase frequently prior to WWII, but it has not been found per se by Churchill scholars in his writings, speeches, press conferences, radio addresses, or parliamentary debates. However, on a radio broadcast (20 Jan 1940), speaking of the neutral states standing by while Germany (and Russia) swallowed them up (referencing Finland fighting against Russia in particular), "Each one hopes that if he feeds the crocodile enough, the crocodile will eat him last. All of them hope that the storm will pass before their turn comes to be devoured. But I fear -- I fear greatly -- the storm will not pass. It will rage and it will roar, even more loudly, even more widely."
Also attributed to Franklin Roosevelt.
Croesus said to Cambyses: That peace was better than war; because in peace the sons did bury their fathers, but in wars the fathers did bury their sons.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626) English philosopher, scientist, author, statesman
Apophthegms, #149 (1625)
See Herodotus.
True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman, civil rights leader, orator
Stride Toward Freedom, ch. 2 (1958)
(Source)
Strange to see how a good dinner and feasting reconciles everybody.
Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) English diarist, naval administrator
Diary (9 Nov 1665)
Be at War with your Vices, at Peace with your Neighbours, and let every New-Year find you a better Man.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American statesman, scientist, philosopher
Poor Richard’s Almanack (1755)
More information on this quotation here.
But it must be remembered that, in spite of the proverb, it takes in reality only one to make a quarrel. It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favour of vegetarianism, while the wolf remains of a different opinion.
William Ralph Inge (1860-1954) English prelate [Dean Inge]
“Patriotism,” Outspoken Essays: First Series (1915)
Sometimes quoted as "while wolves remain of a different opinion."
You don’t promote the cause of peace by talking only to people with whom you agree.
Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969) American general, US President (1953-61)
News conference (20 Jan 1957)
