Famous Quotations On Peace
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The split in today's world is perceptible even to a hasty glance. Anyone living today can easily distinguish two world powers, each of them already capable of utterly destroying the other. However, the understanding of the split is too often limited to this political conception: the illusion according to which the danger may be eliminated through successful diplomatic negotiations or by achieving a military balance. The truth is that the split is both more profound and more alienating and that the fissures are more numerous than one can see at first glance. This deep and multiform split threatens us all with an equally manifold disaster, in accordance with the ancient truth that a kingdom--in this case, our earth--divided against itself cannot stand. --Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn	What threatens us today is fear. Not the atom bomb, nor even fear of it, because if the bomb fell on Oxford tonight, all it could do would be to kill us, which is nothing, since in doing that, it will have robbed itself of its only power over us: which is fear of it, the being afraid of it. Our danger is not that. Our danger is the forces in the world today which are trying to use man's fear to rob him of his indiviuality, his soul, trying to reduce him to an unthinking mass by fear and bribery--...the ecomonies or ideologies or political systems, communist or socialist or democratic, whatever they wish to call themselves, the tyrants and the politicians, American or European or Asiatic, whatever they call themselves, who would reduce man to one obedient mass for their own aggrandisement and power, or because they themselves are baffled and afraid, afraid of, or incapable of, believing in man's capacity for courage and endurance and sacrifice. This is what we must resist, if we are to change the world for man's peace and security. --William Faulkner	When you live closely to individual dramas you marvel that we do not have continuous war, knowing what nightmares human beings conceal, what secret obsessions and hidden cruelties ...I knew the origin of war, which was in each of us, and I knew that our concept of the hero was outdated, that the modern hero was the one who would master his own neurosis so that it would not become universal, who would struggle with his myths, who would know that he himself created them, who would enter the labyrinth and fight the monster. This monster who sleeps at the bottom of his own brain. The wars we carried within us were projected outside. --Anais Nin
In the twentieth century war will be dead, the scaffold will be dead, royalty will be dead, and dogmas will be dead; but man will live. For all, there will be but one country--that country the whole earth; for all, there will be but one hope--that hope the whole heaven. All hail, then, to that noble twentieth century, which shall own our children, and which our children shall inherit. --Victor Hugo	The bells of the world have tolled long enough for death, let them now ring out for life...A dead youth is a blasphemy against the God of Life. No one desires war but a fool or a madman, and there is no longer room in the world for madmen or fools. We deny the infallibility of the atom bomb; we affirm the infallibility of the brotherhood of man the world over. --Sean O'Casey	What we now need to discover in the social realm is the moral equivalent of war; something heroic that will speak to man as universally as war does, and yet will be as conpatible with their spiritual selves as war has proved to be incompatible. --William James
...all I ask is that, in the midst of a murderous world, we agree to reflect on murder and to make a choice. After that, we can distinguish those who accept the consequences of being murderers themselves or the accomplices of murderers, and those who refuse to do so with all their force and being. Since this terrible dividing line does actually exist, it will be a gain if it be clearly marked. Over the expanse of five continents throughout the coming years an endless struggle is going to be pursued between violence and friendly persuasion, a struggle in which, granted, the former has a thousand times the chances of success than that of the latter. But I have always held that, if he who bases his hopes on human nature is a fool, he who gives up in the face of circumstances is a coward. And henceforth, the only honorable course will be to stake everything on a formidable gamble: that words are more powerful than munitions. --Albert Camus
Now, I maintain that in this matter you cannot run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. You cannot be an advocate of organised world peace and a full and complete patriot also. A great number of worthy people are trying to achieve this impossibility. If we subtract them from the total of those who are "working for world peace," I doubt if any large number of people remain. The patriotic attitude seems to be a much more natural and satisfactory one than the cosmopolitan. It is much easier to adhere to a government that exists than to get at cross-purposes with all the honour and procedure of your own country in order to work for one that does not and never may exist. Patriotism is rich with associations; it is romantic and poetic. It is always nice and strengthening to hate and despise something, and patriotism gives you the whole outer world for that sustaining use. Its chief drawback is that it takes you along roads that end sooner or later in war... --H. G. Wells