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Peace Quotes

John F. Kennedy, Shakespeare, Woodrow Wilson, Barack Obama and Isaac Herzog lead, which makes the page heavy on speeches. For older sources, Byron’s The Bride of Abydos (1813) has the line about a conqueror who makes a solitude and calls it peace. Keats, in Hyperion (1819), has the days of peace and slumberous calm fled, and Albert Schweitzer, in Kulturphilosophie (1923), says man will not himself find peace until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things.

Flagged: Patrick Henry’s “Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?” and Publilius Syrus on providing in peace what we need in war are both disputed. A passage on creating chaos through psychopolitics, credited to Lavrentiy Beria, is marked misattributed.

Random quote on Peace

Most quoted on peace:

I accept your nomination in the confident trust that the masses of our countrymen, North and South, are eager to clasp hands across the bloody chasm which has so long divided them.

Horace Greeley

The promise is: "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee." Now, as long as our minds are stayed on our dear selves, we shall never have peace.

Dwight L. Moody Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding. You cannot subjugate a nation forcibly unless you wipe out every man, woman, and child. Unless you wish to use such drastic measures, you must find a way of settling your disputes without resort to arms.

Albert Einstein

Mexicans: let us now pledge all our efforts to obtain and consolidate the benefits of peace.

Benito Juárez

Peace at Home, Peace in the World.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

The world and its peoples being as they are, there is no easy or quick or infallible approach to a secure peace. It is only by patient, persistent, undismayed effort, by trial and error, that peace can be won. Nor can it be won cheaply, as the taxpayer is learning.

Ralph Bunche Some Reflections on Peace in Our Time (1950)

Nor is heaven always at peace.

Claudian

For peace do not hope; to be just you must break it.
Still work for the minute and not for the year.

John Boyle O'Reilly

The weak and the defenceless, in this imperfect world, invite aggression from others. The best way in which we can serve the cause of peace is by removing the temptation from the path of those who think that we are weak and, therefore, they can bully or attack us.

Muhammad Ali Jinnah

The future is mysterious. Now we’re seeing an entire generation lost to war. My hopes for the future are not personal; they’re for my people. My hopes are for peace, and only for peace.

Hani Abbas Interview (2013)

As on the Sea of Galilee,
The Christ is whispering "Peace."

John Greenleaf Whittier

So, then, let us pursue the things making for peace and the things that are upbuilding to one another.

Paul of Tarsus

Peace is not the absence of anything. Real peace is the presence of something beautiful. Both peace and the thirst for it have been in the heart of every human being in every century and every civilization.

Prem Rawat

To the increase of his rulership

Isaiah The Book of Isaiah (-500)

The trenchant blade, Toledo trusty,
For want of fighting was grown rusty,
And ate into itself, for lack
Of somebody to hew and hack.

Samuel Butler Part I (1663)

The gentleman [Josiah Quincy] cannot have forgotten his own sentiment, uttered even on the floor of this House, "Peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must."

Henry Clay speech on the New Army Bill (1813)

Most anarchists believe the coming change can only come through a revolution, because the possessing class will not allow a peaceful change to take place; still we are willing to work for peace at any price, except at the price of liberty.

Lucy Parsons

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 D. Eisenhower

We can gain no lasting peace if we approach it with suspicion and mistrust or with fear. We can gain it only if we proceed with the understanding, the confidence, and the courage which flow from conviction.

Franklin D. Roosevelt Fourth inaugural address (1945)

That peace, safety, and concord may be the portion of our native land, and be long enjoyed by our fellow-citizens, is the most ardent wish of my heart, and if I can be instrumental in procuring or preserving them, I shall think I have not lived in vain.

Thomas Jefferson

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