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:

Better than a thousand hollow words
Is one word that brings peace. Better than a thousand hollow verses
Is one verse that brings peace. Better than a hundred hollow lines
Is one line of the law, bringing peace.

Gautama Buddha

It is thus that mutual cowardice keeps us in peace. Were one-half of mankind brave and one-half cowards, the brave would be always beating the cowards. Were all brave, they would lead a very uneasy life; all would be continually fighting; but being all cowards, we go on very well.

Samuel Johnson

In this surrender—if such it may be called—the National Government does not even stoop to conquer. It simply lifts itself to the height of its original principle. The early efforts of its best negotiators, the patriotic trial of its soldiers … may at last prevail.

Charles Sumner

In a world of danger and trial, peace is our deepest aspiration, and when peace comes we will gladly convert not our swords into plowshares, but our bombs into peaceful reactors, and our planes into space vessels. "Pursue peace," the Bible tells us, and we shall pursue it with every effort and every energy that we possess. But it is an unfortunate fact that we can secure peace only by preparing for war.

John F. Kennedy

Justice will win -- because might does not make right, and the only path to lasting peace is when people know that their dignity will be respected and that their rights will be upheld. And citizens, like nations, will never settle for a world where the big are allowed to bully the small. Sooner or later, they fight back.

Barack Obama Remarks to the People of Estonia (2014)