“The greatest honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker.”
"The greatest honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker" was later used as Nixon's epitaph.
1960s, First Inaugural Address (1969)
Context: What kind of nation we will be, what kind of world we will live in, whether we shape the future in the image of our hopes, is ours to determine by our actions and our choices.
The greatest honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker. This honor now beckons America — the chance to help lead the world at last out of the valley of turmoil, and onto that high ground of peace that man has dreamed of since the dawn of civilization.
If we succeed, generations to come will say of us now living that we mastered our moment, that we helped make the world safe for mankind.
This is our summons to greatness.
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Richard Nixon 89
37th President of the United States of America 1913–1994Related quotes
“Everyone would like to be the greatest, but God cannot bestow that honor on everyone.”
Source: Gervaso, Roberto. La mosca al naso, Rizzoli Editore (1980)
“The greatest honor which can be paid to God is to know and imitate him.”
Sentences of Sextus
La galantería y la honra tienen esta ventaja, que se quedan: aquélla en quien la usa, ésta en quien la haze.
Maxim 118: (p. 66)
The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1647)
“A favor well bestowed is almost as great an honor to him who confers it as to him who receives it.”
No. 497 (30 September 1712)
The Spectator (1711-1714)
De vita solitaria (1346) as quoted in Madalyn Aslan's Jupiter Signs: How to Improve Your Luck, Career, Health, Finances, Appearance, and Relationships Through the New Astrology (2003) by Madalyn Aslan
“I know of no title that I deem more honorable than that of Professor of the Harvard Law School.”
Of Law and Life and Other Things: Papers and Address of Felix Frankfurter (1965).
Other writings
1920s, Ordered Liberty and World Peace (1924)
“The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.”
No findable citation to Socrates. Found ascribed to Socrates in Stephen Covey (1992), Principle Centered Leadership (1990) p. 51 https://books.google.com/books?id=w4zCIPZrniQC&pg=PA51&dq=%22be+what+we+pretend+to+be%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiyvZnCg5HKAhUU5mMKHQIIAIgQ6AEIHTAA#v=onepage&q=%22be%20what%20we%20pretend%20to%20be%22&f=false.
Misattributed