Quotes about peace
page 27

Muhammad photo

“Anas reported that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "Allah is pleased with His slave who eats a morsel and praises Allah for it or takes a drink and praises Allah for it."”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 1, hadith number 140
Sunni Hadith

Henry Van Dyke photo
James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce photo
Walt Whitman photo
Margaret Fuller photo
Dwight D. Eisenhower photo
George Fitzhugh photo

“The chroniclers of the early Turkish rulers of India take pride in affirming that Qutbuddin Aibak was a killer of lakhs of infidels. Leave aside enthusiastic killers like Alauddin Khalji and Muhammad bin Tughlaq, even the "kind-hearted" Firoz Tughlaq killed more than a lakh Bengalis when he invaded their country. Timur Lang or Tamerlane says he killed a hundred thousand infidel prisoners of war in Delhi. He built victory pillars from severed heads at many places. These were acts of sultans. The nobles were not lagging behind. One Shaikh Daud Kambu is said to have killed 20,000 with his dagger. The Bahmani sultans of Gulbarga and Bidar considered it meritorious to kill a hundred thousand Hindu men, women and children every year….. The rite of Jauhar killed the women, the tradition of not deserting the field of battle made Rajputs and others die fighting in large numbers. When Malwa was attacked (1305), its Raja is said to have possessed 40,000 horse and 100,000 foot.43 After the battle, "so far as human eye could see, the ground was muddy with blood"…. Under Muhammad Tughlaq, wars and rebellions knew no end. His expeditions to Bengal, Sindh and the Deccan, as well as ruthless suppression of twenty-two rebellions, meant only depopulation in the thirteenth and first half of the fourteenth century. For one thing, in spite of constant efforts no addition of territory could be made by Turkish rulers from 1210 to 1296; for another the Turkish rulers were more ruthless in war and less merciful in peace. Hence the extirpating massacres of Balban, and the repeated attacks by others on regions already devastated but not completely subdued….. Mulla Daud of Bidar vividly describes the war between Muhammad Shah Bahmani and the Vijayanagar King in 1366 in which "Farishtah computes the victims on the Hindu side alone as numbering no less than half a million." Muhammad also devastated the Karnatak region with vengeance….. Under Akbar and Jahangir "five or six hundred thousand human beings were killed," says emperor Jahangir. The figures given by these killers and their chroniclers may be a few thousand less or a few thousand more, but what bred this ambition of cutting down human beings without compunction was the Muslim theory, practice and spirit of Jihad, as spelled out in Muslim scriptures and rules of administration.”

Ch 3
Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India (1999)

Charles James Fox photo
George Gordon Byron photo
Muhammad photo
Robert Murray M'Cheyne photo
Muhammad Ali Jinnah photo
Hal David photo

“The love of a girl can make a man stay on when he should go,Just tryin' to build a peaceful life where love is free to grow.”

Hal David (1921–2012) American lyricist

Song The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

Charles Taze Russell photo
Al Gore photo

“American troops and American taxpayers are shouldering a huge burden with no end in sight because Mr. Bush took us to war on false premises and with no plan to win the peace.”

Al Gore (1948) 45th Vice President of the United States

"How to Debate George Bush" in The New York Times (29 September 2004).

Hester Chapone photo
Tsunetomo Yamamoto photo
Rudolph Rummel photo

“Socialism aside, there also has been a rejection of Western values, of which individual freedom is prominent, and acceptance of some form of value-relativism (thus, no political system is better than any other). In some cases this rejection has turned to outright hostility and particularly anti-Americanism, and thus opposition to American values, such as freedom. To accept, therefore, that democratic freedom is inherently most peaceful, is to the value-relativist, to say the unacceptable—that it is better.”

Rudolph Rummel (1932–2014) American academic

“Political Systems, Violence, and War,” chap. 14, in "Approaches to Peace: An Intellectual Map", edit, W. Scott Thompson and Kenneth M. Jensen, Washington, D.C., United States Institute of Peace, 1991, pp. 347-370; and “The Politics of Cold Blood,” Society, Vol. 27 (November/December, 1989) pp. 32-40

Adam Smith photo
Robert G. Ingersoll photo
Kenneth N. Waltz photo

“It is not true that were the Soviet Union to disappear the remaining states could easily live in peace.”

Source: Man, the State, and War (1959), Chapter VIII, Conclusion, p. 230

John Gray photo
Enoch Powell photo

“The Prime Minister constantly asserts that the nuclear weapon has kept the peace in Europe for the last 40 years… Let us go back to the middle 1950s or to the end of the 1940s, and let us suppose that nuclear power had never been invented… I assert that in those circumstances there would still not have been a Russian invasion of western Europe. What has prevented that from happening was not the nuclear hypothesis… but the fact that the Soviet Union knew the consequences of such a move, consequences which would have followed whether or not there were 300,000 American troops stationed in Europe. The Soviet Union knew that such an action on its part would have led to a third world war—a long war, bitterly fought, a war which in the end the Soviet Union would have been likely to lose on the same basis and in the same way as the corresponding war was lost by Napoleon, by the Emperor Wilhelm and by Adolf Hitler…
For of course a logically irresistible conclusion followed from the creed that our safety depended upon the nuclear capability of the United States and its willingness to commit that capability in certain events. If that was so—and we assured ourselves for 40 years that it was—the guiding principle of the foreign policy of the United Kingdom had to be that, in no circumstances, must it depart from the basic insights of the United States and that any demand placed in the name of defence upon the United Kingdom by the United States was a demand that could not be resisted. Such was the rigorous logic of the nuclear deterrent…
It was in obedience to it… that the Prime Minister said, in the context of the use of American bases in Britain to launch an aggressive attack on Libya, that it was "inconceivable" that we could have refused a demand placed upon this country by the United States. The Prime Minister supplied the reason why: she said it was because we depend for our liberty and freedom upon the United States. Once let the nuclear hypothesis be questioned or destroyed, once allow it to break down, and from that moment the American imperative in this country's policies disappears with it.
A few days ago I was reminded, when reading a new biography of Richard Cobden, that he once addressed a terrible sentence of four words to this House of Commons. He said to hon. Members: "You have been Englishmen." The strength of those words lies in the perfect tense, with the implication that they were so no longer but had within themselves the power to be so again. I believe that we now have the opportunity, with the dissolution of the nightmare of the nuclear theory, for this country once again to have a defence policy that accords with the needs of this country as an island nation, and to have a foreign policy which rests upon a true, undistorted view of the outside world. Above all, we have the opportunity to have a foreign policy that is not dictated from outside to this country, but willed by its people. That day is coming. It may be delayed, but it will come.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech on Foreign Affairs in the House of Commons http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1987/apr/07/foreign-affairs (7 April 1987).
1980s

Woody Allen photo

“I took a course in speed reading, learning to read straight down the middle of the page, and I was able to go through War and Peace in 20 minutes. It’s about Russia”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

Attributed to Allen by Herb Caen in Reader's Digest, October 1967. For additional citations see this entry from Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/12/08/speed-reading/.

Thomas Merton photo
Muhammad photo
Andrew Dickson White photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Hillary Clinton photo
Hamid Karzai photo

“Today, while celebrating the jihad victory, we once again invite those who have sided with aliens because of seduction against their nation, to give up sedition and evil and join peaceful life.”

Hamid Karzai (1957) President of Afghanistan

Karzai offers peace, Taliban free Frenchwoman http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSSP14081620070428?pageNumber=2 Apr 28, 2007
Message to Taliban

Alfred de Zayas photo

“Since a democratic and equitable international order requires peace, States must engage in good faith negotiations for disarmament and significantly reduce military expenditure and the arms trade.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

UN expert urges States to be more transparent on military expenditure
2014

Muhammad Ali Jinnah photo
Joseph Merrick photo
Francesco Petrarca photo

“Peace I do not find, and I have no wish to make war; and I fear and hope, and burn and am of ice.”

Pace non trovo, et non ò da far guerra;
e temo, et spero; et ardo, et son un ghiaccio.
Canzone 134, lines 1–2
Il Canzoniere (c. 1351–1353), To Laura in Life

Ingrid Newkirk photo

“Every animal has his or her story, his or her thoughts, daydreams, and interests. All feel joy and love, pain and fear, as we now know beyond any shadow of a doubt. All deserve that the human animal afford them the respect of being cared for with great consideration for those interests or left in peace.”

Ingrid Newkirk (1949) British-American activist

"Every Week There is More Reason to Feel Empathy for Animals" https://www.huffingtonpost.com/ingrid-newkirk/every-week-there-is-more_b_216409.html, Huffington Post, 17 July 2009.
2009

Ronald Firbank photo

“I suppose when there's no more room for another crow's-foot, one attains a sort of peace?”

Valmouth (1918), cited from The Complete Ronald Firbank (London: Duckworth, 1961) p. 448.

Graham Greene photo
Benjamín Netanyahu photo
Muhammad photo
Benito Mussolini photo

“Three cheers for the war. Three cheers for Italy's war and three cheers for war in general. Peace is hence absurd or rather a pause in war.”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

Popolo d'Italia (Feb. 1, 1921), quoted in The Menace of Fascism, John Strachey (1933) p. 65
1920s

Ignatius Sancho photo
Robert Aumann photo

“All these cries for peace we hear in Israel, especially from our side, do not bring peace any closer -- they only push it away. If you chase peace it only eludes you. That's not game theory; that's history.”

Robert Aumann (1930) Israeli-American mathematician

From an article on Israel Hayom http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=23811

Yukteswar Giri photo
Sara Teasdale photo
Cornstalk photo
Noam Chomsky photo
Hafsat Abiola photo
Charles Stross photo
Kurien Kunnumpuram photo
Earl Holliman photo
Jeremy Corbyn photo
Newton Lee photo
Muhammad photo
John Buchan photo
Ariel Sharon photo

“It is not in our interest to govern you. We would like you to govern yourselves in your own country. A democratic Palestinian state with territorial contiguity in Judea and Samaria and economic viability, which would conduct normal relations of tranquility, security and peace with Israel. Abandon the path of terror and let us together stop the bloodshed. Let us move forward together towards peace.”

Ariel Sharon (1928–2014) prime minister of Israel and Israeli general

Address by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at the Fourth Herzliya Conference, December 18, 2003; cited in: Terje Rød-Larsen, ‎Fabrice Aidan, ‎Nur Laiq (2014), The Search for Peace in the Arab-Israeli Conflict. p. 373
2000s

Rosa Luxemburg photo

“The friends of peace in bourgeois circles believe that world peace and disarmament can be realised within the frame-work of the present social order, whereas we, who base ourselves on the materialistic conception of history and on scientific socialism, are convinced that militarism can only be abolished from the world with the destruction of the capitalist class state.”

Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) Polish Marxist theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary

Die Friedensfreunde aus bürgerlichen Kreisen glauben, das sich Weltfriede und Abrüstung im Rahmen der heutigen Gesellschaftsordnung verwirklichen lassen, wir aber, die wir auf dem Boden der materialistischen Geschichtsauffassung und des wissenschaftlichen Sozialismus stehen, sind der Überzeugung, das der Militarismus erst mit dem kapitalistischen Klassenstaate zusammen aus der Welt geschafft werden kann.
Peace Utopias (1911)

Sri Chinmoy photo
Jakaya Kikwete photo

“Justice has to be done, justice must be seen to be done, what the AU is simply saying is that what is critical, what is the priority, is peace. That is priority number one now.”

Jakaya Kikwete (1950) Tanzanian politician and president

His backing for Sudan's President Omar Bashir, 2008-09-09 http://ippmedia.com/ipp/guardian/2008/09/09/122209.html
2008

George W. Bush photo
Harold Holt photo
Donald J. Trump photo

“You are full of confidence, peace is with you”

The lecture in Ashland, Oregon (8th of July 2005)

Antonio Salieri photo
Vyacheslav Molotov photo
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury photo
George William Curtis photo
Rudolph Rummel photo

“Since advancing freedom of the press furthers democracy, spreading freedom of the press promotes world peace. And the reverse logic is also true. Without democracies, there will be war; without freedom of the press, democracies cannot exist.”

Rudolph Rummel (1932–2014) American academic

“Freedom of the press—a way to peace,” ASNE Bulletin (February 1989), p. 27. ASNE stands for the American Association of Newspaper Editors

Alfred North Whitehead photo

“A general definition of civilization: a civilized society is exhibiting the five qualities of truth, beauty, adventure, art, peace.”

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher

Source: 1930s, Adventures of Ideas (1933), p. 353.

Richard Holbrooke photo

“Dayton shook the leadership elite of post-Cold War Europe. The Europeans were grateful to the United States for the leading the effort that finally ended the war in Bosnia, but some European officials were embarassed that American involvement had been necessary. Jacque Poos's 1991 assertion that Europe's "hour had dawned" lay in history's dustbin, alongside James Baker's view that we had no dog in that fight. "One cannot call it an American peace", French Foreign Minister de Charette told the press, "even if President Clinton and the Americans have tried to pull the blanket over to their side. The fact is that the Americans looked at this affair in ex-Yugoslavia from a great distance for nearly four years and basically blocked the progression of things." But de Charette also acknowledged that "Europe as such was not present, and this, it is true, was a failure of the European Union." Prime Minister Alain Juppé, after praising the Dayton agreement, could not resist adding, "Of course, it resembles like a twin the European plan we presented eighteen months ago" - when he was Foreign Minister. Agence France-Presse reported that many European diplomats were "left smarting" at Dayton. In an article clearly inspired by someone at the French Foreign Ministry, Le Figaro said that "Richard Holbrooke, the American mediator, did not leave his European collegues with good memories from the air base at Dayton." They quoted an unnamed Franch diplomat as saying, "He flatters, he lies, he humiliates: he is a sort of brutal and schizophrenic Mazarin." President Chirac's national security assistant, Jean-David Levitte, called to apologize for this comment, saying it did not represent the views of his boss. I replied that such minidramas were inevitable given the pressures and frustrations we faced at Dayton and were inconsequential considering that the war was over.”

Richard Holbrooke (1941–2010) American diplomat

Source: 1990s, To End a War (1998), p. 318

Periyar E. V. Ramasamy photo
J. William Fulbright photo
John Lancaster Spalding photo
Richard Nixon photo
James Anthony Froude photo
John L. Lewis photo
Henry Adams photo
George Bernard Shaw photo

“When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Ellie Dunn, Act II
1910s, Heartbreak House (1919)

Steve Killelea photo
Alfred de Zayas photo
Sara Teasdale photo
William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham photo

“My Lords, I rejoice that the grave has not closed upon me; that I am still alive to lift up my voice against the dismemberment of this ancient and most noble monarchy! Pressed down as I am by the hand of infirmity, I am little able to assist my country in this most perilous conjuncture; but, my Lords, while I have sense and memory, I will never consent to deprive the royal offspring of the House of Brunswick, the heirs of the Princess Sophia, of their fairest inheritance. Where is the man that will dare to advise such a measure? My Lords, his Majesty succeeded to an empire as great in extent as its reputation was unsullied. Shall we tarnish the lustre of this nation by an ignominious surrender of its rights and fairest possessions? Shall this great kingdom, that has survived, whole and entire, the Danish depredations, the Scottish inroads, and the Norman conquest; that has stood the threatened invasion of the Spanish Armada, now fall prostrate before the House of Bourbon? Surely, my Lords, this nation is no longer what it was! Shall a people, that seventeen years ago was the terror of the world, now stoop so low as to tell its ancient inveterate enemy, take all we have, only give us peace? It is impossible! …My Lords, any state is better than despair. Let us at least make one effort; and if we must fall, let us fall like men!”

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham (1708–1778) British politician

Speech in the House of Lords (7 April 1778), quoted in William Pitt, The Speeches of the Right Honourable the Earl of Chatham in the Houses of Lords and Commons: With a Biographical Memoir and Introductions and Explanatory Notes to the Speeches (London: Aylott & Jones, 1848), pp. xv-xvi.

Muharrem İnce photo

“I want peace, I want fraternity, I want prosperity, I want jobs for teens, I want food.”

Muharrem İnce (1964) Turkish politician

Source: Muharrem İnce: Yalova Belediye seçimlerini hatırlıyor musunuz? http://www.sozcu.com.tr/2018/gundem/son-dakika-muharrem-ince-sancaktepede-2469598/

William Westmoreland photo
John Hall photo
Irina Bokova photo

“The award of the Peace Prize to these two ardent defenders of education sends out a resounding message to the world on the importance of education for building peaceful and sustainable societies.”

Irina Bokova (1952) Bulgarian diplomat

abcnews.go.com http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/peace-prize-childrens-rights-met-praise-26098345.

Rose Wilder Lane photo
Winston S. Churchill photo

“New discord has arisen in Europe of late years from the fact that Germany is not satisfied with the result of the late War. I have indicated several times that Germany got off lightly after the Great War. I know that that is not always a fashionable opinion, but the facts repudiate the idea that a Carthaginian peace was in fact imposed upon Germany. No division was made of the great masses of the German people. No portion of Germany inhabited by Germans was detached, except where there was the difficulty of disentangling the population of the Silesian border. No attempt was made to divide Germany as between the northern and southern portions which might well have tempted the conquerors at that time. No State was carved out of Germany. She underwent no serious territorial loss, except the loss of Alsace and Lorraine, which she herself had seized only 50 years before. The great mass of the Germans remained united after all that Europe had passed through, and they are more vehemently united to-day than ever before. You may talk of the War indemnity; what has happened there? I suppose that the Germans paid, in round terms, £1,000,000,000. But they had borrowed £2,000,000,000 at the same time, and there are no signs of their paying back.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1933/apr/13/adjournment-easter-1#column_2790 in the House of Commons (13 April 1933)
The 1930s

River Phoenix photo
James, son of Zebedee photo

“But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace.”

James, son of Zebedee major religious figure in Christian tradition and one of the Twelve Apostles

James 3:17-18 http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/book.php?book=James&chapter=3&verse=25&t=1, KJV

John F. Kennedy photo
Nayef Al-Rodhan photo

“We should aim for peaceful coexistence at least and transcultural synergy at best.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan (1959) philosopher, neuroscientist, geostrategist, and author

Symbiotic Realism: A Theory of International Relations in an Instant and an Interdependent World, p. 124 (2007)

Calvin Coolidge photo
Hjalmar Schacht photo
Alfred de Zayas photo
Muammar Gaddafi photo

“I do not support peace in the Middle East. And I do not support Arafat. He is a stupid, incompetent fool!… The stupid fool is a zealot, a warrior, and a clever one. But he doesn't accomplish anything.”

Muammar Gaddafi (1942–2011) Libyan revolutionary, politician and political theorist

Remarks quoted in Red Horizons: Chronicles of a Communist Spy Chief (1987) by Ion Mihai Pacepa, p. 110

Tom Lehrer photo

“Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.”

Tom Lehrer (1928) American singer-songwriter and mathematician

On the awarding of the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize to Henry Kissinger, and Lê Ðức Thọ; one of his most quoted quips, it is often mentioned in articles and interviews, including "Stop clapping, this is serious" in Sydney Morning Herald (1 March 2003) http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/02/28/1046407753895.html

Alfred de Zayas photo

“A just, peaceful, equitable and democratic world order must not be undermined by the activities of investors, speculators and transnational enterprises avid for immediate profit at the expense of social and economic progress.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Mainstream human rights into trade agreements and WTO practice – UN expert urges in new report http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=20473&LangID=E#sthash.bn9VjkJJ.dpuf.
2016, Mainstream human rights into trade agreements and WTO practice – UN expert urges in new report