Peace Quotes

A world that begins to witness the rebirth of trust among nations can find its way to a peace that is neither partial nor punitive. With all who will work in good faith toward such a peace, we are ready, with renewed resolve, to strive to redeem the near-lost hopes of our day.

The details of such disarmament programs are manifestly critical and complex. Neither the United States nor any other nation can properly claim to possess a perfect, immutable formula.

The fruit of success in all these tasks would present the world with the greatest task, and the greatest opportunity, of all. It is this: the dedication of the energies, the resources, and the imaginations of all peaceful nations to a new kind of war [on poverty].

This would be a declared total war, not upon any human enemy but upon the brute forces of poverty and need. The peace we seek, founded upon decent trust and cooperative effort among nations, can be fortified, not by weapons of war but by wheat and by cotton, by milk and by wool, by meat and timber and rice.

The hunger for peace is too great, the hour in history too late, for any government to mock men's hopes with mere words and promises and gestures.

The purpose of the United States, in stating these proposals, is simple... They aspire to this: the lifting, from the backs and from the hearts of men, of their burden of arms and of fears, so that they may find before them a golden age of freedom and of peace.

These proposals spring, without ulterior motive or political passion, from our calm conviction that the hunger for peace is in the hearts of all people - those of Russia and of China no less than of our own country.

If the people of the world are to conduct an intelligent search for peace, they must be armed with the significant facts of today's existence.

The whole book of history reveals mankind's never-ending quest for peace, and mankind's God-given capacity to build.

My country wants to be constructive, not destructive. It wants agreement, not wars, among nations. It wants itself to live in freedom, and in the confidence that the people of every other nation enjoy equally the right of choosing their own way of life.

My country's purpose is to help us move out of the dark chamber of horrors into the light, to find a way by which the minds of men, the hopes of men, the souls of men every where, can move forward toward peace and happiness and well being.

The gravity of the time is such that every new avenue of peace, no matter how dimly discernible, should be explored.

The United States would seek more than the mere reduction or elimination of atomic materials for military purposes. It is not enough to take this weapon out of the hands of the soldiers. It must be put into the hands of those who will know how to strip its military casing and adapt it to the arts of peace.

The atomic energy agency could be made responsible for the impounding, storage and protection of the contributed fissionable and other materials... to devise methods whereby this fissionable material would be allocated to serve the peaceful pursuits of mankind. Experts would be mobilized to apply atomic energy to the needs of agriculture, medicine and... provide abundant electrical energy in the power-starved areas of the world.

I would be prepared to submit to the Congress of the United States... any such plan that would, first, encourage world-wide investigation into the most effective peacetime uses of fissionable material, and... second, begin to diminish the potential destructive power of the world's atomic stockpiles; third, allow all peoples of all nations to see that, in this enlightened age, the great Powers of the earth... are interested in human aspirations first rather than in building up the armaments of war; fourth, open up a new channel for peaceful discussion.

Against the dark background of the atomic bomb, the United States does not wish merely to present strength, but also the desire and the hope for peace.

The United States pledges before you - and therefore before the world - its determination to help solve the fearful atomic dilemma - to devote its entire heart and mind to find the way by which the miraculous inventiveness of man shall not be dedicated to his death, but consecrated to his life.

We look upon this shaken Earth, and we declare our firm and fixed purpose - the building of a peace with justice in a world where moral law prevails. The building of such a peace is a bold and solemn purpose. To proclaim it is easy. To serve it will be hard.

We know clearly what we seek, and why. We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom. And now, as in no other age, we seek it because we have been warned, by the power of modern weapons, that peace may be the only climate possible for human life itself.

This peace we seek cannot be born of fear alone: it must be rooted in the lives of nations. There must be justice, sensed and shared by all peoples, for, without justice the world can know only a tense and unstable truce.