Peace After War Quotes & Sayings

It is simply not true that "religion" is always aggressive. Sometimes it has actually put a brake on violence. In the ninth century BCE, Indian ritualists extracted all violence from the liturgy and created the ideal of ahimsa, "nonviolence." The medieval Peace and Truce of God forced knights to stop terrorizing the poor and outlawed violence from Wednesday to Sunday each week. Most dramatically, after the Bar Kokhba war, the rabbis reinterpreted the scriptures so effectively that Jews refrained from political aggression for a millennium. Such successes have been rare. Because of the inherent violence of the states in which we live, the best that prophets and sages have been able to do is provide an alternative. — Karen Armstrong

I know that mundane history is not of enormous interest to most Shadowhunters", he said. "But there was a time before the Nephilim. A time when Rome battled the city of Carthage, and over the course of many wars was victorious. After one of the wars, Rome demanded that Carthage pay them tribute, that Carthage abandon their army, and that the land of Carthage be sowed with salt. The historian Tacitus said of the Romans that 'they make a desert and call it peace.'" He turned to Jia. "The Carthaginians never forgot. Their hatred of Rome sparked another war in the end, and that war ended in death and slavery. That was not peace. This is not peace."
...
"The Fair Folk have long hated the Nephilim for their harshness. Show them something other than harshness, and you will receive something other than hate in return! — Cassandra Clare

The Sun Tzu School (which wrote the Art of War) surely never imagined that their antiwar, pro-empire treatise would become known and accepted after the fall of the first empire as a text on military tactics. Likewise, they would have been surprised to see the Ping-fa military metaphor - an inspired teaching device - come to be seen as the message and not the medium. — David G. Jones

Naturally, the common people don't want war ... but after all it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country. — Hermann Goring

Among Evangelical Christians, all of whom await the Second Coming of Jesus, there are historically two camps: postmillennialists and premillennialists. For most of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, most were of the "post" variety, meaning that they expected the Messiah's return after the thousand-year reign of peace. In order to hasten His arrival, they set out to create that harmonious world here and now, fighting for the abolition of slavery, prohibition of alcohol, public education, and women's literacy.
The chaos of the Civil War and industrialization caused many evangelicals to rethink their optimism. They determined that Jesus would actually arrive before the final judgment. Therefore any efforts toward a just society here on earth were futile; what mattered was perfecting one's faith. As historian Randall Balmer writes, these believers "retreated into a theology of despair, one that essentially ceded the temporal world to Satan and his minions. — Mark Sundeen

Generals are fascinating cases of arrested development - after all, at five all of us wanted to be generals. — Peter Ustinov

We shared a piece of Poncho's apple pie, and I told Poncho about PureTone. Like all serious musicians, he is depressed by the quality of sound the people's music id delivered in today. That is the impression I have gotten from every Musician I have met. Everyone. After he heard PureTone, Ben Bourdon, one of Ben Young's caregivers asked me if I was making war on Apple. I said, No. I'm waging heavy peace. — Neil Young

I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of nuclear annihilation ... I believe that even amid today's mortar bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow ... I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed. — Martin Luther King Jr.

After a war, the silencing of arms is not enough. Peace means respecting all rights. You can't respect one of them and violate the others. When a society doesn't respect the rights of its citizens, it undermines peace and leads it back to war. — Maria Julia Hernandez

War is always a negative-sum outcome. It subtracts, removes, empties. No one who has witnessed combat can, with any honesty, describe it another way. "We know more about war than we know about peace," said five-star general Omar Bradley in an Armistice Day address a few years after the end of World War II, "more about killing than we know about living." Think of it like this. For every soldier's grave in places such as Arlington or Anzio or Normandy, there are more forgotten burial sites for civilians - parents, children, newlyweds, and newborns - claimed in some way by the same fighting. — Brian Murphy

As a civilian, I know nothing about combat, the Marine Corps experience or modern man's struggle adjusting to peace after war. I only know what's been shared with me; confidences I would never betray, nor use as details in a novel. — Tiffany Madison

That peace that we're after, lies somewhere beyond personality, beyond the perception of others, beyond invention and disguise, even beyond effort itself. You can join the game, fight the wars, play with form all you want, but to find real peace, you have to let the armor fall. — Jim Carrey

In particular, the efforts to reestablish peace after the World War have been directed toward the formation of states and the regulation of their frontiers according to a consciously national program. — Christian Lous Lange

Most of the institutions that come in to offer help after disaster don't have the resources to provide concrete help. . . . Donor communities invest billions funding peace talks and disarmament. Then they stop. The most important part of postwar help is missing: providing basic social services to people. Not having those resources might have been a reason men went to war in the first place; they crossed a border and joined an armed group because they didn't have jobs. In Liberia right now, there are hundreds of thousands of unemployed young people, and they're ready-made mercenaries for wars in West Africa. You'd think the international community would be sensible enough to know they should work to change this. But they aren't. — Leymah Gbowee

Truly Human September 12 In addition to the battle to "get ahead," there is another: THIS OTHER WAR is the war not to conquer but the war to become whole and at peace inside our skins. It is a war not of conquest now but of liberation because the object of this other war is to liberate that dimension of selfhood which has somehow become lost, that dimension of selfhood that involves the capacity to forgive and to will the good not only of the self but of all other selves. This other war is the war to become a human being. This is the goal that we are really after and that God is really after. This is the goal that power, success, and security are only forlorn substitutes for. This is the victory that not all our human armory of self-confidence and wisdom and personality can win for us - not simply to be treated as human but to become at last truly human. — Frederick Buechner

And this is as good a picture as any of how counterculture communities like the Haight took care of the war's mangled souls: a doctor from a hippie clinic carrying a dying, emaciated soldier in his arms. For decades after the war, up to this very day, right-wing politicians and pundits have spread the libel about how peace activists and hippies greeted returning Vietnam vets with gobs of spit and contempt. — David Talbot

We forget now, but during his life, Dr. King wasn't always considered a unifying figure. Even after rising to prominence, even after winning the Nobel Peace Prize, Dr. King was vilified by many, denounced as a rabble rouser and an agitator, a communist and a radical. He was even attacked by his own people, by those who felt he was going too fast or those who felt he was going too slow; by those who felt he shouldn't meddle in issues like the Vietnam War or the rights of union workers. — Barack Obama

Words had lost their meaning; even war was no longer war. Monteron would tum in his grave if he could hear what they called war nowadays. After all, peace was no longer peace. — Ernst Junger

After the war people said, 'If you can plan for war, why can't you plan for peace?' When I was 17, I had a letter from the government saying, 'Dear Mr. Benn, will you turn up when you're 17 1/2? We'll give you free food, free clothes, free training, free accommodation, and two shillings, ten pence a day to just kill Germans.' People said, well, if you can have full employment to kill people, why in God's name couldn't you have full employment and good schools, good hospitals, good houses? — Tony Benn

We in America have learned bitter lessons from two world wars: It is better to be here [in Europe] ready to protect the peace, than to take blind shelter across the sea, rushing to respond only after freedom is lost. We've learned that isolationism never was and never will be an acceptable response to tyrannical governments with an expansionist intent. — Ronald Reagan

Homeward bound I suddenly noticed before me my own shadow as I had seen the shadow of the other war behind the actual one. During all this time it has never budged from me, that irremovable shadow, it hovers over every thought of mine by day and by night; perhaps its dark outline lies on some pages of this book, too. But, after all, shadows themselves are born of light. And only he who has experienced dawn and dusk, war and peace, ascent and decline, only he has truly lived. — Stefan Zweig

What this country needs is Discipline! Peace is a great dream, but maybe sometimes it's only a pipe dream! I'm not so sure - now this will shock you, but I want you to listen to one woman who will tell you the unadulterated hard truth instead of a lot of sentimental taffy, and I'm not sure but that we need to be in a real war again, in order to learn Discipline! We don't want all this highbrow intellectuality, all this book-learning. That's good enough in its way, but isn't it, after all, just a nice toy for grownups? No, what we all of us must have, if this great land is going to go on maintaining its high position among the Congress of Nations, is Discipline - Will Power - Character! — Sinclair Lewis

Now the valley cried with anger, "Mount your horses draw your sword." And they killed the mountain people, so they won their just reward. Now they stood beside the treasure, on the mountain dark and red. Turned the stone and looked beneath it. "Peace on earth" was all it said. Go ahead and hate your neighbor,go ahead and cheat a friend. Do it in the name of heaven, you can justify it in the end. There won't be any trumpets blowing come the judgment day. On the bloody morning after one tin soldier rides away. — Dennis Lambert

The delegates to the peace conference after World War I tried to impose a rational order on an irrational world. — Margaret MacMillan

I was never the mythic lucky-born after all, the post-war harbinger of hope, peace and progress. That hope and faith grew in parental minds. It all fell apart when we moved to Canada. We brought the War with us, tattooed on our souls. — Kaimana Wolff

Almost everybody wore a curious limpidity of expression, like newborn babies or souls just after death. Dazed but curiously dignified ... after a criseof hysterical revulsion and tiredness, I passed beyondand became entered by a rather sublime feeling. — Elizabeth Bowen

A flight from London carrying the artist we all used to know as Cat Stevens, now known as Yusuf Islam, was forced to make an emergency landing in Bangor, Maine after his name showed up on a terrorist no-fly list. I tell you, it's a real success story in the war on terror. You know, we finally got the guy that wrote Peace Train. — Cat Stevens

Enjoy the war,' read the graffiti left on Berlin's walls. 'The peace will be terrible. — Andrei Cherny

Let us not forget that the European Community started as a project for peace after the terrible Second World War. And today people take for granted the freedom to travel, to study, to work abroad. And the citizens of one country have almost exactly the same rights as another country. — Jose Manuel Barroso

After further conferences that late spring the following plan was drawn up. Speidel, almost alone among the Army conspirators in the West, survived to describe it: An immediate armistice with the Western Allies but not unconditional surrender. German withdrawal in the West to Germany. Immediate suspension of the Allied bombing of Germany. Arrest of Hitler for trial before a German court. Overthrow of Nazi rule. Temporary assumption of executive power in Germany by the resistance forces of all classes under the leadership of General Beck, Goerdeler, and the trade-union representative, Leuschner. No military dictatorship. Preparation of a "constructive peace" within the framework of a United States of Europe. In the East, continuation of the war. Holding a shortened line between the mouth of the Danube, the Carpathian Mountains, the River Vistula and Memel. — William L. Shirer

Two thirds of my countrymen read this kind of newspaper, read things written in this tone every morning and every night, are every day worked up and admonished and incited, and robbed of their peace of mind and better feelings by them, and the end and aim of it all is to have the war over again, the next war that draws nearer and nearer, and it will be a good deal more horrible than the last. All that is perfectly clear and simple. Anyone could comprehend it and reach the same conclusion after a moment's reflection. But nobody wants to. Nobody wants to avoid the next war, nobody wants to spare himself and his children the next holocaust if this be the cost. To reflect for one moment, to examine himself for a while and ask what share he has in the world's confusions and wickedness - clearly, nobody wants to do that. And so there's no stopping it, and the next war is being pushed on with enthusiasm by thousands upon thousands day by day. — Hermann Hesse

Revolutionary war is an antitoxin that not only eliminates the enemy's poison but also purges us of our own filth. Every just, revolutionary war is endowed with tremendous power and can transform many things or clear the way for their transformation. The Sino-Japanese war will transform both China and Japan; provided China perseveres in the War of Resistance and in the united front, the old Japan will surely be transformed into a new Japan and the old China into a new China, and people and everything else in both China and Japan will be transformed during and after the war. — Mao Zedong

President George Bush declared a National Day of Prayer for Peace. This was after he had carefully arranged and started the war. — George Carlin

This truth may be unfashionable, unpalatable, no doubt unpopular, but, if it is the truth, the story of mankind shows that war was universal and unceasing for millions of years before armaments were invented or armies organized. Indeed, the lucid intervals of peace and order only occurred in human history after armaments in the hands of strong governments have come into being, and civilization in every age has been nursed only in cradles guarded by superior weapons and superior discipline. — Winston Churchill

We jumped for joy. After the awful events of yesterday, finally something good happens and brings us ... hope! Hope for an end to the war, hope for peace. — Anne Frank

So after a hectic week of believing that war was peace, that good was bad, that the moon was made of blue cheese, and that God needed a lot of money sent to a certain box number, the Monk started to believe that 35 percent of all tables were hermaphrodites, and then broke down. — Douglas Adams

During which time I have experienced the satisfactions of working the land, building the soil, and making brown into green, I am beginning to believe that our new world that will open up after the war should be constructed round a repopulated rural America, so that a reasonably large proportion of the population shall participate in the culture of the earth. The trend is often in the opposite direction, even in peace. As things are now in America, country living is possible only for those who have either the talents and instincts of a true farmer or the means to live wherever they choose. — E.B. White

Keep the peace of the kingdoms, keep the peace of the kingdoms. Bring the end of war. Let there be no empire to disturb us all. Look after the Father. Keep the peace of the kingdoms. — Philip Dodd

Examples of goodness that know no ethnic, religious, racial, or political bounds are important documents of war, as they also represent an axis around which a healthy future can be constructed after the atrocities have halted. — Dario Spini

Any man who had ever worked in a hardened missile site would have felt at home in Clavius. Here on the Moon were the same arts and hardware of underground living, and of protection against a hostile environment; but here they had been turned to the purposes of peace. After ten thousand years, Man had at last found something as exciting as war. — Arthur C. Clarke

If you're all so peaceful up there, how did you get such greedy and cruel ideas?"
The dragon was silent for a long time after this question. And at last he said: "It just came over me. I don't know why. It just came over me, listening to the battling shouts and the war-cries of the earth - I got excited, I wanted to join in. — Ted Hughes

As a peace machine, it's value to the world will be beyond computation. Would a declaration of war between Russia and Japan be made, if within an hour there after a swifty gliding aeroplane might take its flight from St Petersburg and drop half a ton of dynamite above the enemy's war offices? Could any nation afford to war upon any other with such hazards in view? — John Brisben Walker

It has been, after all, 11 years, more than a decade now, of defiance of U.N. resolutions by Saddam Hussein. Every obligation that he signed onto after the Gulf War, so that he would not be a threat to peace and security, he has ignored and flaunted. — Condoleezza Rice

It's funny, isn't it," Miss Woolf whispered in Ursula's ear, "how much German music we listen to. Great beauty transcends all. Perhaps after the war it will heal all too. — Kate Atkinson

It has been the one song of those who thirst after absolute power that the interest of the state requires that its affairs should be conducted in secret ... But the more such arguments disguise themselves under the mask of public welfare, the more oppressive is the slavery to which they will lead ... Better that right counsels be known to enemies than that the evil secrets of tyrants should be concealed from the citizens. They who can treat secretly of the affairs of a nation have it absolutely under their authority; and as they plot against the enemy in time of war, so do they against the citizens in time of peace. — Will Durant

After all, no one is stupid enough to prefer war to peace; in peace sons bury their fathers and in war fathers bury their sons. — Herodotus

We know what we want. To us it means nothing that there is a Soviet Union somewhere in the world, for the sake of whose peace and tranquillity the workers of Germany and China were sacrificed to Fascist barbarians by Stalin. We want revolution here in Spain, right now, not maybe after the next European war. We are giving Hitler and Mussolini far more worry with our revolution than the whole Red Army of Russia. We are setting an example to the German and Italian working class on how to deal with Fascism. — Buenaventura Durruti

One day, many years after the siege was lifted and the war was over, two nutritionists met by chance. They introduced themselves. One, Alexei Bezzubov, had worked at Leningrad's Vitamin Institute, seeking out new sources of protein for the hungry. The other, as it turned out, was Ernst Ziegelmeyer, deputy quartermaster of Hitler's army, the man who'd been assigned to calculate how quickly Leningrad would fall without food deliveries. Now these two men met in peace: the one who had tried to starve a city, and the other who had tried to feed it. Ziegelmeyer pressed Bezzubov incredulously: "However did you hold out? How could you? It's quite impossible! I wrote a deposition that it was physically impossible to live on such a ration." Bezzubov could not provide a scientific, purely nutritive answer. There was none. Instead, he "talked of faith in victory, of the spiritual reserves of Leningraders, which had not been accounted for in the German professor's — M T Anderson

Starting from the ruins of the Second World War, we - all Europeans said, after centuries of fighting each other, we're going to build permanent arrangements in which peace between European countries is secured, freedom is secured, and growing prosperity. And that's what we have done over the last 70 years. — Timothy Garton Ash

Old Jiko says that nowadays we young Japanese people are heiwaboke.112 I don't know how to translate it, but basically it means that we're spaced out and careless because we don't understand about war. She says we think Japan is a peaceful nation, because we were born after the war ended and peace is all we can remember, and we like it that way, but actually our whole lives are shaped by the war and the past and we should understand that. — Ruth Ozeki

When after many battles past,
Both tir'd with blows,
make peace at last,
What is it, after all, the people get?
Why! taxes, widows, wooden legs, and debt. — Francis Daniels Moore

No one starts a war warning that those involved will lose their innocence - that children will definitely die and be forever lost as a result of the conflict; that the war will not end for generations and generations, even after cease-fires have been declared and peace treaties have been signed. No one starts a war that way, but they should. It would at least be fair warning and an honest admission: even a good war - if there is such a thing - will kill anyone old enough to die. — Alexandra Fulller

After a long, hopeless war, people will settle for peace, at almost any price. — Salman Rushdie

After the end of the Cold War, a belief was proclaimed in a 'New World Order', an 'end of history', world peace characterised by democracy and trade (Pax Americana). Now the Twenty-first century is preparing for us perhaps the most bellicose situation in the entire history of humanity. The enormous wars of the Twentieth century will be smaller than those that we and our descendants are going to experience. — Guillaume Faye

Today I prayed for Boston, for America, my home away from home. Today, I realized how lucky we Sri Lankans are to have peace in our country. How I feel today, hearing of the bombs going off in the city brings back memories of how I used to feel four years ago in Sri Lanka when the LTTE was setting off bombs all around Colombo. That feeling I used to get when I hear about a bomb blast, the goosebumps, the school evacuation drills, the breaking news footage, and most of all, that fear we Sri Lankans used to feel, every second of everyday, it all came back to me today. Thank you God for bringing peace to my country, look after America the way you did Sri Lanka. — Thisuri Wanniarachchi

What's the harm in forgetting? What does remembering do? Kugel had read that the war in the Balkans was referred to as the War of the Grandmothers; that after 50 years of peace, it was the grandmothers who reminded their offspring to hate each other, the grandmothers who reminded them of past atrocities, of indignities long gone. Never forget! shouted the grandmothers. So their grandchildren remembered, and their grandchildren died. — Shalom Auslander

Since there will be no one left to talk peace after the next war, it makes good sense to break with tradition and hold the peace conference first. — William Glasser

After Napoleon's 1815 defeat at Waterloo, Europeans had created nation-states in the image and likeness of Napoleon. The new states became the foci of popular affection, even worship. All organized themselves as Napoleon had France, and as Hegel had prescribed, with every house numbered so that bureaucratic government could pass its science to and collect sustenance from each. The states became the purveyors of education and sources of authority. They fostered the myth that people within their borders formed distinct races with different geniuses and destinies. All partook of Charles Darwin's ideology that life is an evolutionary struggle in which the fittest survive. — Angelo M. Codevilla

The Japanese chose the principle of eternal peace as the basis of morality for our rebirth after the War. — Kenzaburo Oe

From the Battle of Trenton to the Argonne, Marines have won foremost honors in war, and in the long eras of tranquility at home, generation after generation of Marines have grown gray in war in both hemispheres and in every corner of the seven seas, that our country and its citizens might enjoy peace and security. — John A. Lejeune

How do you know Hollywood is getting serious about video games? They want to make one of their own. In 'Defiance,' the remaining humans on Earth, as well as alien species looking for a new home, find themselves settling for peace after a massive war desecrated the world and destroyed most of the alien ships along with it. — Rob Manuel

The spectacle of a field of battle after the combat, is sufficient to inspire Princes with the love of peace, and the horror of war. — Napoleon Bonaparte

We should keep [the Panama Canal]. After all, we stole it fair and square. — S.I. Hayakawa

It's a shame for women's history to be all about men
first boys, then other boys, then men men men. It reminds me of the way our school history textbooks were all about wars and elections, one war after another, with the dull periods of peace skimmed over whenever they occurred. (Our teachers deplored this and added extra units about social history and protest movements, but that was still the message of the books.) — Elizabeth Kostova

I'm not pro-war. But I think war has been the dominant condition of humankind, and peace has been the anomaly - certainly sustained periods of peace that profit great masses of people - and I think war has worked, even awful hellish wars: worked to staunch fascist aggression in Europe, worked to preserve the Union after secession in the United States, etc. Not always, maybe not often, but to say never is to reject history in favor of a wishful unreality. — Philip Gourevitch

We can have a new vision, one even greater than the system they gave us after World War II. Everyone can pursue happiness and freedom and peace. — Condoleezza Rice

After America won the Cold War, some believed we had come to the 'end of history,' and budget-cutters celebrated the so-called 'peace dividend.' As a result, we ignored the toxic mixture of militant Islam and terror that ultimately led to 9/11. — Frank Gaffney

Democracies are notorious for a tendency to obey the feelings rather than the mind; thus the nature of democracies often makes itdifficult to conclude a peace after a hard-won war. Generous victors are rare. — Amos Elon

The world after a war is a good world, I told myself. A happy world. A secure world. In this world, I might do anything. — Jennifer Niven

She, with her affection and her gaiety, had been largely responsible for him having rediscovered the meaning of life, her love had driven him to the far corners of the Earth, because he needed to be rich enough to buy some land and live in peace with her for the rest of their days. It was his utter confidence in this fragile creature, that had made him fight with honor, because he knew that after a battle he could forget all the horrors of war in her arms, and that, despite all the women he had known, only there in her arms could he close his eyes and sleep like a child. — Paulo Coelho

Perhaps peace is not, after all, something you work for, or 'fight for.' It is indeed 'fighting for peace' that starts all the wars. What, after all, are the pretexts of all these Cold War crises, but 'fighting for peace?' Peace is something you have or do not have. If you are yourself at peace, then there is at least some peace in the world. Then share your peace with everyone, and everyone will be at peace. — Thomas Merton

It would be good," thought Prince Andrei, glancing at the little image that his sister had hung around his neck with such reverence and emotion, "It would be good if everything were as clear and simple as it seems to Princess Marya . How good it would be to know where to seek help in this life, and what to expect after it, beyond the grave! How happy and at peace I should be if I could now say:" Lord have mercy on me! ... But to whom should I say this? To some power
indefinable and incomprehensible, to which I not only cannot appeal, but which I cannot express in words
The Great All or Nothing," he said to himself, "or to that God who has been sewn into this amulet by Marya? There is nothing certain, nothing except the nothingness of everything that is comprehensible to me, and the greatness of something incomprehensible but all important! — Leo Tolstoy

A smart soldier wants to know the causes of wars. Also how to end them. After all, war is the normal state of affairs, isn't it? Peace is the name of the ideal we deduce from the fact that there have been interludes between wars. — Jerry Pournelle

Freedom may come quickly in robes of peace or after ages of conflict and war, but come it will, and abide it will, so long as the principles by which it was acquired are held sacred. — Edward Everett

Age's terms of peace, after the long interlude of war with life, have still to be concluded-Youth must keep decently away-so many old wounds may have to be unbound, and old scars pointed to with pride, to prove to ourselves we have been brave and noble. — Eugene O'Neill

Once upon a time there were two countries, at war with each other. In order to make peace after many years of conflict, they decided to build a bridge across the ocean. But because they never learned each other's language properly, they could never agree on the details, so the two halves of the bridge they started to build never met. To this day the bridge extends far into the ocean from both sides, and simply ends half way, miles in the wrong direction from the meeting point. And the two countries are still at war. — Vera Nazarian

Heroes who shed their blood and lost their lives! You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours. You, the mothers, who sent their sons from far away countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well. — Mustafa Kemal Ataturk

The reason territorial monarchs failed time after time against maritime powers was not that absolutist, non-consensual governments were incapable of building great fleets in peace - quite the reverse - but that they were unable to fund them in the crises of war. Mainly this was because they were forced to divert resources from the fleet to their armies, to fight territorial rivals frequently financed by their maritime enemy from the profits of sea trade. — Peter Padfield

We were well aware that the end of the fighting would not automatically settle the problems arising out of the war. The establishment of peace after the fighting is over has always been a
difficult task. — Harry S. Truman

The past is dangerous, not least because it cannot go away. It is simply there, never to change, and in its constancy it reflects the eternity of God. It presents to the young mind a vast field of fascination, of war and peace, loyalty and treason, invention and folly, bitter twists of fate and sweet poetic justice. When that past is the past of one's people or country or church, then the danger is terrible indeed, because then the past makes claims upon our honor and allegiance. Then it knocks at the door, saying softly, "I am still here." And then our plans for social control - for inducing the kind of amnesia that has people always hankering after what is supposed to be new, without asking inconvenient questions about where the desirable thing has come from and where it will take us - must fail. For a man with a past may be free; but a man without a past, never. — Anthony Esolen

After the 'war to end war' they seem to have been pretty successful in Paris at making a 'Peace to end Peace. — Archibald Wavell

It is one of the ironies of this strange century that the most lasting results of the October revolution, whose object was the global overthrow of capitalism, was to save its antagonist, both in war and in peace - that is to say, by providing it with the incentive, fear, to reform itself after the Second World War, and, by establishing the popularity of economic planning, furnishing it with some of the procedures for its reform — Eric Hobsbawm

Treaties of peace, made after war, are entrusted to individuals to negotiate and carry out. — Richard Cobden

I desire before I leave the world, as my best legacy to my family,, my serious, solemn advice, to make choice of my God for their God. He has been my father's God, and the God of your Mother's predecessors. I solemnly charge you to make it your first care to seek after peace with God, and being reconciled, to make it your study to please God in all things. — Robert Dabney

If we Americans are to learn from our mistakes, from the flailing, ineffective way we, as a nation, conducted the war on terror after the attacks of 9/11, and from the way we have failed to make our case to the great moderate mass of peace-loving people at the heart of the Muslim world, we need to listen to Greg Mortenson. I did, and it has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. — David Oliver Relin

I first read War And Peace about 100 years after Tolstoy wrote it. — Simon Schama

Man constantly prayed to God for peace, but peace never happened, so he decided that his god must really want war because the other side was sinful. Man invented and extolled virtues which could only be exemplified under conditions of war, like heroism and gallantry and honor, and he gave himself laurel wreaths or booty or medals for such things, thus rewarding himself for behaving well while sinning. He did it when he was a primitive, and he went on with it after he thought he was civilized. — Sheri S. Tepper

It doesn't take a military genius to see we'll all be crispy critters after World War III. — Al Yankovic

it is not surprising that some, such as the historian John R. Vile, suggest we consider the concession as a form of military surrender or even a funeral oration. Just as after a war, the public wants peace after a presidential campaign. They hope that politicians will emulate that most — Scott Farris

It's a shame for a woman's history to be all about men-first boys, then other boys, then men, men, men. It reminds me of the way our school history textbooks were all about wars and elections, one war after another, with the dull periods of peace skimmed over when they happened. — Elizabeth Kostova

It is the most painful thing to see how young children become collateral damage of wars, but when peace treaties are signed landmines do not respect any of these accords. And as long as these silent killers linger after wars, children will never know peace — Danny Glover

In one sense, I have always felt glad to have had the war [World War II] in my childhood, because, as a result, nothing that has happened in the world since then has ever seemed quite so bad. On the other hand, I never entirely got over my feeling of being cheated when the promised era of peace in a wonderful "post-war world" failed to materialize. I could not understand how, after all that, people could ever even think of fighting again. And I still can't. — Ashleigh Brilliant

Whatever may be the reason, whether it was that Hitler thought he might get away with what he had got without fighting for it, orwhether it was that after all the preparations were not sufficiently complete
however, one thing is certain: he missed the bus. — Neville Chamberlain

There's one bright spot in the generally gloomy picture know as the Pacific Conflict Zone. According to my calculations, by the year 2500 or so we should have killed off every last member of our species who is stupid enough to take part in so futile a pastime as this war between "ideals," and with luck they won't have left their genes behind because they'll typically have been killed at an age when society thinks they're too young to assume the responsibility of childbearing. After that we may get some peace and quiet for a change. — John Brunner

The discovery of oil occurred shortly after the Addis Ababa agreement, the pact that ended the first civil war, that first one lasting almost seventeen years. In 1972, the north and south of Sudan met in Ethiopia, and the peace agreement was signed, including, among other things, provisions to share any of the natural resources of the south, fifty-fifty. Khartoum had agreed to this, but at the time, they believed the primary natural resource in the south was uranium. But at Addis Ababa, no one knew about oil, so when the oil was found, Khartoum was concerned. They had signed this agreement, and the agreement insisted that all resources be split evenly ... But not with oil! To share oil with blacks? This would not do! It was terrible for them, I think, and that is when much of the hard-liners in Khartoum began thinking about canceling Addis Ababa and keeping the oil for themselves. — Dave Eggers