Peace Quotes

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war.  There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

Martin Luther King


By acting compassionately, by helping to restore justice and to encourage peace, we acknowledge that we are all part of one another.

Rahm Dass


As you press on for justice, be sure to move with dignity and discipline, using only the weapon of love.  Let no man pull you so low as to hate him. Always avoid violence.  If you succumb to the temptation of using violence in your struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and your chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos.

Martin Luther King


Poverty is the worst form of violence.

Mohandas Gandhi


Without justice and love, peace will always be the great illusion.

Helder Camara


Non-violence is more powerful than violence.

Cesar Chavez


Non-violence is not inaction. It is not discussion. It is not for the timid or weak. It is hard work. It is the willingness to sacrifice. It is the patience to win.

Cesar Chavez


There is no such thing as defeat in nonviolence.

Cesar Chavez


We can choose to use our lives for others to bring about a better and more just world for our children. People who make that choice will know hardship and sacrifice, but if they give themselves totally to the non-violent struggle for peace and justice they will also find that people will give them their hearts and they will never be hungry and never alone. And in giving of themselves they will discover a whole new life full of meaning and love.

Cesar Chavez


Most of us have been conditioned…since armies are legal, we feel war is acceptable; in general, nobody feels war is criminal or that accepting it is criminal attitude. In fact, we have been brainwashed. War is monstrous. It’s very nature is one of tragedy and suffering.

Dali Lama


If you wish to experience peace, provide peace for another.

Dali Lama


Don’t let the actions of others destroy your inner peace.

Dali Lama


We are the nation the most powerful, the most armed and we are supplying arms and money to the rest of the world where we are not ourselves fighting. We are eating while there is famine in the world.

Dorothy Day


The Gospel takes away our right forever, to discriminate between the deserving and the undeserving poor.

Dorothy Day


Peace begins when the hungry are fed.

Dorothy Day


Non-violence confronts systemic injustice with active love and refuses to retaliate with further violence under any circumstances. In order to halt the vicious cycles of violence, it requires a willing acceptance of suffering and death rather than inflicting suffering or death on anyone else.

John Dear


If we want to reach real peace in this world, we should start educating our children.

Mohandas Gandhi


Peace is its own reward.

Mohandas Gandhi


I offer you peace. I offer you love. I offer you friendship. I see your beauty. I hear your need. I feel your feelings. My wisdom flows from the Highest Source. I salute that Source in you. Let us work together for unity and love.

Mohandas Gandhi


There is no way to peace, peace is the way.

Thich Nhat Hahn


Our mind must make peace with our heart before we can witness peace in the world.

Thich Nhat Hahn


Real strength can be found not in power, money or weapons, but in deep, inner peace. When we have enough insight, we are not caught by many difficult situations anymore.

Thich Nhat Hahn


Among individuals, as among nations, respect of the rights of others is peace.

Benito Juarez


At its core, war is impoverishment. War’s genesis and ultimate end is in the poverty of our hearts. If we can realize that the world’s liberation begins within those troubled hearts, then we may yet find peace…What good has ever come from the slaughter of the innocents?

Kathy Kelly


First keep peace within yourself, then you can bring peace to others.

Thomas Kempis


Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind.

John F. Kennedy


Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.

Martin Luther King


True peace is not merely the absence of tension, it is the presence of justice.

Martin Luther King


We must learn to live together as brothers and sisters or we will perish together as fools.

Martin Luther King


The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood.

Martin Luther King


We must rapidly begin the shift from a ‘thing-oriented’ society to a ‘person-oriented’ society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

Martin Luther King


The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.

Martin Luther King


If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. They he becomes your partner.

Nelson Mandela


To give financial support to war and at the same time preaching against it is no longer a tenable position.

Maurice McCrackin


Give peace a chance, yes, but why not get serious and give it a place in the curriculum: peace courses in every school, every grade, every nation. Unless we teach our children peace, someone else will teach them violence.

Colman McCarthy


Peace is the result of love, and if love were easy we’d all be good at it.

Colman McCarthy


Everyone’s a pacifist between wars. It’s like being a vegetarian between meals.

Colman McCarthy


War-making doesn’t stop war-making. If it did, our problems would have stopped millennia ago.

Colman McCarthy


Beware of trying to accomplish anything by force.

St. Angela Merici


We cannot have peace if we are only concerned with peace. War is not an accident. It is the logical outcome of a certain way of life. If we want to attack war, we have to attack that way of life.

A.J. Muste


In a world built on violence, one must be a revolutionary before one can be a pacifist.

A.J. Muste


The problem after a war is with the victor. He thinks that he has just proved that war and violence pay. Who will now teach him a lesson?

A.J. Muste


Much violence is based on the illusion that life is a property to be defended and not to be shared.

Henri Nouwen


Many powerful people don’t want peace because they live off of war.

Pope Francis


War never again! Never again war!

Pope Francis


Do not be afraid to take a chance on peace, to teach peace, to live peace… peace will be the last word of history.

Pope John Paul II


A peaceful person does more good than a learned one.

Pope John XXIII


The true and solid peace of nations consists not in equality of arms, but in mutual trust alone. It must not be the special interests of individuals or groups, nor unregulated competition, economic despotism, national prestige or imperialism, nor any other aim of this sort. On the contrary, all forms of economic enterprise must be governed by the principles of social justice and charity.

Pope John XXIII


There has already been enough warfare among men! Too many youths in the flower of life have shed their blood already! Legions of the dead, all fallen in battle, dwell within this earth of ours. Their stern voices urge us all to return at once to harmony, unity and a just peace.

Pope John XXIII


Two conditions render difficult this situation of mankind: It is full of tremendously deadly armament, and it has not progressed morally as much as it has scientifically.

Pope Paul VI


If you want peace, work for justice.

Pope Paul VI


Nonviolence isn’t sitting back with your arms folded. It is first recognizing that the very person who is your oppressor is also your brother or sister. One day he or she may stop being your oppressor, but they’ll never stop being your brother or sister.

Mev Puelo


When you find peace within yourself, you become the kind of person who can live at peace with others.

Mildred Norman Ryder


No one can find inner peace except by working, not in a self-centered way, but for the whole human family.

Mildred Norman Ryder


I will write peace on your wings and you will fly all over the world.

Sadako Sasaki


If they mean to have peace, let it begin here.

Sargent Shriver


No one had to impose my enemies on me. I selected them myself. I didn’t avoid them: I pointed them out, marked them, attacked them.

Jacobo Timerman


If you want peace, you don’t talk to your friends, you talk to your enemies.

Desmond Tutu


I believe every act of violence is also a message that needs to be understood. Violence should not be answered just by greater violence but by real understanding. We must ask: Where is the violence coming from? What is its meaning?

Jean Vanier


Peace is the fruit of love, a love that is also justice. But to grow in love requires work – hard work. And it can bring pain because it implies loss – loss of the certitudes, comforts and hurts that shelter and define us.

Jean Vanier


We reach maturity when we are able to love our enemies and to be people of peace.

Jean Vanier


Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all.

George Washington


We are living in a global age with problems and conflicts on a global scale. Either we shall learn to resolve these problems together, or we shall destroy one another. Mutual security and survival require a new vision of the world as one interdependent planet. We have rights and duties not only within our diverse national communities but within the larger world community.

U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops


We shall find peace. We shall hear the angels, we shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds.

Anton Chekhov


Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.

Baruch Spinoza


Peace has never come from dropping bombs. Real peace comes from enlightenment and educating people to behave more in a divine manner.

Carlos Santana


I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.

Dwight Eisenhower


If man does find the solution for world peace it will be the most revolutionary reversal of his record we have ever known.

George Marshall


Peace is not a relationship of nations. It is a condition of mind brought about by a serenity of soul. Peace is not merely the absence of war. It is also a state of mind. Lasting peace can come only to peaceful people.

Jawaharlal Nehru


The only alternative to coexistence is co-destruction.

Jawaharlal Nehru


You can’t separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.

Malcolm X


If you want to make peace, you don’t talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.

Moshe Dayan


If you want peace, stop fighting. If you want peace of mind, stop fighting with your thoughts.

Peter McWilliams


Every day we do things, we are things that have to do with peace. If we are aware of our life, our way of looking at things, we will know how to make peace right in the moment, we are alive.

Thich Nhat Hanh


First keep the peace within yourself, then you can also bring peace to others.

Thomas Kempis


When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.

Dom Helda Camara


One is called to live nonviolently even if the change one works for seems impossible.

Daniel Berrigan


Now let me suggest first that if we are to have peace on earth, our loyalties must become ecumenical rather that sectional. Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective. No individual can live alone; no nation can live alone, and as long as we try, the more we are going to have war in this world. Now the judgment of God is upon us, and we must either learn to live together as brothers or we are all going to perish together as fools.

Martin Luther King


Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral.  It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all.  The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind.  It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert.  Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love.  It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible.  It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue.  Violence ends by defeating itself.  It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.

Martin Luther King


Peace can only exist where human rights are expected, where the people are fed, and where individuals and nations are free.

Dalai Lama


Scripture

He said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace.’

Luke 8:47-49


Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace be to this house.’

Luke 10:4-6


Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord; peace in heaven and glory in the highest!

Luke 19:38


These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world.

John 16:33


What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet do not supply their bodily needs, what good is that?

James 2: 14-16


Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body; and be thankful.

Colossians 3:15


And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 4:7


So Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you; as the Father has sent Me, I also send you.’

John 20:21


While they were telling these things, He Himself stood in their midst and said to them, ‘Peace be to you.’

Luke 24:36


Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful.

John 14:27


If a man of peace is there, your peace will rest on him; but if not, it will return to you.

Luke 10:5-7


To all who are beloved of God in Rome, called as saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Romans 1:7


So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria enjoyed peace, being built up; and going on in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it continued to increase.

Acts 9:31


So Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you; as the Father has sent Me, I also send you.’

John 20:21


These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world.

John 16:32-33


Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful.

John 14:27


While they were telling these things, He Himself stood in their midst and said to them, ‘Peace be to you.’

Luke 24:36


Do you suppose that I came to grant peace on earth? I tell you, no, but rather division.

Luke 12:50-52


And He said to the woman, ‘Your faith has saved you; go in peace.’

Luke 7:50


Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men with whom He is pleased.

Luke 2:14


Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.

Matthew 10:34


Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

Matthew 5:8-10


These are the things which you should do: speak the truth to one another; judge with truth and judgment for peace in your gates.

Zechariah 8:16


I will make a covenant of peace with them; it will be an everlasting covenant with them And I will place them and multiply them, and will set My sanctuary in their midst forever.

Ezekiel 37:26


For thus says the LORD, ‘Behold, I extend peace to her like a river, And the glory of the nations like an overflowing stream; and you will be nursed, you will be carried on the hip and fondled on the knees.’

Isaiah 66:12


There is no peace, says my God, for the wicked.

Isaiah 57:21


For you will go out with joy and be led forth with peace; The mountains and the hills will break forth into shouts of joy before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.

Isaiah 55:12


For the mountains may be removed and the hills may shake, but my love will not be removed from you, and My covenant of peace will not be shaken, Says the Lord who has compassion on you.

Isaiah 54:10


How lovely on the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who announces peace and brings good news of happiness, who announces salvation, and says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns!’

Isaiah 52:7


Then my people will live in a peaceful habitation, and in secure dwellings and in undisturbed resting places.

Isaiah 32:18


And the work of righteousness will be peace, and the service of righteousness, quietness and confidence forever.

Isaiah 32:17


There will be no end to the increase of His government or of peace, On the throne of David and over his kingdom, To establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness From then on and forevermore The zeal of the Lord of hosts will accomplish this.

Isaiah 9:7


For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; And the government will rest on His shoulders; And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.

Isaiah 9:6


A time to love and a time to hate; a time for war and a time for peace.

Ecclesiastes 3:8


He makes peace in your borders; He satisfies you with the finest of the wheat.

Psalm 147:13-15


For length of days and years of life and peace they will add to you.

Proverbs 3:1-3


Indeed, may you see your children’s children Peace be upon Israel!

Psalm 128:6


May peace be within your walls, and prosperity within your palaces.

Psalm 122:7


I am for peace, but when I speak, they are for war.

Psalm 120:7


Too long has my soul had its dwelling with those who hate peace.

Psalm 120:6


Those who love Your law have great peace, And nothing causes them to stumble.

Psalm 119:165


Love and truth have met together; Righteousness and peace have kissed each other.

Psalm 85:10


In his days may the righteous flourish, and abundance of peace till the moon is no more.

Psalm 72:7


Let the mountains bring peace to the people and the hills, in righteousness.

Psalm 72:3


In peace I will both lie down and sleep, For You alone, O Lord, make me to dwell in safety.

Psalm 4:8


The Lord will give strength to His people; The Lord will bless His people with peace.

Psalm 29:11


And thus you shall say, ‘Have a long life, peace be to you, and peace be to your house, and peace be to all that you have.

1 Samuel 25:6


Dominion and awe belong to Him who establishes peace in His heights.

Job 25:2


The Lord said to him, ‘Peace to you, do not fear; you shall not die.’

Judges 6:23


The Lord lift up His countenance on you, and give you peace.

Numbers 6:26