Quotes About Peace

An old man, I want only peace. The things of this world mean nothing. I know no good way to live and I can't stop getting lost in my thoughts, my ancient forests. The wind that waves the pines loosens my belt. The mountain moon lights me as I play my lute. You ask: how does a man rise or fall in this life? The fisherman's song flows deep under the river.

May all sentient beings be free from needless suffering.

There's a whole lot of comfort in saying nothing.

Soon his eyes close on their own accord, and he's swept back into sleep, that nightly place of plantlike deliverance.

Tecumseh tried to unite the scattered nations under the banner of Crane Power, but the Hopi mark for the crane's foot became the world's peace symbol.

From the horrible weapon which they were about to urge the United States to develop, Szilard, Teller and Wigner—"the Hungarian conspiracy," Merle Tuve was amused to call them—hoped for more than deterrence against German aggression.1194 They also hoped for world government and world peace, conditions they imagined bombs made of uranium might enforce.

All war is immoral. Logically, the 100 percent pacifist has the only impregnable position.

people are more likely to refrain from violence out of preference for a nonviolent existence than they are to do so out of fear of punishment.

I have often wondered why people never want to put a stone monument of the Eight Beatitudes on a courthouse lawn. Then I realize that the Eight Beatitudes of Jesus would probably not be very good for any war, any macho worldview, the wealthy, or our consumer economy.

Forgiveness is to let go of our hope for a different or better past.

It is hardly an exaggeration to say that "us-and-them" seeing, and the dualistic thinking that results, is the foundation of almost all discontent and violence in the world.

Only when we rest in God can we find the safety, the spaciousness, and the scary freedom to be who we are, all that we are, more than we are, and less than we are.

Human maturity is neither offensive nor defensive; it is finally able to accept that reality is what it is.

There is no way to peace. Peace is the way. There is no path toward love except by practicing love. War will always produce more war. Violence can never bring about true peace.

When you are concerned with either attacking or defending, manipulating or resisting...you cannot be contemplative. When you are preoccupied with enemies, you are always dualistic.

Faith for Jesus is the opposite of anxiety. If you are anxious, if you are trying to control everything, if you are worried about many things, you don't have faith, according to Jesus. You do not trust that God is good and on your side. You're trying to do it all yourself, lift yourself up by your own bootstraps.

You rest in God, not in outcomes.

May the God of peace make you whole and holy, may you be kept safe in body, heart, and mind, and thus ready for the presence. God has called you and will not fail you" (1 Thessalonians 5:23).

Forgiveness is to let go of our hope for a different or better past." It is what it is, and such acceptance leads to great freedom, as long as there is also accountability and healing in the process.

Know that things are okay as they are. This moment is as perfect as it can be. The saints called this the "sacrament of the present moment.

Thomas Merton, say it, as he so often does: "A door opens in the center of our being, and we seem to fall through it into immense depths, which although they are infinite—are still accessible to us. All eternity seems to have become ours in this one placid and breathless contact.

Before you speak of peace, you must first have it in your heart. —St. Francis of Assisi13

God is the ultimate nonviolent one, so we dare not accept any theory of salvation that is based on violence, exclusion, social pressure, or moral coercion.

When you are present, you will know the Presence. It is that simple, and it is that hard.