Dalai Lama Quotes

Real peace is more than the absence of war; it is an absence of the causes of war.

Society has arisen out of the works of peace; the essence of society is peacemaking. Peace and not war is the father of all things.

The story of the human race is war. Except for brief and precarious interludes there has never been peace in the world; and long before history began murderous strife was universal and unending.

Peace is hard, but we know that it is possible

I have been apt to think that there has never been, nor ever will be, any such thing as a good war, or a bad peace.

War is the antithesis of all our teaching. It breaks all the commandments; it makes rich men poor, and strong men weak. It makes well men sick, and by it living men are changed to dead men.

There is no time left for anything but to make peace work a dimension of our every waking activity.

More and more individuals worldwide are realizing that war does not solve conflict, nor resolve long-standing cycles of violence. As more of those who have this understanding communicate it to policy-makers and more particularly, start implementing it in their own lives and localities, change will start to happen.

I have to believe in the possibility of peace, because the alternative is to accept the inevitability of continual war, and of always living in fear. It doesn't have to be that way. However, there are no simple solutions, and I am not the possessor of a magic formula for peace. All I can say is that for peace to succeed it requires perseverance, patience, humility, compromise, and commitment, from all parties.

So long as human history continues, we will face the perennial challenge of realizing, maintaining and strengthening peace through dialogue, of making dialogue the sure and certain path to peace. We must uphold and proclaim this conviction without cease, whatever coldly knowing smiles or cynical critiques may greet us.

If we do not want to die together in war, we must learn to live together in peace.

The belief that peace is desirable is rarely enough to achieve it. Peace requires responsibility. Peace entails sacrifice.

A word of truth can mobilise two peoples looking for the road to reconciliation.

Moderate doesn't mean that you're a wimp - far from it. It means that you've chosen a path because you believe that's the only way for global harmony and peace.

Peace must be more than the absence of war.

Society has arisen out of the works of peace; the essence of society is peacemaking.

Good wishes alone will not ensure peace.

To increase the zone of peace is to build the inner core of a stable international zone.

We should wage war not to win war, but to win peace.

Peace is not the product of a victory or a command. It has no finishing line, no final deadline, no fixed definition of achievement. Peace is a never-ending process, the work of many decisions.

You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.

Where there is no trust, how can we give up our weapons first?

How could we live without the sword?

Peace, if it ever exists, will not be based on the fear of war, but on the love of peace. It will not be the abstaining from an act, but the coming of a state of mind.

Peace is never a perfect achievement.