Peter Maurer Quotes

We must understand the factors that cause fragility, violence, and conflict in order to develop solutions that will meaningfully reduce instability at its roots rather than merely addressing the symptoms.

If you don't want to have to kill or capture every bad guy in the country, you have to reintegrate those who are willing to be reconciled and become part of the solution instead of a continued part of the problem. And then, above all, the resources.

Here we were talking about economic development, about investing billions of dollars in various programs, and I could see it wasn't billions of dollars people needed right away.

The best way to perpetuate poverty is by spending on arms and military, and the best way to fight terrorism is by fighting the basic needs of humanity, because hunger and poverty perpetuate crime.

Too many times, the international community has not prepared the post-conflict period in time.

If we could just stop building up armies and things like that, we would have all the money we need for wildlife and poverty.

America’s super-elite has been particularly effective at using the tools of a political democracy to protect its minority privilege.

… the many armed conflicts which continue to afflict the world today present us daily with dramatic images of misery, hunger, illness and death. Without peace, there can be no form of economic development.  Violence never begets peace, the necessary condition for development.

If we can afford tremendous sums of money to win the war, we can afford to invest whatever amount it takes to win the peace

To one American family out of four, the idea of capitalism as a benign system of comfort, dignity, and personal advance is only a myth, or worse, a bitter mockery.

I understand how every healthy child, every new road, puts a country on a better path, but instability and war will arise from time to time, and I'm not an expert on how you get out of those things.

We need to end our country's counterproductive regime change war policies that have undermined our national security, destroyed so many countries, and taken so many lives. We must instead focus on investing in and rebuilding our communities right here at home.

People are starting to notice the great divide. The Tea party sees the aloofness in a political elite that thinks it knows best and orders the rest of America to fall in line. The Occupy movement sees it in an economic elite that lives in mansions and flies on private jets.

We encourage the international community to redouble its efforts to support social and economic development in South Sudan for the benefit of the citizens of the new country.

You can't wish away poverty overnight.

Too often, U.N. peacekeepers face an impossible task in countries that are still at war and where there is no real peace to keep.

Humanitarian response, sustainable development, and sustaining peace are three sides of the same triangle.

Little islands of human happiness, peace, and prosperity are so exceptional at this point in history that I'm not even sure we can draw lessons from them.

In a world where the latest app can sell for billions of dollars, there are plenty of ways to provide a minimum of humanity for those caught in conflict, who never had the opportunity to reach their potential in the first place.

This country has so much wealth and so much poverty, and that seemed wrong to me. 'Evicted' was my Ph.D. dissertation.

If we continue to tolerate this level of poverty in our cities, and go along with eviction as commonplace in poor neighborhoods, it's not for a lack of resources. It will be a lack of something else.

It's not easy, especially in our politically polarized world, to recognize both the structural and the cultural barriers that so many poor kids face. But I think that if you don't recognize both, you risk being heartless or condescending, and often both.

I could never understand why our lives felt like a struggle while those living off government largesse enjoyed trinkets that I only dreamed about.

I was really interested in the way in which poverty and economic stagnation were transforming and corrupting the American narrative.

When I was growing up reading history books as a young student, it seemed all wars had a winner. Yet in today's wars, it is increasingly clear that no one wins. Everyone loses.