Pico Iyer Quotes

The measure of civilization in a people is to be found in its just appreciation of the wrongfulness of war.

I think the most challenging thing for me in my life and in the Bible is that we worship Jesus as the Prince of Peace. And America is constantly at war.

If the inner world is inundated with peace, then the nightmare of world war cannot even come into being.

All my life, I have maintained that the people of the world can learn to live together in peace if they are not brought up in prejudice.

You don't have to have fought in a war to love peace.

The mortal mind alone cannot devise an answer to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, because the true answer lies on a level of consciousness that's beyond our mortal thinking. Quite simply, when it comes to Israel and the Palestinians, we need a miracle.

So I would say God hates war, but God loves every soldier.

At the beginning of this century, people never questioned the effectiveness of war, never thought there could be real peace. Now, people are tired of war and see it as ineffective in solving anything.

You can’t have peace without a war.

The founders of the United Nations sought to replace a world at war with a world of civilized order. They hoped that a world of relentless conflict would give way to a new era, one where freedom from violence prevailed.... But the awful truth is that the use of violence for political gain has become more, not less, widespread in the last decade.

War's Legitimate Object Is More Perfect Peace.

Given how deeply the ways of war have penetrated our collective consciousness, it will take spiritual power to turn the issue around.

The world will continue to change dramatically, but fighting and war can destroy us utterly. What we need now are techniques of harmony, not those of contention. The Art of Peace is required, not the Art of War.

Peace need not be impracticable, and war need not be inevitable.

I want that there should be a belief, a faith in the possibility of removing mountains to the side of right. If we believe that war is wrong, as everyone must, then we ought to believe that by proper efforts on our part, it may be done away with.

If peace is equated simply with the absence of war, it can become abject pacifism that turns the world over to the most ruthless.

Peace is not passive, it is active. Peace is not appeasement, it is strength. Peace does not 'happen,' it requires work.

What really matters is that we should all of us realize that we are guilty of inhumanity. The horror of this realization should shakes us out of our lethargy so that we can direct our hopes and our intentions to the coming of an era in which war will have no place.

No more war, war never again! Peace, it is peace which must guide the destinies of people and of all mankind.

I am a man of peace. I believe in peace. But I do not want peace at any price.

The best way to perpetuate poverty is spending on arms, and poverty itself is a form of violence. The wealthy industrialized countries have been too slow to recognize this. I hope that in this new century and new millennium, the world will learn that if you want peace, you must prepare for peace, plan for peace, work for it, and comply with its dictates. Lasting peace will never be achieved with the instruments of war.

We know how to win wars. We must learn now to win peace.

Sometimes peace looks like war, you cannot tell them apart.

Such will be a great lesson of peace: teaching men that what they cannot take by an election, neither can they take it by war.

War and Authority are companions; Peace and Liberty are companions.