Kofi Annan Quotes

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.

Peace is impossible, war is improbable.

War's Legitimate Object Is More Perfect Peace.

War is not its own end, except in some catastrophic slide into absolute damnation. It's peace that's wanted. Some better peace than the one you started with.

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

Peace by persuasion has a pleasant sound, but I think we should not be able to work it. We should have to tame the human race first, and history seems to show that that cannot be done.

You can’t have peace without a war.

We have thought of peace as passive and war as the active way of living. The opposite is true. War is not the most strenuous life. It is a kind of rest cure compared to the task of reconciling our differences ... From War to Peace is not from the strenuous to the easy existence; it is from the futile to the effective, from the stagnant to the active, from the destructive to the creative way of life ... The world will be regenerated by the people who rise above these passive ways and heroically seek, by whatever hardship, by whatever toil, the methods by which people can agree.

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

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

Peacemaking calls for courage, much more so than warfare.

For a just and lasting peace, here is my solemn pledge to you: by dedication and patience we will continue, as long as I remain your President, to work for this simple - this single - this exclusive goal.

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.

Even in waging war, cherish the spirit of peace-maker; that, by conquering those whom you attack, you may lead them back to the advantages of peace.

All men desire peace, but very few desire those things that make for peace.

We have agreed that peace can be achieved with the removal of the occupation and the end of aggression.

It is easier to make war than to make peace.

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.

If the time comes when our culture tires of the endless homicidal feuds, despairs of the use of force and war as a means of bringing peace, becomes discontent with the half-lives that its members are living - only then will our culture seriously look for alternatives.

We say peace and the echo comes back from the other side, war. We dont want wars even when we win.

We believe that peace is at hand.

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

War is not the answer. Violence is not the solution. A more peaceful world is possible.

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.