Martin Van Creveld Quotes

If you're a politician, you might want to learn the Buddhist way of negotiation. Restoring communication and bringing back reconciliation is clear and concrete in Buddhism.

Dialogue and education for peace can help free our hearts from the impulse toward intolerance and the rejection of others.

My opinion on who's wrong or who's right has nothing to do with the fact that we have to bring together people who are against each other, to transform antagonism into cooperation.

It's hard for me to stay silent when I keep hearing that peace is only attainable through war. There's nothing more scary than watching ignorance in action.

Every fight should be settled through love and dialogue.

We simply believe that we should lean into the world with something other than the pointed edge of a sword.

Peace comes when you talk to the guy you most hate. And that's where the courage of a leader comes, because when you sit down with your enemy, you as a leader must already have very considerable confidence from your own constituency.

The advocates of retaliatory wars will continue to assume a much simpler reality with their hoary oppositions: Religious and secular, backward and enlightened, free and unfree. But if we are to admit how deeply and irrevocably interconnected our world is, then we must find new ways to break the cycle of counter-productive violence.

The practice of peace and reconciliation is one of the most vital and artistic of human actions.

Through mutual understanding, sincerity and goodwill, and with great wisdom and broad views, the leaders on both sides should jointly initiate new opportunities for peace, stability, cooperation and mutual benefit.

We shall listen, not lecture; learn, not threaten. We will enhance our safety by earning the respect of others and showing respect for them. In short, our foreign policy will rest on the traditional American values of restraint and empathy, not on military might.

Peace in the Middle East isn't going to be created by another war or violent act on the other side.

God calls all of his children to the table. We can disagree and even say a lot of hateful things, but what we can't do in good conscience is leave the table. Or demand that someone else not be at the table.

I think that peace is, in many ways, a precondition of joy.

People respond in accordance to how you relate to them. If you approach them on the basis of violence, that's how they'll react. But if you say, 'We want peace, we want stability,' we can then do a lot of things that will contribute towards the progress of our society.

My policy is trust—peace, and to put aside the bayonet

Tolerance is a virtue that depends upon peace and strength. History shows that it cannot survive war and devastation.

Quarrels would not last long if the fault were only on one side.

Violence against violence? That will never solve the problem.

Conflict resolution cannot be merely about eliminating all opposition or reducing the choices in negotiating the problem to two mutually exclusive sets of rights and wrongs. Rather, it must consist of laboring to bring everybody to accept reality and then to project a future with this understanding as the foundation.

We have to face the fact that either all of us are going to die together or we are going to learn to live together and if we are to live together we have to talk.

… morality ends where the gun begins.

The good people of this world are very far from being satisfied with each other & my arms are the best peacemakers.

You don't promote the cause of peace by talking only to people with whom you agree.

I'm not asking you to be tolerant of each other. Tolerance is for cowards. Understand each other.