Pope John XXIII Quotes

The popular, and one may say naive, idea is that peace can be secured by disarmament and that disarmament must therefore precede the attainment of absolute security and lasting peace.

So long as peace is not attained by law (so argue the advocates of armaments) the military protection of a country must not be undermined, and until such is the case disarmament is impossible.

The best missile defense system of all would be a just and lasting peace.

Discussions without end have been devoted to the subject of peace, and the efforts to obtain a general and lasting peace have been frequent through many years of world history.

Among the many defects that have been pointed out in the Federal Constitution ... is an office for promoting and preserving perpetual peace in our country.... Let a Secretary of Peace be established.

The Mutual Security Act was intended not to fight a war but to prevent a war.

True and solid peace of nations consists not in equality of arms, but in mutual trust alone.

Without armaments peace cannot be kept; wars are waged not only to repel injustice but also to establish a firm peace.

A permanent peace cannot be prepared by threats but only by the honest attempt to create a mutual trust. However strong national armaments may be, they do not create military security for any nation nor do they guarantee the maintenance of peace.

Lightly armed nations can move toward war just as easily as those which are armed to the teeth, and they will do so if the usual causes of war are not removed.

Certain it is that a great responsibility rests upon the statesmen of all nations, not only to fulfill the promises for reduction in armaments, but to maintain the confidence of the people of the world in the hope of an enduring peace.

I think it's in the hands of each head of state: the future of peace in his own country.

The war industry people are very together; they know exactly what they want; they don't even have to talk to each other. The peace industry people are just intellectuals who are very critical of each other... Unless the peace industry is powerful, we're always going to have war. It is as simple as that.

We cannot be both the world's leading champion of peace and the world's leading supplier of the weapons of war.

I know that military alliances and armament have been the reliance for peace for centuries, but they do not produce peace; and when war comes, as it inevitably does under such conditions, these armaments and alliances but intensify and broaden the conflict.

It is easy to get into war, not so easy to get out.

I came here as a practical man, to talk, not simply on the question of peace and war, but to treat another question which is of hardly less importance - the enormous and burdensome standing armaments which it is the practice of modern Governments to sustain in time of peace.

From 1836, down to last year, there is no proof of the Government having any confidence in the duration of peace, or possessing increased security against war.

... the notion that the greater the preparation for war the smaller the probability of its occurrence might well appear a reductio ad absurdum of militarism, implying, as it does, that the only way to secure an eternal world peace is to concentrate the entire energy of all nations upon the art of war ...

Whenever there is talk of peace, there is anger in the military- industrial- political complex.

Security provided by peace treaties is preferable to security enforced by troops.

The core of detente [with Russia] is the reduction in arms.

Wars are most often won by those who have made the greatest effort to prevent them.

Every nation must have some degree of military organization, even among the most peaceful peoples. The possession of armament however, no matter how necessary, breeds suspicion, fear, counter-armament and hate.

Peacemaking and peacekeeping should run in parallel.