It is 6:30 a.m. In the silence of the early morning, my feet crunch leaves in the dank stillness. There is something pure and sacred about the world before it wakes up. No flashing lights or screens, no noisy car engines, no odor of disinfectant. There are just the simple surroundings of nature — the fresh, clean air caressing your skin, the soft twitter of birds and the solid earth underneath. I feel unfettered, all my senses intensified, truly tranquil, at peace.
According to Simple English Wikipedia, peace is a time without any fights or wars. In a larger sense, peace — or peacefulness — can mean a state of harmony, quiet or calm that is not disturbed by anything at all, like a still pond with no ripples.
Below are a few quotes from Selena Barrientos’ Nov. 12, 2019 article “28 Quotes About Peace That Will Inspire Tranquility in Your Life” in Good Housekeeping.
Inner Peace Quotes
Do not let the behavior of others destroy your inner peace. —Dalai Lama
If you are depressed, you are living in the past; if you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present. —Lao Tzu
Nobody can bring you peace but yourself. —Ralph Waldo Emerson
The life of inner peace, being harmonious and without stress, is the easiest type of existence. —Norman Vincent Peale
Peace can become a lens through which you see the world. Be it. Live it. Radiate it out. Peace is an inside job. —Wayne Dyer
Calming Peace Quotes
Peace is liberty in tranquility. —Marcus Tullius Cicero
Let go of the thoughts that don’t make you strong. —Karen Salmansohn
You should feel beautiful and you should feel safe. What you surround yourself with should bring you peace of mind and peace of spirit. —Stacy London
“Being relaxed, at peace with yourself, confident, emotionally neutral loose, and free-floating — these are the keys to successful performance in almost everything.” —Wayne W. Dyer
“Every breath we take, every step we make, can be filled with peace, joy and serenity.” —Thich Nhat Hanh
Inspirational Peace Quotes
Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding. —Albert Einstein
It isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn’t enough to believe in it. One must work at it. —Eleanor Roosevelt
You will find peace not by trying to escape your problems, but by confronting them courageously. You will find peace not in denial, but in victory. —J. Donald Walters
Peace brings with it so many positive emotions that it is worth aiming for in all circumstances. —Estella Eliot
If you don't know the guy on the other side of the world, love him anyway because he's just like you. He has the same dreams, the same hopes and fears. It's one world, pal. We're all neighbors. —Frank Sinatra
World Peace Quotes
Not one of us can rest, be happy, be at home, be at peace with ourselves, until we end hatred and division. —John Lewis
Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say that I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will be as one. —John Lennon
When you make peace with yourself, you make peace with the world. —Maha Ghosananda
When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace. —Jimi Hendrix
When I say it's you I like, I'm talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can ever see or hear or touch. That deep part of you that allows you to stand for those things without which humankind cannot survive. Love that conquers hate, peace that rises triumphant over war and justice that proves more powerful than greed. ―Fred Rogers
Nobel Peace Prize
According to nobelprize.org, the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded 100 times to 134 Nobel Laureates between 1901 and 2019, 107 individuals and 27 organizations. Since the International Committee of the Red Cross has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize three times — in 1917, 1944 and 1963, and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize two times — in 1954 and 1981, there are 24 individual organizations which have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
According to Nick Collins’ Oct. 9, 2009 article “Nobel Peace Prize: Ten Famous Winners” in The Telegraph, below are some of the most notable Nobel Peace Prize winners.
1. Martin Luther King Jr. - 1964, civil rights and social justice
Martin Luther King dreamed that all inhabitants of the United States would be judged by their personal qualities and not by the color of their skin. In April 1968 he was murdered by a white racist. Four years earlier, he had received the Peace Prize for his nonviolent campaign against racism.
King adhered to Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolence. In 1955 he began his struggle to persuade the U.S. government to declare the policy of racial discrimination in the southern states unlawful. The racists responded with violence to the black people's nonviolent initiatives.
In 1963, 250,000 demonstrators marched to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, where King gave his famous "I have a dream" speech. The following year, President Lyndon Johnson got a law passed prohibiting all racial discrimination.
But King had powerful opponents. The head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, had him placed under surveillance as a communist, and when King opposed the administration's policy in Vietnam, he fell into disfavor with the President. It has still not been ascertained whether King's murderer acted on his own or was part of a conspiracy.
At the age of 35 he was the youngest man to have received the award, and donated all his prize money to the civil rights movement.
2. Nelson Mandela - 1993, peaceful termination of apartheid
Nelson R. Mandela and Frederik Willem de Klerk were awarded the prize
jointly for their work for the peaceful termination of the apartheid regime, and for laying the foundations for a new democratic South Africa.
From their different points of departure, Mandela and de Klerk reached agreement on the principles for a transition to a new political order based on the tenet of one man-one vote. By looking ahead to South African reconciliation instead of back at the deep wounds of the past, they have shown personal integrity and great political courage.
Ethnic disparities cause the bitterest conflicts. South Africa has been the symbol of racially conditioned suppression. Mandela’s and de Klerk’s constructive policy of peace and reconciliation also pointed the way to the peaceful resolution of similar deep-rooted conflicts elsewhere in the world.
Previous Nobel Laureates Albert Lutuli and Desmond Tutu made important contributions to progress towards racial equality in South Africa. Mandela and de Klerk took the process a major step further.
3. Mother Teresa - 1979, bringing help to suffering humanity
Born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in Skopje in 1910, the founder of the Missionaries of Charity won the prize for her work caring for the poor in the slums of Calcutta.
Despite having no money, she built her Christian order into a worldwide organization with the help of volunteers and charitable donations.
Mother Teresa left her teaching post at a Roman Catholic girls’ school in Calcutta in order to devote her life to working among the poorest of the poor in the slums of that city.
The Roman Catholic order of which she was the head extended its activities to include a number of other Indian cities and other parts of the world.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee recognized Mother Teresa’s work in bringing help to suffering humanity. In 1979, the world turned its attention to the plight of children and refugees, and those were precisely the categories for whom Mother Teresa worked so selflessly for so many years.
The Committee placed special emphasis on the spirit that inspired her activities and which was the tangible expression of her personal attitude and human qualities.
A feature of her work was respect for the individual human being, for his or her dignity and innate value. The loneliest, the most wretched and the dying have, at her hands, received compassion without condescension, based on reverence for man.
In Mother Teresa’s case, this basic philosophy of life was firmly rooted in her Christian faith. In Calcutta and elsewhere, she enlisted the help of assistants from other religious denominations. Also, she was recognized by the Indian authorities and by the Asian Secretary-General of the United Nations, the Buddhist U Thant.
Constructive efforts to do away with hunger and poverty and to ensure for mankind a safer and better world community in which to develop should be inspired by the spirit of Mother Teresa, by respect for the worth and dignity of the individual human being.
4. Jimmy Carter - 2002, peaceful solutions to international conflicts
The former American president was commemorated for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.
During his time as President, he played a key role in disarmament talks with the Soviet Union — resulting in the SALT II treaty — and established relations between the U.S. and China, as well as many other international peace treaties.
During his presidency (1977-1981), Carter’s mediation was a vital contribution to the Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt, in itself a great enough achievement to qualify for the Nobel Peace Prize. At a time when the cold war between East and West was still predominant, he placed renewed emphasis on the place of human rights in international politics.
Through his Carter Center, he — since his presidency — undertook very extensive and persevering conflict resolution on several continents. He showed outstanding commitment to human rights and served as an observer at countless elections all over the world. He worked hard on many fronts to fight tropical diseases and to bring about growth and progress in developing countries. Carter was active in several of the problem areas that have figured prominently in the over 100 years of Peace Prize history.
Carter stood by the principles that conflicts must as far as possible be resolved through mediation and international cooperation based on international law, respect for human rights and economic development.
5. Theodore Roosevelt - 1906, negotiating peace agreement
The American president was recognized for successfully negotiating a peace agreement that ended the Russo-Japanese war.
He also helped bring the first case before the International Court of Arbitration at The Hague, asking for the tribunal to resolve an old dispute with Mexico over the Pious Foundations of California.
Roosevelt was the first statesman to be awarded the Peace Prize, and for the first time the award was controversial. The Norwegian Left argued that Roosevelt was a "military mad" imperialist who completed the American conquest of the Philippines. Swedish newspapers wrote that Alfred Nobel was turning in his grave, and that Norway awarded the Peace Prize to Roosevelt to win powerful friends after the dramatic dissolution of the union with Sweden the previous year.
In domestic policy, Roosevelt was a radical within the Republican Party. He went in for social reforms and for state control of big capital. Roosevelt's term as President ended in 1908. During World War I he tried in vain to be allowed to serve as an officer, and in 1919 he opposed U.S. membership of the new League of Nations.
6. Albert “Al” Arnold Gore Jr. - climate change
The former U.S. vice president was recognized for his efforts to raise awareness about climate change and other environmental issues, chiefly through his documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth.”
The awarding committee said Mr. Gore and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — with whom he shared the prize — were helping to prevent future conflicts across the world.
Indications of changes in the earth’s future climate must be treated with the utmost seriousness and with the precautionary principle uppermost in our minds. Extensive climate changes may alter and threaten the living conditions of much of mankind. They may induce large-scale migration and lead to greater competition for the earth’s resources. Such changes will place particularly heavy burdens on the world’s most vulnerable countries. There may be increased danger of violent conflicts and wars both within and between states.
Through the scientific reports it has issued over the past two decades, the IPCC has created an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming. Thousands of scientists and officials from over 100 countries have collaborated to achieve greater certainty as to the scale of the warming. Whereas in the 1980s global warming seemed to be merely an interesting hypothesis, the 1990s produced firmer evidence in its support. In the last few years, the connections have become even clearer and the consequences still more apparent.
Al Gore has for a long time been one of the world’s leading environmentalist politicians. He became aware at an early stage of the climatic challenges the world is facing. His strong commitment, reflected in political activity, lectures, films and books, has strengthened the struggle against climate change. He is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted.
7. Mikhail Gorbachev - 1990, negotiating peace
He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 for his role in the peace process between America and the Soviet Union that later led to the end of the cold war.
His award — which had previously been given to political dissident Andrei Sakharov and Polish trade union leader Lech Walesa — attracted great controversy, as it was viewed by many within the Soviet Union as an ideological weapon of the West.
During this time, dramatic changes took place in the relationship between East and West. Confrontation was replaced by negotiations. Old European nation states regained their freedom. The arms race was slowing down, and there was a definite and active process in the direction of arms control and disarmament. Several regional conflicts were solved or at least came closer to a solution. The UN began to play the role which was originally planned for it in an international community governed by law.
These historic changes sprung from several factors, but Mikhail Gorbachev was recognized for his many and decisive contributions. The greater openness he brought about in Soviet society also helped promote international trust.
This peace process — which Gorbachev contributed so significantly to — opens up new possibilities for the world community to solve its pressing problems across ideological, religious, historical and cultural dividing lines.
8. Kofi Annan - 2001, working for a better organized and more peaceful world
Shared the prize with the United Nations, of which he was then secretary general. This award was also hotly debated, due to what many observers saw as the UN's failure to prevent mass killings in Rwanda and Serbia, and Annan's perceived failure to stand up to America and other Western powers.
Annan was born in Ghana in 1938. His father was a chief and governor of the Ashanti province. He attended a Methodist school and a technical college in his home country before continuing his academic studies in Switzerland and the United States.
He pursued a varied career in the UN system until 1993, when he was appointed Deputy Secretary-General for peacekeeping operations — a position he held until 1997 — when he took over as the United Nations' seventh Secretary-General.
Annan was awarded the Peace Prize for having revitalized the UN and for having given priority to human rights. The Nobel Committee also recognized his commitment to the struggle to contain the spread of the HIV virus in Africa and his declared opposition to international terrorism.
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