La Paz

“ The light of heavenly love will shine, and the darkness of enmity and hatred will be dispelled from the world. Universal peace will raise its tent in the center of the earth, and the blessed Tree of Life will grow and spread to such an extent that it will overshadow the East and the West. Strong and weak, rich and poor, antagonistic sects and hostile nations—which are like the wolf and the lamb, the leopard and kid, the lion and the calf—will act toward each other with the most complete love, friendship, justice and equity. ”

“ At one time the pretext for war has been religion, at another time patriotism, racial prejudice, national politics, territorial conquest or commercial expansion; in brief, humanity has never been at peace during the period of known history. What blood has been shed! How many fathers have mourned the loss of sons; how many sons have wept for fathers, and mothers for dear ones! Human beings have been the food and targets of the battlefield, and everywhere warfare and strife have been the theme and burden of history. Ferocity has characterized men even more than animals. ”

“ The land is filled with widows and orphans; and mourning, lamentation and woe, have spread through all its extent. Oh! for a return of peace! When will the calamity be past? If some envoy from European power would lift up his voice, and in the name of humanity protest against the wrongs which we suffer, what relief would it afford! And if our enemy, whether yielding to necessity, or a sense of justice, should authorize a proclamation of peace to go through the land, how would our hearts leap for joy! ”

“ We cannot intervene and save Cuba without the exercise of force, and force means war; war means blood. The lowly Nazarene on the shores of Galilee preached the divine doctrine of love, "Peace on earth, good will toward men." Not peace on earth at the expense of liberty and humanity. Not good will toward men who despoil, enslave, degrade, and starve to death their fellow-men. I believe in the doctrine of Christ. I believe in the doctrine of peace; but men must have liberty before there can come abiding peace. When has a battle for humanity and liberty ever been won except by force? ”

“ Exert yourselves with heart and soul so that, perchance, through your efforts the light of universal peace may shine and this darkness of estrangement and enmity may be dispelled from amongst men, that all men may become as one family and consort together in love and kindness, that the East may assist the West and the West give help to the East, for all are the inhabitants of one planet, the people of one original native land and the flocks of one Shepherd. ”

“ To give peace to warring tribes, to administer justice where all was violence, to strike the chains off the slave, to draw the richness from the soil, to plant the earliest seeds of commerce and learning, to increase in whole peoples their capacities for pleasure and diminish their chances of pain—what more beautiful ideal or more valuable reward can inspire human effort? ”

“ The peace agreements committed the Government and the guerrillas to a comprehensive set of measures to address the underlying causes of the war: decades of authoritarian government, repression of potential political opposition, and the political and economic exclusion, discrimination and extreme poverty suffered by the indigenous populations. ”

“ As far as possible, rest thou not for a moment, travel to the North and South of the country and summon all men to the oneness of the world of humanity and to universal peace, saying: O people! Bahá’u’lláh laid the foundation of universal peace fifty years ago. He even addressed Epistles to the kings wherein He declared that war could destroy the foundation of the world of humanity, that peace is conducive to everlasting life and that dire peril awaited mankind. ”

“ He demonstrated, in the face of the world, and all its arguments and all its practice, that peace may be maintained when men will it; and that there is no need, and therefore no excuse, for the bloodshed and the violence that are perpetually marking the expanding boundaries of what is oddly enough termed civilization. ”

“ There would have been gained the priceless moment of meditation which would have enabled the heady currents of racial and national passion to be allayed. Today there would be in all in the devastated countries of the world that calm progress which a continuation of peaceful civilization ensures. ”

“ For the establishment of international peace the blood of twenty thousand Bahá’ís was spilt. Their homes were destroyed, their children made captives and their possessions pillaged yet none of these people waxed cold or wavered in devotion. Even to this day the Bahá’ís are persecuted and quite recently a number were killed, for wherever they are found they put forth the greatest efforts to establish the peace of the world. They not only promulgate principles; they are people of action. ”

“ Nations professing the religion of universal brotherhood carry on wars with the most perfect means of murder and destruction that may be imagined. Millions of soldiers in the Old World, and even in the New, are kept on foot, avowedly to guard the peace among nations who worship as God the great herald of "Peace on earth and good will among men!" ”

“ Praise be to God that thou hast attained!...Thou hast come to see a prisoner and an exile...We desire but the good of the world and the happiness of the nations; yet they deem us a stirrer up of strife and sedition worthy of bondage and banishment...That all nations should become one in faith and all men as brothers; that the bonds of affection and unity between the sons of men should be strengthened; that diversity of religion should cease, and differences of race be annulled--what harm is there in this?...Yet so it shall be ”

“ A country that should be a land of peace and plenty has for generations been an armed camp of contending factions, in which the worst elements have come to the front and in which justice and innocence and respectability have been trampled under foot. ”

“ The advocate of universal peace, of the eternal reign of justice and charity, could not fail to see in slavery the embodiment of universal war of man against man, of absolute injustice and oppression. ”

“ Thus shall the working classes of all the belligerent countries become conscious of the necessity to fight for a peace consistent with the principles of Socialism, a peace without conquest and without humiliation, a peace based not on hatred but on fraternity, not on force but on freedom, a peace which, because of its justice, may be everlasting. ”

“ The pride of their nation, their wives and little ones, their cabins, their hunting and fishing grounds, their territories claimed by the prescriptive right of possession, the graves and spirits of their fathers—their own lives, dear to all, and now menaced by impending war;—every fact and circumstance, that is precious in present possession, or dear to hope;—all, that belongs to life, and all that is mysterious and awful in religion—are invoked, and brought in with all the power of their wild poetry and savage rhetoric, to shake off the lethargies of peace, and kindle the passions for war. ”

“ At first the demonstrations were all in favour of peace. Labourers in blue blouses were marching up in compact masses on the Place de la Concorde, carrying white flags and signs with the inscriptions "À bas la guerre" and "Vive la paix!" Public speakers delivered long orations on the horrors of war, and protested against the ambitious, fame-hunting tyrants who drove their innocent, peace-loving subjects into bloody combats to feed their own greed for glory and power. ”

“ We can, at the same time, recognize, through the haze of an ever-widening hostility, the progress, painful yet persistent, of certain communities within its pale through the stages of obscurity, of proscription, of emancipation, and of recognition—stages that must needs culminate in the course of succeeding centuries, in the establishment of the Faith, and the founding, in the plenitude of its power and authority, of the world-embracing Bahá’í Commonwealth. ”

“ The spirit of slavery and barbarism which, in some dark and distant parts of our country, still lingers to blight and to destroy, would have made our assembling here the signal and excuse for opening upon us all the flood-gates of wrath and violence. That we are here in peace to-day is a compliment and a credit to American civilization and a prophecy of still greater national enlightenment and progress in the future. ”

“ Wherever peace can find a refuge from the violence and uncertainty of war, industry and commerce take root and work their miracles.!No matter whether it find protection on the slopes or in the valleys of mountains, among the sand dunes or in the marshes of the sea, behind the walls of a city or away from the path of marauding invaders, the result is the same—civilization. ”

“ For, surely, in the words of an architect of conflict and peace, “a society becomes great not by the victories of its factions over each other but by its reconciliations.” To this end, we shall continue to exhaust measures and avenues that will involve all our people in the task of moral and material reconstruction and national unity. ”

“ The earth has one surface. God has not divided this surface by boundaries and barriers to separate races and peoples. Man has set up and established these imaginary lines, giving to each restricted area a name and the limitation of a native land or nationhood. By this division and separation into groups and branches of mankind, prejudice is engendered which becomes a fruitful source of war and strife. Impelled by this prejudice, races and nations declare war against each other; the blood of the innocent is poured out, and the earth torn by violence. ”

“ From Cambodia to Afghanistan to Angola, our strength, our assistance to those who would fight for freedom, has given both peace and freedom a new breath of life and given the people of those countries new hope. Yes, the world today is filled with realistic hopes for peace and freedom that would have seemed totally utopian just 8 years ago. ”

“ Now, I ask all of you for your support -- to give our government and our people in our Southern regions -- Christians, Muslims, Lumads, Filipinos all -- the MNLF, our soldiers, our policemen, and the people of our divided communities included -- this long-sought opportunity under our transitory arrangements to convert swords into plowshares. From every part of the globe, we do not lack examples of the futility of armed conflict as a way of settling ethnic, religious, economic, social and cultural differences. ”

“ Love for peace—this is exemplified in the doctrine sanctified in our Constitution which renounces war as an instrument of national policy. We have served the cause of peace in our land by capturing Jesus Lava, the top head and brain of the communists who seek to overthrow our peace and freedom. ”

“ The ruling classes may have fought for power, for territory, for a little earth, but the common soldiers fought for peace. And if they are with us to-night, in the darkness over land and sea, they are speaking that word into our hearts now, as the message of hope that will lighten the burden of the troubled world. ”

“ Oh, peace, so precious art thou to humanity that our highest ideal of social felicity must ever be thy sovereignty upon earth. Pagan statesmanship, speaking through pagan poetry, exclaims: 'The best of things which it is given to know is peace; better than a thousand triumphs is the simple gift of peace.' The regenerated world shall not lift up sword against sword ”

“ You wish for a peaceful life and livelihood? Then get you up and go to your national land, and look no more for crumbs from strangers’ tables: for there is neither peace nor livelihood except for each people in its own land. ”

“ Thus devastation was on a scale both great and small: man fought with man, tribe with tribe, family with family, race with race, nation with nation. The larger and more powerful communities absorbed the weaker ones; and the greater and more vigorous became the aggregation of men, the more seldom did one hear of acts of violence within these communities, and the more secure the continuity of their existence appeared. ”

“ Go on in your indifference and carelessness, and these western valleys and mountains will, in the days of your children, be blood-soaked by one of the most desperate of interracial wars—a war at once civil and international—in the history of the world, and despite all your treaties of peace. ”

“ Consider how discord and dissension have prevailed in this great human family for thousands of years. Its members have ever been engaged in war and bloodshed. Up to the present time in history the world of humanity has neither attained nor enjoyed any measure of peace, owing to incessant conditions of hostility and strife. History is a continuous and consecutive record of warfare brought about by religious, sectarian, racial, patriotic and political causes. ”

“ How often we have enumerated and deprecated the evils of war! The Mexican War, in which Slavery herself involved us, (using the power of the Republic against which she conspired to further her conspiracy,) gave us occasion to extol the benefits of peace, and to draw up a formidable indictment against the spirit which lusted for the appeal to arms. We have not lusted for it, and the benefits of peace seem greater than ever; but the benefits of equity and truth seem greater than all. ”