Lester B. Pearson

“We are all descendants of Adam, and we are all products of racial miscegenation.”

“Until the last great war, a general expectation of material improvement was an idea peculiar to Western man. Now war and its aftermath have made economic and social progress a political imperative in every quarter of the globe.”

“Misunderstanding arising from ignorance breeds fear, and fear remains the greatest enemy of peace.”

“We know now that in modern warfare, fought on any considerable scale, there can be no possible economic gain for any side. Win or lose, there is nothing but waste and destruction.”

“But while we all pray for peace, we do not always, as free citizens, support the policies that make for peace or reject those which do not. We want our own kind of peace, brought about in our own way.”

“I have worked in a very close and cordial way with Norwegian representatives at many international meetings, and the pleasure I felt at those associations was equaled only by the profit I always secured from them.”

“As for the promotion of peace congresses we have had our meetings and assemblies, but the promotion through them of the determined and effective will to peace displaying itself in action and policy remains to be achieved.”

“As a soldier, I survived World War I when most of my comrades did not.”

“When you're special to a cat, you're special indeed, she brings to you the gift of her preference of you, the sight of you, the sound of your voice, the touch of your hand.”

“The choice, however, is as clear now for nations as it was once for the individual: peace or extinction.”

“I am grateful for the opportunities I have been given to participate in that work as a representative of my country, Canada, whose people have, I think, shown their devotion to peace.”

“No state, furthermore, unless it has aggressive military designs such as those which consumed Nazi leaders in the thirties, is likely to divert to defense any more of its resources and wealth and energy than seems necessary.”

“The scientific and technological discoveries that have made war so infinitely more terrible for us are part of the same process that has knit us all so much more closely together.”

“It would be especially tragic if the people who most cherish ideals of peace, who are most anxious for political cooperation on a wider than national scale, made the mistake of underestimating the pace of economic change in our modern world.”

“The grim fact is that we prepare for war like precocious giants, and for peace like retarded pygmies.”

“As a civilian during the Second War, I was exposed to danger in circumstances which removed any distinction between the man in and the man out of uniform.”

“Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.”

“The stark and inescapable fact is that today we cannot defend our society by war since total war is total destruction, and if war is used as an instrument of policy, eventually we will have total war.”

“Today the predatory state, or the predatory group of states, with power of total destruction, is no more to be tolerated than the predatory individual.”

“I cannot think of anything more difficult than to say something which would be worthy of this impressive and, for me, memorable occasion, and of the ideals and purposes which inspired the Nobel Peace Award.”