Lester B. Pearson quotes

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects. (Lester B. Pearson)
Of all our dreams today there is none more important - or so hard to realise - than that of peace in the world. May we never lose our faith in it or our resolve to do everything that can be done to convert it one day into reality. View quote
Lester B. Pearson
It has too often been too easy for rulers and governments to incite man to war. View quote
Lester B. Pearson
As a soldier, I survived World War I when most of my comrades did not. View quote
Lester B. Pearson
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. View quote
Lester B. Pearson
The grim fact is that we prepare for war like precocious giants, and for peace like retarded pygmies. View quote
Lester B. Pearson
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. View quote
Lester B. Pearson
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. View quote
Lester B. Pearson
A great gulf, however, has been opened between man's material advance and his social and moral progress, a gulf in which he may one day be lost if it is not closed or narrowed. View quote
Lester B. Pearson
We must keep on trying to solve problems, one by one, stage by stage, if not on the basis of confidence and cooperation, at least on that of mutual toleration and self-interest. View quote
Lester B. Pearson
The choice, however, is as clear now for nations as it was once for the individual: peace or extinction. (Lester B. Pearson)
And I have lived since - as you have - in a period of cold war, during which we have ensured by our achievements in the science and technology of destruction that a third act in this tragedy of war will result in the peace of extinction. View quote
Lester B. Pearson
Today continuing poverty and distress are a deeper and more important cause of international tensions, of the conditions that can produce war, than previously. View quote
Lester B. Pearson
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. View quote
Lester B. Pearson
Every state has not only the right but the duty to make adequate provision for its own defense in the way it thinks best, providing it does not do so at the expense of any other state. View quote
Lester B. Pearson
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. View quote
Lester B. Pearson
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. View quote
Lester B. Pearson
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. View quote
Lester B. Pearson
The life of states cannot, any more than the life of individuals, be conditioned by the force and the will of a unit, however powerful, but by the consensus of a group, which must one day include all states. View quote
Lester B. Pearson
We are all descendants of Adam, and we are all products of racial miscegenation. View quote
Lester B. Pearson
This was not enough for a minority now demanding much sterner action to meet the Nazi threat. At the head of this group was Winston Churchill. His prestige, however, after his stand during the abdication crisis [in late spring 1937] and his aggressive, bellicose speeches on the need for more arms, was at a low point. Not many listened to him yet. He was still considered an irresponsible failure and an unreliable character. (Lester B. Pearson)
Things can be done under the incentive of terror and fear that can not be done when the fear disappears. View quote
Lester B. Pearson
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. View quote
Lester B. Pearson
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. View quote
Lester B. Pearson
As to the first, I do not know that I have done very much myself to promote fraternity between nations but I do know that there can be no more important purpose for any man's activity or interests. View quote
Lester B. Pearson