Lester B. Pearson
The grim fact is that we prepare for war like precocious giants, and for peace like retarded pygmies.
Lester B. PearsonWhen 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.
Lester B. PearsonA 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.
Lester B. PearsonWe 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.
Lester B. PearsonToday the predatory state, or the predatory group of states, with power of total destruction, is no more to be tolerated than the predatory individual.
Lester B. PearsonThe 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.
Lester B. PearsonAnd 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.
Lester B. PearsonThe 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.
Lester B. PearsonNo 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.
Lester B. PearsonThe choice, however, is as clear now for nations as it was once for the individual: peace or extinction.
Lester B. PearsonPolitics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
Lester B. PearsonI 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.
Lester B. PearsonIt 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.
Lester B. PearsonAs 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.
Lester B. PearsonNevertheless, defense by power as a first obligation on a state has to be considered in relation to things other than economics.
Lester B. PearsonWe are all descendants of Adam, and we are all products of racial miscegenation.
Lester B. Pearson
