A Quote by Raymond Aron

Peace is impossible, war is improbable.

Raymond Aron

Quote Topics

Impossible Improbable Peace War

Quote Author

Raymond Aron
French - Philosopher
March 14, 1905 - October 17, 1983

I reject your impossible. Most of what others tell me is impossible I know to be improbable. If it is impossible you have nothing more to do but if it is improbable...you can choose to ask the unasked question or walk the unwalked step. For me that has made all the difference.

Gary Holder-Winfield

War forgets peace. Peace forgives war. War is the death of the life human. Peace is the birth of the Life Divine. Our vital passions want war. Our psychic emotions desire peace.

Sri Chinmoy

The twentieth century had dispensed with the formal declaration of war and introduced the fifth column, sabotage, cold war, and war by proxy, but that was only the begining. Summit meetings for disarmament pursued mutual understanding and a balance of power but were also held to learn the strengths and weaknesses of the enemy. The world of the war-or-peace alternative became a world in which war was peace and peace war.

Stanislaw Lem

The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it which the merely improbable lacks. How often have you been presented with an apparently rational explanation of something that works in all respects other than one, which is just that it is hopelessly improbable? Your instinct is to say, 'Yes, but he or she simply wouldn't do that.

Douglas Adams

Sherlock Holmes observed that once you have eliminated the impossible then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the answer. I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible.

Douglas Adams

We fully realize today that victory in war requires a mighty united effort. Certainly, victory in peace calls for, and must receive, an equal effort. Man has learned long ago, that it is impossible to live unto himself. This same basic principle applies today to nations. We were not isolated during the war. We dare not now become isolated in peace.

Harry S. Truman

Peace demands more, not less, from a people. Peace lacks the clarity of purpose and the cadence of war. War is scripted: peace is improvisation.

Richard M. Nixon

From time immemorial, people have talked about peace without achieving it. Do we simply lack enough experience? Though we talk peace, we wage war. Sometimes we even wage war in the name of peace. . . . War may be too much a part of history to be eliminated?ever.

Elie Wiesel

Man invents war. Man discovers peace. He invents war from without. He discovers peace from within. War man throws. Peace man sows. The smile of war is the flood of human blood. The smile of peace is the love, below, above.

Sri Chinmoy

So a war begins. Into a peace-time life, comes an announcement, a threat. A bomb drops somewhere, potential traitors are whisked off quietly to prison. And for some time, days, months, a year perhaps, life has a peace-time quality, into which war-like events intrude. But when a war has been going on for a long time, life is all war, every event has the quality of war, nothing of peace remains.

Doris Lessing

My 40 years in the foreign service and the careers of many of my friends became associated with the fall of the Soviet Empire and the putting in order of what came after - the building of a Europe whole, free, and at peace. It`s hard to recall today how improbable victory in the Cold War appeared.

Daniel Fried

War is harmful, not only to the conquered but to the conqueror. Society has arisen out of the works of peace; the essence of society is peacemaking. Peace and not war is the father of all things. Only economic action has created the wealth around us; labor, not the profession of arms, brings happiness. Peace builds, war destroys.

Ludwig von Mises

Once you've ruled out the impossible then whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truth. The problem lay in working out what was impossible, of course. That was the trick, all right. There was also the curious incident of the orangutan in the night-time.

Terry Pratchett

People talk of peace, "We should have peace" - how can you have peace? It's not possible, is an impossible situation. You see we think by thinking, by organizing, by manipulating, we'll have peace. You cannot. You cannot have peace that way. How will you have peace? When the peace is established on your attention. When your attention is peaceful, when we are absolutely without any thoughts, then the peace resides.