Peace

Peace is generally defined as a state of quiet or tranquillity, as an absence of disturbance or agitation (Latin derivation Pax = Absentia Belli). Peacemakers (#) are people who have overcome entrenched violence and conflict through their leadership and vision to achieve peace.

More specifically, it can refer to an absence of violence or war. In this sense, peace between and within national states is a goal of many persons and organisations, notably the United Nations. Peace can be voluntary, where potential agitators choose to abstain from disturbance, or it can be enforced, by suppressing those who might otherwise cause such disturbance.

Peacemakers

Nobel Peace Prize

Main article: Nobel Peace Prize

The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded annually to notable persons, generally peacemakers and visionaries who have overcome notorious cycles in violence, conflict or oppression through their moral leadership, but also controversially former warmongers and former terrorists who it was believed had helped bring the world closer to ending such situations through exceptional concessions in the attempt to achieve peace.

Here is a partial list of Nobel Peace Prize laureates whose award is still considered by some a matter of particular controversy:

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1964 laureate);
Henry Kissinger (1973 laureate);
Nelson Mandela and Former President Frederik Willem de Klerk (joint 1993 laureates);
Yasser Arafat (1994 laureate);
David Trimble (1998 laureate).

Quotes

From Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Letter from Birmingham Jail (see References (#1)):

True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice.

From Henry Timrod, known as The Poet Laureate of the Confederacy, who wrote passionate poems that caused many young men to enlist in the Confederate Army of the American Civil War. But after seeing for himself the horrors of war, he wrote this poignant prayer for peace:

Not all the darkness of the land

Can hide the lifted eye and hand;

Nor need the clanging conflict cease,

To make Thee hear our cries for peace.

External links

References

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Letter from Birmingham Jail (http://www.sas.upenn.edu/African_Studies/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html).