JFK's "Peace Speech" from 1963 is a call for self-examination, as relevant today - given the West's stance on Gaza (“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.") & undermining of the U.N. - as during the Cold War. Soviet leader Khrushchev was so impressed with this speech, he allowed it to be printed in it’s entirety, uncensored, in Pravda.
Imagine if in each dispute with a partner or coworker, one resorted to threats and giving the other party no option but to retreat in humiliation?
It takes a bigger person to show tolerance, respect, and a genuine desire to find common ground.
Quotes (full text below):
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"With such a peace, there will still be quarrels and conflicting interests, as there are within families and nations. World peace, like community peace, does not require that each man love his neighbor--it requires only that they live together in mutual tolerance, submitting their disputes to a just and peaceful settlement."
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" But it is also a warning--a warning to the American people not to see only a distorted and desperate view of the other side, not to see conflict as inevitable, accommodation as impossible, and communication as nothing more than an exchange of threats."
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"No government or social system is so evil that its people must be considered as lacking in virtue. As Americans, we find communism profoundly repugnant as a negation of personal freedom and dignity. But we can still hail the Russian people for their many achievements--in science and space, in economic and industrial growth, in culture and in acts of courage."
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"So, let us not be blind to our differences--but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal."
"We are not engaged in a debate, seeking to pile up debating points. We are not here distributing blame or pointing the finger of judgment. We must deal with the world as it is, and not as it might have been had the history been different."
"Meanwhile, we seek to strengthen the United Nations, to help solve its financial problems, to make it a more effective instrument for peace, to develop it into a genuine world security system--a system capable of resolving disputes on the basis of law, of insuring the security of the large and the small."
Video:
https://lnkd.in/eGyHgHyS
Full Transcript:
https://lnkd.in/emd6BC7c
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Chief Strategy & Marketing Officer
1moGrateful for Ambassador Moose and his career of service to peace and diplomacy and grateful that so many Goodwin Living residents were able to experience the occasion honoring Dr. McCann! Thank you, United States Institute of Peace, for hosting the occasion!