True peace must be anchored in justice and an unwavering commitment to universal rights for all humans, regardless of ethnicity, religion, gender, national origin or any other identity attribute.

We cannot make peace between a victor and a vanquished. In order for peace to be lasting, it must be based on justice and the rights of all the protagonists must be recognised and granted.

Peace, in the sense of the absence of war, is of little value to someone who is dying of hunger or cold. It will not remove the pain of torture inflicted on a prisoner of conscience. It does not comfort those who have lost their loved ones in floods caused by senseless deforestation in a neighboring country. Peace can only last where human rights are respected, where the people are fed, and where individuals and nations are free.

Perfect peace has no historical antecedents and therefore no practical meaning in a world in which conflict among men is persistent and pervasive. If real peace is to exist, it must exist along with men’s ambitions, their pride, and their hatreds. A peace that fails to take these things into account will not last.

Peace is not just the absence of conflict; peace is the creation of an environment where all can flourish regardless of race, color, creed, religion, gender, class, caste or any other social markers of difference.

A just peace includes not only civil and political rights — it must encompass economic security and opportunity. For true peace is not just freedom from fear, but freedom from want. It is undoubtedly true that development rarely takes root without security; it is also true that security does not exist where human beings do not have access to enough food, or clean water, or the medicine and shelter they need to survive. It does not exist where children can't aspire to a decent education or a job that supports a family. The absence of hope can rot a society from within.

I would call the human right to peace an ultimate or “end right”, in that the state of peace is the result of the promotion and protection of human rights. Indeed, a society where human rights are upheld is a society that is free of the kind of structural violence that leads to armed conflict. Now, as it has been said many times, peace is not the mere absence of war. Peace in a holistic sense, peace in its individual and collective dimension, entails a state of internal and external harmony.

It is truer today than when Alfred Nobel realized it a half-century ago, that peace cannot be achieved in a vacuum. Peace must be paced by human progress. Peace is no mere matter of men fighting or not fighting. Peace, to have meaning for many who have known only suffering in both peace and war, must be translated into bread or rice, shelter, health, and education, as well as freedom and human dignity - a steadily better life. If peace is to be secure, long-suffering and long-starved, forgotten peoples of the world, the underprivileged and the undernourished, must begin to realize without delay the promise of a new day and a new life.

Peace is an armistice in a war that is continuously going on.

Peace does not mean an absence of conflicts; differences will always be there. Peace means solving these differences through peaceful means; through dialogue, education, knowledge; and through humane ways.

Peace is the most desirable of all human conditions. It is a promise of Paradise. When all human worries and griefs will be over, we will participate in the fullness of being with no unrest, anxiety, or disturbance. For believers, this is our ultimate goal. It is also part of our nature. Peace is our fate because peace is our origin. Our human nature is made out of peace, and peace is what we are made for. All troubles are in fact caused by the disruption of our original condition, which is both our origin and our destiny.
Peace is then quite a serious thing—something that may be cast in doubt today, if we consider how this precious word is too often misused.
Peace is the opposite of war, in a broader sense, but it is not just the absence of war.
...Only deeply peaceful men and women can build a truly pacific society, one that would be able to resist and last.

Peace is not the absence of conflict, but the ability to cope with conflict by peaceful means.

World peace must develop from inner peace. Peace is not just mere absence of violence. Peace is, I think, the manifestation of human compassion.

A just and lasting peace demands apologies and forgiveness. ... A just and lasting peace embraces gender equality. ... A just and lasting peace calls for economic reforms.