A 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. Pearson Quote

As a civilian during the Second War, I was exposed to danger in circumstances which removed any distinction between the man in and the man out of uniform.
- Lester B. Pearson Quote

As a soldier, I survived World War I when most of my comrades did not.
- Lester B. Pearson Quote

As 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. Pearson Quote

Every state has not only the right but the duty to make adequate provision for its own defense in the way it thinks best, providing it does not do so at the expense of any other state.
- Lester B. Pearson Quote

I am grateful for the opportunities I have been given to participate in that work as a representative of my country, Canada, whose people have, I think, shown their devotion to peace.
- Lester B. Pearson Quote

I have worked in a very close and cordial way with Norwegian representatives at many international meetings, and the pleasure I felt at those associations was equaled only by the profit I always secured from them.
- Lester B. Pearson Quote

It 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. Pearson Quote

No 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. Pearson Quote

Of all our dreams today there is none more important - or so hard to realise - than that of peace in the world. May we never lose our faith in it or our resolve to do everything that can be done to convert it one day into reality.
- Lester B. Pearson Quote

The choice, however, is as clear now for nations as it was once for the individual: peace or extinction.
- Lester B. Pearson Quote

The grim fact is that we prepare for war like precocious giants, and for peace like retarded pygmies.
- Lester B. Pearson Quote

The 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. Pearson Quote

Today continuing poverty and distress are a deeper and more important cause of international tensions, of the conditions that can produce war, than previously.
- Lester B. Pearson Quote

Today 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. Pearson Quote

Until the last great war, a general expectation of material improvement was an idea peculiar to Western man. Now war and its aftermath have made economic and social progress a political imperative in every quarter of the globe.
- Lester B. Pearson Quote

We know now that in modern warfare, fought on any considerable scale, there can be no possible economic gain for any side. Win or lose, there is nothing but waste and destruction.
- Lester B. Pearson Quote

We 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. Pearson Quote