Alva Myrdal quotes

Alva Myrdal was a Swedish diplomat, sociologist, and politician renowned for her advocacy of disarmament and social welfare reforms. Her influential work in the United Nations and her leadership in nuclear disarmament negotiations earned her the Nobel Peace Prize. She became a prominent voice for peace and human rights on the international stage. Here are 28 of her quotes:

The age in which we live can only be characterized as one of barbarism. Our civilization is in the process not only of being militarized, but also being brutalized.

Alva Myrdal

The misconception that a victory can be worth its price, has in the nuclear age become a total illusion.

Alva Myrdal

There is a cultural factor promoting violence which nowadays undoubtedly is highly effective is the mass media. And particularly everything that enters our minds through pictorial media.

Alva Myrdal

Many countries persecute their own citizens and intern them in prisons or concentration camps. Oppression is becoming more and more a part of the systems.

Alva Myrdal

The inventions and the great discoveries have opened up whole continents to reciprocal communication and interchange, provided we are willing.

Alva Myrdal

I agree with the many who consider freezing all sorts of weapons systems a first step in a realistic disarmament policy.

Alva Myrdal

The economic and political roots of the conflicts are too strong for us to pretend to create a lasting state of harmonious understanding between men.

Alva Myrdal

All mankind is now learning that these nuclear weapons can only serve to destroy, never become beneficial.

Alva Myrdal

The longing for peace is rooted in the hearts of all men. But the striving, which at present has become so insistent, cannot lay claim to such an ambition as leading the way to eternal peace, or solving all disputes among nations.

Alva Myrdal

If only the authorities could be made to realize that the forces leading them on in the armament race are just insane.

Alva Myrdal

It is of the greatest importance that people and governments in many more countries than ours should realize that it is more dangerous to have access to nuclear arms than not to possess them.

Alva Myrdal

War and preparations for war have acquired a kind of legitimacy.

Alva Myrdal

I have always regarded global development as a struggle between the forces of good and evil. Not to be simplified as a struggle between Jesus and Satan, since I do not consider that the process is restricted to our own sphere of culture.

Alva Myrdal

The world generally speaking is now drifting on a more and more devastating course towards the absurd target of extermination - or rather, to be more exact - of the northern hemisphere's towns, fields, and the people who have developed our civilization.

Alva Myrdal

My personal philosophy of life is one of ethics.

Alva Myrdal

War is murder. And the military preparations now being made for a potential major confrontation are aimed at collective murder. In a nuclear age the victims would be numbered by the millions. This naked truth must be faced.

Alva Myrdal

It's not worthy o human beings to give up.

Alva Myrdal

More must be done in concrete terms in order to promote the cause of disarmament.

Alva Myrdal

Nobel was a genuine friend of peace. He even went so far as to believe that he had invented a tool of destruction, dynamite, which would make war so senseless that it would become impossible. He was wrong.

Alva Myrdal

I personally believe that those who are leaders with political power over the world will be forced some day, sooner or later, to give way to common sense and the will of the people.

Alva Myrdal

It is frightening that in recent years such an increase has occurred in acts of terrorism, which have even reached peaceful countries such as ours. And as a "remedy", more and more security forces are established to protect the lives of individual men and women.

Alva Myrdal

A great amount has been talked and written about what constitutes a sufficient balance and what really is meant by the concepts of "balance" and "deterrence".

Alva Myrdal