Daily Inspiration Quote by Kamisese Mara

It is the kind of restraint that lands like a threat: the speaker offers to withdraw, but on terms that quietly reassign responsibility for whatever comes next. Mara’s line stages a conditional surrender - “if you think” - that forces his audience to own its assumptions. He is not simply agreeing to step back; he is interrogating the moral math behind that request, suggesting that noninvolvement is being sold as virtue while violence is treated as someone else’s problem.

The phrase “avoid bloodshed” does heavy political lifting. It invokes the highest stakes without naming perpetrators, grievances, or plans, a useful ambiguity for a statesman navigating a volatile moment. Bloodshed becomes the shared nightmare that can justify either action or inaction. By pairing it with “standing aside,” Mara exposes the paradox of leadership in crisis: the public may demand both decisive authority and the self-effacing posture that keeps factions from feeling dominated.

Subtextually, the sentence carries a warning about the limits of control. If he stays involved, he risks being blamed for escalation; if he exits, he signals that the guardrails are coming off. “Then I will stand aside” is crisp, almost ceremonial - the kind of phrasing that preserves dignity while registering disapproval. It’s also a rhetorical mirror: if others insist his presence is the spark, he will remove himself and let them test their theory in the real world, where consequences aren’t hypothetical.