Politics & Power Quote by Maurice Strong

Strong’s sentence reads like a diplomatic pat on the head, but it’s doing harder work: laundering authority through optimism. By foregrounding the UN-created University for Peace, he places himself inside an institution that sounds simultaneously idealistic and technocratic, then uses that perch to fuse three agendas - peace, security, environment - into one seamless moral proposition. That triad isn’t accidental. It’s the conceptual spine of modern environmental governance: if ecological breakdown is a security issue, then environmental policy can claim the urgency (and budgets) normally reserved for defense. The move elevates climate and conservation from “nice causes” to matters of global stability.

The pivot to youth is the emotional engine. “I meet with young people around the world” signals breadth, not intimacy; it’s a credibility cue that also sidesteps specifics. Young people function here as evidence of the future’s consent. When Strong says he “always” leaves “enthused and encouraged,” the absolute is the tell. It’s reassurance in an era when the peace-and-environment linkage often arrives packaged with anxiety and sacrifice. He’s selling momentum: the idea that the next generation is already aligned, so today’s institutions are not out of step.

Context matters because Strong wasn’t just any businessman; he was a major architect of global environmental diplomacy (Stockholm 1972, Rio 1992). Read through that lens, the quote is less a personal diary entry than a strategic posture: soft power as affect. Hope becomes a governance tool, and youth becomes the witness called to legitimize it.