War & Peace Quote by Albert Reynolds

Reynolds is selling urgency as both a moral duty and a political deadline. “Everyone of goodwill” sounds like a generous invitation, but it’s also a boundary line: if you don’t sign on, you’re implicitly outside the circle of decency. That’s a classic statesman’s move in a peace process - define the center as “goodwill,” then make dissent look like bad faith rather than legitimate fear, anger, or strategic calculation.

The phrasing carries the weight of the early 1990s, when the Northern Ireland conflict was exhausting itself yet still dangerously capable of detonating any tentative opening. Reynolds, as Irish Taoiseach, was speaking into a landscape of shattered trust: republican and loyalist paramilitaries, British-Irish friction, and communities trained by decades of violence to read every gesture as a trap. His language tries to disarm that reflex. “Beginning of peace” is careful: not triumph, not resolution, not reconciliation - just the first fragile step, framed as something that can still be lost.

“Both in Ireland and abroad” widens the stage. It nods to the diaspora (especially Irish-American influence), international mediators, and the idea that peace needs not only combatants’ consent but also money, legitimacy, and pressure from outside. The deadline - “before this year is out” - is the real muscle. It converts a moral appeal into a timetable, signaling momentum, implying back-channel progress, and warning spoilers that the window is closing.

“Open a new era” is aspirational branding with strategic intent: if history has been a loop of grievance, the ask is to rewrite the script together - and to accept that peace is made, not granted.