War & Peace Quote by Sargent Shriver

Shriver frames a charge as a credential, flipping the courtroom logic of “guilty” into a punchline with consequences. “The Peace Corps is guilty of enthusiasm and a crusading spirit” borrows the language of indictment to pre-empt the critiques that trailed the program from the start: that it was naive, starry-eyed, maybe even a softer form of American missionary impulse. By naming those suspicions himself, he drains them of power and recasts them as virtues too energetic to be polite.

The phrasing does double work. “Enthusiasm” is intentionally unserious in political diction; it suggests youth, idealism, a willingness to look earnest in public. “Crusading spirit” is riskier. It evokes moral clarity and momentum, but also hints at paternalism and the old Western habit of dressing intervention up as salvation. Shriver doesn’t dodge that edge; he leans into it, betting that in the early 1960s, in the heat of Cold War competition, Americans wanted a national project that felt morally legible and globally active without being military.

Then comes the hard pivot: “But we’re not apologetic about it.” That’s not just bravado; it’s a governing philosophy. He’s arguing that technocratic competence alone can’t sell a mission. A program built on volunteers, sacrifice, and cultural risk has to defend its emotional engine. The subtext is a rebuttal to cynicism: if you’re going to be accused anyway, choose the crime that signals purpose. In Shriver’s hands, idealism isn’t a liability to be managed; it’s the brand.