War & Peace Quote by Jean-Bertrand Aristide

Peace here isn’t pitched as a sentiment; it’s framed as an obligation with a payoff. Aristide’s line works because it turns “peace” from a vague aspiration into a two-step political bargain: first, make peace (a verb, an action, a concession), then live in peace (a condition, a right, a normalcy people rarely get to enjoy in fragile states). The repetition isn’t decorative. It’s a pressure tactic, insisting that the cost of ending conflict is not optional and the benefit is not abstract.

The subtext is triage. In a country like Haiti, where Aristide’s rise and rule were entangled with coups, international pressure, paramilitary violence, and deep inequality, “peace” can mean disarmament, restraint by security forces, and the cooling of vendettas that metastasize into politics. It can also mean amnesty, compromise, or asking victims to swallow rage for the promise of stability. That tension is embedded in the line’s moral simplicity: it sounds like common sense, which is precisely why it’s useful when consensus is slipping.

The phrase “we must all” is the tell. Aristide is distributing responsibility across factions who would rather cast themselves as sole victims and sole patriots. It’s an appeal to collective discipline, but also a subtle rebuke: if peace fails, it’s because someone refused to “make” it. In that way, the quote doubles as invitation and indictment, a statesman’s attempt to domesticate chaos into a shared civic chore.