True peace is always possible. Yet it requires strength and practice, particularly in times of great difficulty. To some, peace and nonviolence are synonymous with passivity and weakness. In truth, practising peace and nonviolence is far from passive. To practice peace, to make peace alive in us, is to actively cultivate understanding, love, and compassion, even in the face of misperception and conflict. Practising peace, especially in times of war, requires courage.

All of us can practice nonviolence. We begin by recognising that, in the depth of our consciousness, we have both the seeds of compassion and the seeds of violence. We become aware that our mind is like a garden that contains all kinds of seeds: seeds of understanding, seeds of forgiveness, seeds of mindfulness, and also seeds of ignorance, fear and hatred. We realise that, any given moment, we can behave with either violence or compassion, depending on the strength of these seeds within us.

-- Thich Nhat Hanh