AMPeace.org | For a more perfect union and a more peaceful world.

If we are to have peace on earth, our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective.

No individual can live alone; no nation can live alone, and as long as we try, the more we are going to have war in this world.

Now the judgment of God is upon us, and we must either learn to live together as brothers or we are all going to perish together as fools. Yes, as nations and individuals, we are interdependent.

It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality.

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1928 – 1968)

American Museum of Peace

The American Museum of Peace (AMP) honors the intention for peace that has been central to the vision of America from the beginning, an intention for peace that is ever-so-critical today. Never before have we been so perfectly presented with the undeniable truth that all life is one interconnected, interdependent whole.

AMP finds the good and builds on it, celebrating the high ideals of America’s peacemakers, their commitment to life, to liberty of conscience, to freedom and justice; those peacemakers who lived and worked to fulfill and extend the best that has come before us and the promise of America’s founding.(continue)

Hiawatha Wampum Belt (cir. 1142 - 1451)

This belt, named after the Great Peacemaker’s helper Hiawatha, records a time when the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, and Mohawk nations buried their weapons of war under the roots of a very tall evergreen tree to live in peace. Each square represents a nation and the line connects each nation in peace:

"Into the depths of the earth, down into the deep under earth currents of water flowing into unknown regions, we cast all weapons of strife. We bury them from sight forever and plant again the tree. Thus this wall of Great Peace be established and hostilities shall no longer be known among the Five Nations but only peace to a united people."
Benjamin Rush (1745 - 1813)

Physician, humanitarian, educator, signer of the Declaration of Independence, social reformer and advocate for establishing a U.S. Department of Peace as part of the U.S. cabinet.

"The American war is over, but this is far from the case with the American Revolution. Nothing but the first act of the great drama is closed. It remains yet to establish and perfect our new forms of government; and to prepare the principles, morals, and manners of our citizens for these forms of government."
Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826)

Speaking in 1793 as the first U.S. Secretary of State under President Washington.

“The Moral duties which exist between individual and individual in a nature accompany them into a state of society and the aggregate of the duties of all the individuals composing the society constitutes the duties of that society towards any other; so that between society and society the same moral duties exist as did between the individuals composing them while in an unassociated state, their maker not having released them from those duties in their forming themselves into a nation."
Sojourner Truth (1797 - 1883)

Preacher, advocate for the abolition of slavery and women's rights.

"Children, who made your skin white? Was it not God?

Who made mine black? Was it not the same God?

Am I to blame therefore because my skin is black?

Does it not cast a reproach on our Maker to despise a part of His children because He has been pleased to give them a black skin?"
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)

Ordained minister, lecturer, essayist, poet and philosopher

"Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.

Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles."
Jane Addams (1860 - 1935)

Sociologist, author, advocate for peace and social reforms and the recipient of the 1931 Nobel Peace Prize shared that year with Nicholas Murray Butler.

"The lessons of great men are lost unless they reinforce upon our minds the highest demands which we make upon ourselves…They are lost unless they drive our sluggish wills forward in the direction of our highest ideals."
I am only one, but still I am one.

"I cannot do everything, but still I can do something.

I will not refuse to do something I can do."

Helen Keller (1880 - 1968)

American author, political activist, and lecturer
Abraham Heschel (1907 - 1972)

Jewish scholar, theologian, philosopher, professor of ethics, humanitarian and advocate for peace, social justice, civil & human rights.

"A person is not just a specimen of the species called Homosapiens. He is all of humanity in one, and whenever one man is hurt, we are all injured."
Fannie Lou Hamer (1917 - 1977)

American voting rights activist, civil rights leader and field organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the first African-American to be seated as a party delegate at a national political party convention.

"We’re doing something that will not only free the black man in Mississippi but hopefully will free the white one as well. No man is an island."
"My own experience of human unity was in Quaker meeting for worship in California just after visiting Japanese American friends at Tanforan Racetrack, where after Pearl Harbor, they had been taken from Palo Alto, CA, before being sent to an internment camp in Wyoming. We had to visit our friends through barbed wire. They were staying in horse stalls.

"Later, in Meeting, I was unbearably saddened, and felt tremendous kinship with my Japanese American friends, and a feeling of union and love with all humanity."

Irwin Abrams (1914 - 2010)

Educator, scholar, author, humanitarian, and Nobel Peace historian.
Mattie Stepanek (1990 - 2004)

Poet, published author, humanitarian, advocate for peace

"We must learn peace and teach peace so that we can be peace and live in peace."

"Peace is ours to choose. Choose peace."
Elise Boulding (1920 - 2010)

Sociologist, educator and proponent for Peace & Conflict Resolution academic programs.

“A culture of peace really depends on identifying and developing these skills in our local communities, in our schools...We need great clarity of mind, keen powers of observation, good listening skills, but most of all we need a kind of grounding in what it means to be human on this planet. What is our relationship with all living things?

"How do we become what humans could become? How can we grow in our humanity? It all depends on what we can do in ourselves, as much as on what we can do in the world around us."
Pete Seeger (1919 - 2014)

American folk singer, songwriter, humanitarian, environmentalist, peace, human and civil rights activist.

“If there’s something wrong, speak up!"
Maya Angelou (1928 - 2014)

Author, poet, essayist, dancer, singer, actress, producer, civil rights activist, humanitarian.

"Good done anywhere is good done everywhere.

"For a change, start by speaking to people rather than walking by them like they're stones that don't matter.

"As long as you're breathing, it's never too late to do some good."

To meet a human being is a major challenge to mind and heart. I must recall what I normally forget. A person is not just a specimen of the species called Homo sapiens. He is all of humanity in one, and whenever one man is hurt, we are all injured.

The human is a disclosure of the divine, and all men are one in God’s care for man.

Many things on earth are precious, some are holy, humanity is holy of holies. To meet a human being is an opportunity to sense the image of God, the presence of God.

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907 – 1972)

There is no time left for anything but to make peacework a dimension of our every waking activity.

Elise Boulding (1920 – 2010)

Help AMP Fulfill the Vision

The American Museum of Peace needs your support. Every donation is vital towards sustaining AMP’s growth and development. Each donation makes it possible for AMP to continue the research, organizational, web, program and exhibit development necessary to establish AMP as a significant museum presence in Washington, DC, one that draws on America’s rich and diverse peace history to create exhibits and programs in DC, on the AMPeace.org website and for special features and traveling exhibits.

Your tax-deductible contribution will help to establish AMP in our nation’s Capital where local, national and international visitors can remember and celebrate those who lived and labored to uphold and extend those principles of peace that are so vital to our nation and to the world, a place where each can reflect on the attitudes and attributes that promote peace that we might rededicate ourselves to a more perfect union and a more peaceful world.

Make your tax-deductible contribution to AMP via PayPal: or mail your contribution to: American Museum of Peace, The Towers #1106west, 4201 Cathedral Avenue NW, Washington DC, 20016.

We cannot leave our values at the door. If we leave our values at the door we abandon much of the moral glue that has held our nation together for centuries and allowed us to become somewhat more perfect a union.

Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Jane Addams, Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day, Abraham Heschel, – a majority of great reformers in American History did their work not just because it was sound policy or they had done good analysis or understood how to exercise good politics but because their faith and their values dictated it; and called for bold action, sometimes in the face of indifference, sometimes in the face of resistance. This is no different today for millions of Americans and certainly not for me.

President Barack Obama

We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change.

Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.

Howard Zinn (1922 – 2010)

A Legacy of Peace

Peace is multi-dimensional and America has a vast history of peacemakers. Visit AMP’s Legacy of Peace to learn more about those who have helped to foster peace at home and abroad. Share your stories of peace and the stories of those who inspire you to live in ways that foster peace.

AMPeaceTours: America’s Peace Landmarks

All across the land that we now call the United States of America there are landmarks commemorating Americans’ quest for peace and memorials to those courageous, determined individuals who fostered peace in their lives, their communities, their nation and the world. Their stories remind us that creating peace is ours to choose.

Beginning with Washington, DC, AMPeaceTours™ identifies locations that represent those who have lived and worked for peace.

Where are your favorite landmarks for peace? Help AMP expand AMPeaceTours to include peace landmarks in your community. Share your recommendations, your photos, postcards and momentos of the memorials, the parks, the museums, and monuments that represent humankind’s aspirations for peace, those landmarks that inspire and remind us of those who chose to live according to the principles and attributes that promote peace.

Take the AMPeace Pledge: Live with love, integrity and respect to experience, extend and enhance peace.

You have to believe, there may be setbacks, there may be some disappointments, there may be some interruption. But, again, you have to take the long, hard look. With this belief, it’s going to be OK; it’s going to work out. If it failed to happen during your lifetime…it would happen in somebody’s lifetime. But you must do all that you can do while you occupy this space during your time.

Rep. John Lewis

It’s never to late to get back on your feet
though we won’t live forever;
make sure you accomplish
what you were put here for.

Abigail Adams (1744 – 1818)