Saturday, March 13, 2010

The Nobel Peace Prize 1977




http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1977/press.html

Nobelprize.org

The Nobel Peace Prize 1977

Presentation Speech

Presentation Speech by Aase Lionæs, Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, on the occasion of the award of the Nobel Peace Prize for 1977 in the University Festival Hall, Oslo, December 10, 1977

Translation

Your Majesty, Your Royal Highnesses, Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,

This year the Norwegian Nobel Committee is awarding two Peace Prizes, one to the initiators of the Northern Ireland Peace Movement and one to the organisation Amnesty International.

These two movements have one thing in common: they have sprung spontaneously from the individual's deep and firmly rooted conviction that the ordinary man and woman is capable of making a meaningful contribution to peace.

This is remarkable in an age when we live with the desperate pressure of the conviction that only the military power blocs equipped with nuclear arms are in a position to decide, for one and all of us, the question of war or peace.