When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.

The line contrasts two competing human drives: the desire to dominate (“love of power”) and the capacity for empathy, solidarity, and care (“power of love”). It proposes that peace is not primarily a technical or diplomatic achievement but a moral and cultural reversal—valuing connection over control. Read this way, the quote functions as a compact critique of militarism and authoritarian politics, suggesting that conflict persists when power becomes an object of affection in itself. Its aphoristic structure gives it the feel of a proverb, which helps explain its wide circulation in antiwar and humanist contexts, even when attribution is uncertain.