Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.

The line argues that violence is an intrinsically self-defeating instrument for building a stable, just future. By likening war to a “chisel,” it suggests that the means used to shape society leave marks in the final product: coercion, killing, and hatred tend to reproduce insecurity and resentment rather than reconciliation. The aphorism fits a broader nonviolent ethic often associated with Martin Luther King Jr.—that moral ends cannot be separated from moral means, and that peace is not merely the absence of conflict but the presence of justice and human dignity. It also functions as a warning against the political temptation to treat war as a shortcut to order.