Question: Is the Nobel Prize for Literature as significant as the Nobel Peace Prize?

Sri Chinmoy: At this moment, the world needs peace. We need peace much more than anything else. The entire world needs peace; each human being needs peace. If one gets the Nobel Prize for Literature, only some people will get benefit from it, either in the heart or in the mind. But if the right person receives the Peace Prize, it touches the very depths of everybody’s heart.

Some world figures — Mother Teresa, President Gorbachev, President Mandela and others — are famous for their divine qualities. But when they are addressed as Nobel laureates, that title carries tremendous weight in the field of peace.

Right now the world needs peace more than mind-development or illumination in the literary world.