Mother Teresa In 1979, Teresa received the Nobel Peace Prize "for work undertaken in the struggle to overcome poverty and distress, which also constitutes a threat to peace". She refused the conventional ceremonial banquet for laureates, asking that its $192,000 cost be given to the poor in India and saying that earthly rewards were important only if they helped her to help the world's needy. When Teresa received the prize she was asked, "What can we do to promote world peace?" She answered, "Go home and love your family." Building on this theme in her Nobel lecture, she said: "Around the world,
2009 Nobel Peace Prize Nobel Committee. A "Wall Street Journal" editorial, noting Obama's comment that the world's problems "can't be met by any one leader or any one nation", opined, "What this suggests to us—and to the Norwegians—is the end of what has been called 'American exceptionalism'. This is the view that U.S. values have universal application and should be promoted without apology, and defended with military force when necessary. Put in this context, we wonder if most Americans will count this peace-of-the-future prize as a compliment." "Washington Post" columnist Michael Gerson wrote that the committee members "have forfeited any claim to seriousness. Peace—the