Quotes About Conflict

Would you care to comment on the complexities of the relationship between Heathcliff and Catherine?" Yeah, about as much as I'd care to have a Fleet enema, sir.

As Thomas Hobbes observed in the 17th century, life under mob rule is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. Life on a poorly run software project is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and hardly ever short enough.

When somebody's religious identity is being challenged, things are bound to turn nasty quickly.

It's the tension we feel between the desire to erase and forget and the need to always remember, and that only happens after you know, never before.

The "contempt of cops" by those in their chain of command creates Toxic Boss Blues.

The truth is, our best intentions often fail in the harsh light of how much you desire to engage in the very habit you're trying to eliminate. In psychology terms, your super-ego is no match for your id.

The challenge is that often when we think about success or think about our goals, we think it'll be good, and there will also be something which is bad. Therefore we have an inner conflict. If we can't iron out that conflict, we exhaust ourselves fighting against part of us that wants to do this, and part of us that doesn't want to do it. We're pushed and pulled in all kinds of directions by our own internal programs, many of which are unconscious to us.

The problems we confront today, to the extent that they remain political problems, are precisely the same as those confronted in fifth-century Athens, fifteenth-century Florence, or seventeenth-century England.

I turned away, took a deep breath, and sheathed the weapon. I never know what to say after I've intimidated someone; I ought to keep a list of tough-guy remarks.

Someone coughed nearby, from some huddle of stones, and then spoke. 'So, who are we fighting for again?' Fiddler could not place the voice. Nor the one that replied, 'Everyone.' A long pause, and then, 'No wonder we're losing.

In war everyone loses. This brutal truth can be seen in the eyes of every solider in every world.

All those bickering worshippers, each one convinced their version is the right one. Imagine getting prayers from ten million believers, not one of them believing the same thing as the one kneeling beside him or her. Imagine all those Holy Books, not one of them agreeing on anything, yet all of them purporting to be the word of that one god. Imagine two armies annihilating each other, both in that god's name. Who wouldn't be driven mad by that?

I warn you all, hatred is finding fertile soil within me. And in your compassion, in your every good intention, you nurture it.

This ain't your fight,' he said to the distant creature. 'Fucking dragon.

We left a debt in blood,' she said, baring her teeth. 'Malazan blood. And it seems they will not let that stand.' They are here. On this shore. The Malazans are on our shore.

Hello, Capustan. The Bridgeburners have arrived.

Where resides the comforting knowledge of history's vast, cyclical sweep, the ebb and flow of wars and peace? Peace is the time of waiting for war. A time of preparation, or a time of willful ignorance, blind, blinkered and prattling behind secure walls.

You are frowning. Why?' 'Well, I've already killed a god today,' Iron Bars said. 'If I'd known this was going to be a day for killing gods, I might have paced myself better.

Not even the dead know the end to war. -Iskar Jarak

My anthropological back gets raised hackles with simple worlds and simple conflicts. Nothing's simple. Nothing ever was.

The gentler and kinder the god, the more harsh and cruel its worshippers, for they hold to their conviction with taut certainty, febrile in its extremity, and so cannot abide dissenters. They will kill, they will torture, in that god's name. And see in themselves no conflict, no matter how bloodstained their hands.

Pogroms need no reason, sir, none that can weather challenge, in any case. Difference in kind is the first recognition, the only one needed, in fact. Land, domination, pre-emptive attacks—all just excuses, mundane justifications that do nothing but disguise the simple distinction. They are not us. We are not them.

War is not a natural state. It is an imposition, and a damned unhealthy one. With its rules, we willingly yield our humanity.

Sometimes when you get in a fight with a skunk, you can't tell who started it.