Quotes About Conflict

It has become a world of black and white, Matthew, a Manichean world where preachers encourage everyone to rush towards a conflict between good and evil. Each knowing, of course, that their own side is entirely in the right.

Fanatics on both sides,' old Ryprose said gloomily. 'And all we poor ordinary folk in the middle. Sometimes I fear they will bring death to us all.

War tends to make us all students of diplomacy, does it not? There is a story that Napoléon once told the widow of the Marquis de Condorcet that he detested women who meddled in politics. Do you know her reply?' Sebastian shook his head. 'She said, "You are right, of course, General. But in a country where one cuts off women's heads, it is natural that they should wish to know the reason why.

Hero started to say something, then swallowed it. Cousin Victoria's presence in Berkeley Square should have made Hero feel better. She tried to tell herself that her instinctive dislike of the woman was irrational and baseless. But

You must never call your enemy by a name you choose for him. "Instead you must call him by the name he calls himself. What he chooses will reflect his pride; it will reveal his desires. But what you choose to call him will reveal your fears, which should be kept to yourself, lest your enemy find the way to exploit them.

Erica's despair has nothing to do with lack of motherly love. She loved Maja fiercely and sincerely. At the same time she felt as if she'd been invaded by an alien parasite that sucked all joy out of her and forced her into a shadow existence that had nothing in common with the life she'd lived before.

At some level, all love is combat, a wrestling with ghosts.

At some level, all love is combat, a wrestling with ghosts. We are only for something by being against something else. People who believe they are having pleasant, casual, uncomplex sexual encounters, whether with friend, spouse, or stranger are blocking from consciousness the tangle of psychodynamics at work, just as they block the hostile clashings of their dream life.

But literature is unique. To understand literature, you read it with your head, but you interpret it with your heart. The two are forced to work together-and, quite frankly, they often don't get along.

When you find the right person, it's so easy. People who have a lot of fights and drama - well, something is wrong.

We'll then, Enjd said. What's the problem? This, Mindy said. She opened her hand and held up a tiny green plastic toy solider thrusting a bayonet. I don't understand, Enid said. This morning, when I opened my door to get the newspaper, I found a whole troop of them arranged on the mat. And you think Paul Rice did it, Enid said skeptically. I don't think he did it. I know he did it, Mindy said. He told me if I didn't approve his air conditioners, it was war...

If everyone in New York took sides over these petty, insignificant arguments, no one would have any friends at all.

Always remember, others may hate you—but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.

My father's a large man, very strong, but he says fighting is for people who can't win with their brains. He also says there are times when you've got no choice but to defend yourself from common morons.

Now, re-reading Macauley by firelight, Sammy Tigertail struggled to envision the noble and fiercely insulated culture so admiringly documented in those pages. He wondered what the journalist-preacher would say about the twenty-first century clans that eagerly beckoned outsiders to tribal gambling halls, tourist traps and drive-through cigarette kiosks. For not the first time the young man contemplated the crushing likelihood that the warrior he aspired to become had no place to go.

One day he came home to find her burning his collection of heavy-metal CDs, which she had taken to calling "devil wafers." She

Bernal believed discipline was essential for revolution. Wiley, of course, believed just the opposite.

I didn't tell my parents what happened because they would've freaked and gone straight to Dusty Muleman, or maybe even the police, which was not how I wanted to handle it.

Perplexed, Dr. Dressler pulled out the file of Duane Scrod Jr. It showed that the boy had been held back two years in elementary school and later was expelled from a public middle school for fighting with his P.E. teacher. During that scuffle, the teacher lost three teeth and the tip of his right pinkie finger

The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five.

For me, the most ironic token of [the first human moon landing] is the plaque signed by President Richard M. Nixon that Apollo 11 took to the moon. It reads: We came in peace for all Mankind. As the United States was dropping 7 ½ megatons of conventional explosives on small nations in Southeast Asia, we congratulated ourselves on our humanity. We would harm no one on a lifeless rock.

An organism at war with itself is doomed.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

For ages men had used sticks to club and spear each other—Anaximander of Miletus used the stick to measure time.