Quotes About Conflict

A choice to betray myself," he said, "is a choice to go to war.

Another characteristic of conflicts such as these," he said, gesturing toward the board, "is the propensity to demonize others. One way we do this is by lumping others into lifeless categories—bigoted whites, for example, lazy blacks, crass Americans, arrogant Europeans, violent Arabs, manipulative Jews, and so on. When we do this, we make masses of unknown people into objects and many of them into our enemies.

When we're carrying this germ, we're just wars waiting to happen.

If I don't remain open to how I might be mistaken in this deeper way, I might live out my life convinced I was on the right side of a given conflict, but I won't have found lasting solutions

Most wars between individuals are of the 'cold' rather than the 'hot' variety—lingering resentment, for example, grudges long held, resources clutched to rather than shared, help not offered. These are the acts of war that most threaten our homes and workplaces.

when someone's in the box, the same pattern of mutual provocation and justification always emerges.

A heart at war needs enemies to justify it warring. It needs enemies and mistreatment more than it wants peace.

when our hearts are at war, we not only invite failure, we invest in it.

have you ever been in a conflict with someone who thought he was wrong?

We end up gathering with allies—actual, perceived, or potential—as a way of feeling justified in our own accusing views of others.

COLLUSION: A conflict where the parties are inviting the very things they're fighting against

The issue, of course, is not the mountain, whether that mountain is the dishes or the lawn or the title; or whether, for that matter, the mountain is Mount Moriah itself. No, the issue lies beneath the mountain in the realities in our hearts that make these mountains our battlegrounds.

The most successful negotiators understand the other side's concerns and worries as much as their own. But who is more likely to be able to consider and understand the other side's positions so fully—the person who sees others as objects or the person who sees them as people?

Whether we find justification in how we are worse or in how we are better, we can each find our way to a place where we have no need for justification at all. We can find our way to peace—deep, lasting, authentic peace—even when war is breaking out around us.

when our hearts are at war, we can't see clearly. We give ourselves the best opportunity to make clear-minded decisions only to the extent that our hearts are at peace.

pondered the question. "I doubt it. It's kind of tough to agree with people when they're criticizing you. You probably would have felt defensive if someone had accused you like that.

People whose hearts are at war toward others can't consider others' objections and challenges enough to be able to find a way through them.

how you can get out of the boxes you find yourself in—out of the blame, the self-justification, the internal warring, the apparent stuckness.

Dissonance is the truth about harmony.

Like all pacifists, Zweig evaded the question of how to protect the peaceful sheep from the ravening wolves, no doubt in the unrealistic hope that the wolves would one day discover the advantages of vegetarianism.

I know that as you gentlemen view such things, such conduct has no excuse for being. One may be the victim of an internal conflict between two illicit moods, yet nevertheless, as the law and the church see it, guilty of sin and crime. But the truth, none-the-less, is that they do exist in the human heart, law or no law, religion or no religion, and in scores of cases they motivate the actions of the victims. And we admit that they motivated the actions of Clyde Griffiths.

We are severed in Two by an abstract enemy an invisible enemy under the title of liberators who have conveniently named the severance, Civil War. Cold War. Stalemate.

When you say something really unkind, when you do something in retaliation your anger increases. You make the other person suffer, and he will try hard to say or to do something back to get relief from his suffering. That is how conflict escalates.

Until there is peace between religions, there can be no peace in the world.