Quotes About Conflict

The other idea is that wherever there are 'shared' genetic influences on an extended phenotype, the shared influences may be in conflict with each other rather than cooperative

If the parasite's means of genetic exit from the host's body is the same as the host's, namely the host's gametes or spores, there will be relatively little conflict between the 'interests' of parasite and host genes.

In a population of retaliators, no other strategy would invade, since there is no other strategy that does better than retaliator itself.

The priests of the different religious sects…dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight, and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subdivision of the duperies on which they live.

It seems to follow from the thesis of this book that there is no important distinction between our 'own' genes and parasitic or symbiotic insertion sequences. Whether they conflict or cooperate will depend not on their historical origins but on the circumstances from which they stand to gain now.

The most terrible wars of history, the two major wars of the century, have nothing to do with religions.

These days, I no longer believe there ever are truly good guys or bad guys in war, at least in the Middle East. They're generally shades of gray. But that doesn't translate well on television. It was too complicated. Too remote.

Everything changed with the First World War. The Middle East was reorganized, redefined, and the seeds were planted for a century of bloodshed.

I now saw war as a constant, akin to wildfires. They break out unless you work actively to prevent them.

Obviously it was happenstance, but it did change my opinion of human nature. I now saw war as a constant, akin to wildfires. They break out unless you work actively to prevent them. It's an atavistic thing, buried deep in our DNA.

In 2015, when I went back to the States or to an international conference, I found that people didn't much care anymore. They saw the Middle East awash in blood, beyond redemption, and didn't want to read about it or see it on the evening news. They just wanted to keep away from it.

Each day had the same bloody rhythm: mortars at dawn, car bombs by 11: 00 a.m., drive-by shootings before tea, and mortars again at dusk. At night the death squads went to work.

It is not that you know nothing about war, young man, Dorrigo Evans had said. It is that you have learnt one thing. And war is many things.

The Line welcomed rain and sun. Seeds germinated in mass graves, between skulls and femurs and broken pick handles, tendrils rose up alongside dog spikes and clavicles, thrust around teak sleepers and tibias, scapulas, vertebrae, fibulas and femurs.

Pushing away, pushing in: the pattern of so much that was to follow.

How can power and ignorance sleep together?

I'm getting used to it now. His moods, his unpredictable explosions, horrible words and terrible things spewing out of his mouth. When he comes into a room, I go out, not to make a point or anything, not loud like, but quiet as a mouse, hugging the wall so that he will not notice I was ever there.

and every word sounded both a defence against what he truly felt and a betrayal of all that he was.

First, I'll tell about the robbery our parents committed. Then about the murders, which happened later.

There are people like that in the world—people with something wrong with them that can be disguised but won't be denied, and which dominates them.

It cannot be too firmly realized that every Soul in incarnation is down here for the specific purpose of gaining experience and understanding, and of perfecting his personality towards those ideals laid down by the Soul. Let everyone remember/hat his Soul has laid down for him a particular work, and that unless he does this work, though perhaps not consciously, he will inevitably raise a conflict between his Soul and personality which of necessity reacts in the form of physical disorders

Third parties are like bees: once they have stung, they die.

ALTHOUGH American political life has rarely been touched by the most acute varieties of class conflict, it has served again and again as an arena for uncommonly angry minds.

The torpedo won Jutland. It nearly won the war for the Germans. But in the end it defeated them by drawing in the United States on the Allied side.