Quotes About Conflict

All genuine political theories presuppose man to be evil, i.e., by no means an unproblematic but a dangerous and dynamic being.

The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy.

Legality has become a poisonous dagger, with which one party stabs the other in the back.

In the temporal sphere, the temptation to evil inherent in every power is certainly unceasing. Only in God is the conflict between power and good ultimately resolved. But the desire to escape this conflict by rejecting every earthly power would lead to the worst inhumanity.

The friend, enemy, and combat concepts receive their real meaning precisely because they refer to the real possibility of physical killing.

The political is the most intense and extreme antagonism, and every concrete antagonism becomes that much more political the closer it approaches the most extreme point, that of the friend-enemy grouping.

The modern partisan expects neither law nor mercy from the enemy.

Der Feind ist unsere eigene Frage als Gestalt.

The state of crisis is the real war; the equilibrium is nothing but its reflex.

Everything in war is simple, but the simplest thing is difficult.

War is nothing but a duel on a larger scale.

Modern wars are seldom fought without hatred between nations; this serves more or less as a substitute for hatred between individuals.

casualty reports on either side are never accurate, seldom truthful, and in most cases deliberately falsified.

peace is maintained by the equilibrium of forces, and will continue just as long as this equilibrium exists, and no longer.

Surprise becomes effective when we suddenly face the enemy at one point with far more troops than he expected. This type of numerical superiority is quite distinct from numerical superiority in general: it is the most powerful medium in the art of war.

The first, the supreme, the most far-reaching act of judgment that the statesman and commander have to make is to establish by that test the kind of war on which they are embarking; neither mistaking it for, nor trying to turn it into, something that is alien to its nature.

Where execution is dominant, as it is in the individual events of a war whether great or small, then intellectual factors are reduced to a minimum.

in war, the advantages and disadvantages of a single action could only be determined by the final balance.

War is simply the continuation of politics by other means

Everything is very simple in War, but the simplest thing is difficult.

As long as the enemy is not defeated, he may defeat me; then I shall be no longer my own master; he will dictate the law to me as I did to him.

The political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and means can never be considered in isolation from their purpose

For political and social as well as for military reasons the preferred way of bringing about victory was the shortest, most direct way, and that meant using all possible force.

If our opponent is to be made to comply with our will, we must place him in a situation which is more oppressive to him than the sacrifice which we demand; but the disadvantages of this position must naturally not be of a transitory nature, at least in appearance, otherwise the enemy, instead of yielding, will hold out, in the prospect of a change for the better.