Quotes About Conflict

Terrorism works better as a tactic for dictatorships, or for would-be dictators, than for revolutionaries.

You can't have occupation and human rights.

Where would you like to live? In a state of conflict or a conflicted state.

If the counsel of the peaceniks had been followed, Kuwait would today be the nineteenth province of Iraq. Bosnia would be a trampled and cleansed province of Greater Serbia, Kosovo would have been emptied of most of its inhabitants, and the Taliban would still be in power in Afghanistan. Yet nothing seems to disturb the contented air of moral superiority of those that intone the peace movement.

Half the published articles on Gaza contain a standard reference to its resemblance to a vast open-air prison (and when I last saw it under Israeli occupation it certainly did deserve this metaphor). The problem is that, given its ideology and its allies, Hamas qualifies rather too well in the capacity of guard and warder.

T]his is an enemy for life, as well as an enemy of life.

I respect those who say that the United States should simply withdraw from the Middle East, but I don't respect them for anything but their honesty.

It is a settled policy of America, that as peace is better than war, war is better than tribute. The United States, while they wish for war with no nation, will buy peace with none.

Any critique of realism must begin with a sober assessment of the horrors of peace.

Edward had a personal horror of violence and never endorsed or excused it, though in a documentary he made about the conflict he said that actions like the bombing of pilgrims at Tel Aviv airport 'did more harm than good,' which I remember thinking was (a) euphemistic and (b) a slipshod expression unworthy of a professor of English.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that the land question in Zimbabwe is the single most decisive one.

Some peaceniks clear their throats by saying that, of course, they oppose Saddam Hussein as much as anybody, though not enough to support doing anything about him.

I leave it to the faithful to burn each other's churches and mosques and synagogues, which they can always be relied upon to do.

Among the privileges of being a superpower, the right and the ability to make a local quarrel into a global one ranks very high.

If you have ever argued with a religious devotee, for example, you will have noticed that his self-esteem and pride are involved in the dispute and that you are asking him to give up something more than a point in argument.

Although war can bring with it great enthusiasm and solidarity, it also brings the reaction to these things.

believers fight each other over the correct interpretation and even kill members of their own faiths in battles over doctrine. Civilization has been immensely retarded by such arcane interfaith quarrels and could now be destroyed by their modern versions.

The two things he most valued, which is to say liberty and equality, were not natural allies.

Quarrels on the left have a tendency to become miniature treason trials, replete with all kinds of denunciation. There's a general tendency—not by any means confined to radicals but in some way specially associated with them—to believe that once the lowest motive for a dissenting position has been found, it must in some way be the real one.

The most intense wars are civil wars, just as the most vivid and rending personal conflicts are internal ones, and what I hope to do now is give some idea of what it is like to fight on two fronts at once, to try and keep opposing ideas alive in the same mind, even occasionally to show two faces at the same time.

In the weirdly beautiful landscapes along the Irish border, most especially in Derry with its haunting evening light along the Waterside and the old walls, and in rainy Belfast with its nineteenth-century slums and yet its permanent view of the lovely surrounding hills, I saw my first "war" without even needing a passport to travel to it.

Never forget that the Muslim fundamentalists are not against 'empire.' They fight proudly for the restoration of their own lost caliphate.

To this day, religious people kill each other and kill each other's children for the right to exclusive property in this unidentifiable and unlocatable hole in a hill.

It was never that difficult to see that religion was a cause of hatred and conflict, and that its maintenance depended upon ignorance and superstition