Quotes About Conflict

Know your enemy, know yourself.

In 1974, Mahmoud Darwish wrote Yasser Arafat's speech to the General Assembly of the United Nations: Today I have come bearing an olive branch in one hand and a freedom fighter's gun in the other. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand. 346 I repeat: do not let the olive branch fall from my hand.

He was aware, he said, that humiliation was a deep wound. We are Semitic, both of us, Israelis and Palestinians together.

where he might variously be called a terrorist or a martyr or a murderer or a guerrilla or a freedom fighter

The world is run by brutal men and the surest proof is their armies.

As I have always said, it's a disaster to discover the humanity of your enemy, his nobility, because then he is not your enemy anymore, he just can't be.

the hope that war will end is not chimerical. What was needed was to establish, by common consent, a central authority that would have the last word in every conflict of interest. Beyond that, anything which creates emotional ties between human beings inevitably counteracts war. What had to be sought was a community of feeling, and a mythology of the instincts.

The soldiers called the bullets Lazarus pills: when possible, they could be picked up and used again.

We, the Palestinians, became the victims of the victims

It is only when mosquito land on your balls that you realize there is a way to solve problems without using violence.

Where words lose their meaning, people lose their lives.

The sound of the surf mingled with the wind rushing in his ears, and still it did not drown out the sound of her voice: "Can you think of any reason why I should not stay?" A thousand. None of them good enough.

You can't just physically beat a man and expect him not to retaliate. Insults, slaps, threats go just so far. You've got to go for the jugular. You've got to finish the job in a clean sweep. What do the French call it? Coup de grace, as believe. I did learn a few things from living with Charlie.

Men of God and men of war have strange affinities.

When the shooting starts would you rather be armed or legal?

If a man's at odds to know his own mind it's because he hasn't got aught but his mind to know it with.

There's no such thing as life without bloodshed. I think the notion that the species can be improved in some way, that everyone could live in harmony, is a really dangerous idea. Those who are afflicted with this notion are the first ones to give up their souls, their freedom. Your desire that it be that way will enslave you and make your life vacuous.

All progressions from a higher to a lower order are marked by ruins and mystery and a residue of nameless rage.

He did not know how hawks mated but he knew that all things fought.

Somebody has been fuckin my watermelons.

White pussy is nothin but trouble.

This country was filled with violent children orphaned by war.

Ye carry war of a madman's making onto a foreign land. Ye'll wake more than the dogs.

What joins men together is not the sharing of bread but sharing of enemies.