Quotes About Conflict

Human beings could hate to the point of killing whom they hated, based on class and race and politics and religion and mere envy.

So the peacemakers were bomb makers." "A lot of people these days are the opposite of what they say they are, and a lot of them probably don't even realize it. They're opposed to racism even as they act like racists. They're opposed to fascism, even as they act like fascists. The world's gone weird.

Tension, apprehension, and dissension

But the rebellious primitive that lived in the back of every human brain was drawn to what the forebrain deemed too dark for civilized consideration, and the eye sometimes turned traitor.

Every year in this war and that, even in our own cities, countless children are killed, while those who spray the bullets—or plant the roadside bomb, authorize the use of nerve gas, send the drone with the Hellfire missile that strikes the wrong target—shed not a tear, referring to those tender deceased as mere "collateral damage," if they acknowledge

the wake of the shriek, gunfire erupts. One, two, three shots.

it's probably the Russian military, in which you're allowed to smile only when you shoot someone or successfully invade another country.

Once a weapon was drawn, it was more likely to be used, and not always as wisely as you might expect to use it.

He dared not ask for details of the cruelties that she had visited upon their daughter. For the first time, Brian realized that, if he were privy to all the facts, he might be driven to kill this woman.

His heart wanted Mary. And then it wanted Merry.

John F. Kennedy is reported to have said that we can forgive our enemies but we shouldn't forget their names.

Furious, she grabbed his tie and jerked him into the apartment. "You can come inside," she said.

He couldn't function if anyone was upset with him; he even disliked being around other people's arguments. When a situation became too intense for him, he simply moved on.

my mother telling me never to go to bed without resolving an argument.

Maryanne was much too furious to stand still. She paced her living room from one end to the other, her mind spitting and churning. A slow painful death was too good for Nolan Adams.

He practices his faults, and you practice your bitterness. You are both practicing divorce.

Although traditional weapons killed far more people in the Great War, poison gas gave a new nightmare edge to the fighting.

Tanks were normal. Bombs were normal. Why couldn't eating be normal?

Grownups killing each other

You must value something highly to go to war to improve it

There's never been a war in the history of the world that wasn't started by the wealthy for the wealthy

Unless Japan is prepared to see Japanese blood being spilled, unless Japan is prepared to see Japanese soldiers return to Japan in body bags, it cannot expect others to die for its interests. No appeals to its outmoded constitution can change that. Japan must rearm and take its rightful place in the world.

Once upon a time there was a war...and a young American who thought of himself as the Quiet American and the Ugly American, and who wished to be neither, who wanted instead to be the Wise American, or the Good American, but who eventually came to witness himself as the Real American and finally as simply the Fucking American. That's me.

Solutions like, We solve the problems? Or solutions like, We dissolve fuckers in acid?