Quotes About Conflict

It is a curious fact that each of these extreme opposites resembles the other. Each believes that we have only two choices: appeasement or war, suicide or surrender, humiliation or holocaust, to be either Red or dead. [Address at the University of Washington in Seattle, November 16 1961]

Que nunca negociemos por medo, mas que jamais tenhamos medo de negociar.

Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.

Always forgive your enemies but never forget their names

The second cause of failure to enact good stems from conflict of intention. High intelligence leads to multiplicity of interest and a sharpened capacity to foresee the consequences of any action. Will is lost in a labyrinth of hypothesis.

That is how war corrupts us. It plays on our pride in our own free will.

CunoaÈ™terea nu m-a f?cut fericit, m-a cuprins o furie surd? împotriva legii evoluÈ›iei, care acceptase ca în una È™i aceeaÈ™i minte s? existe atâta sensibilitate È™i atâta stâng?cie totodat?. În mine se revolta propriul eu ca un iepure în capcan?.

That's the great dead thing in him.

He is mad. It is me. I am his madness. For years he's been looking for something to put his madness into. And he found me.

There had always been a conflict in me between mystery and meaning. I had pursued tha latter, worshipped the latter as a doctor. As a socialist and rationalist. But then I saw that the attempt to scientize reality, to name it and categorize it and vivisect it out of existence, was like trying to remove the air from the atmosphere. In the creating of the vacuum it was the experimenter who died, because he was inside the vacuum.

cassocks and cowls, armour and jerkins, and

We were there to do what had to be done. Using napalm didn't fit with peacetime sensitivities, but peace and a return to the sensitivities that it permitted were what we were fighting to achieve.

and hold her. Another woman would have instinctively known what Bonnie needed. But as a man, I didn't know that touching, holding, and listening were so important to her. By recognizing these differences I began to learn a new way of relating to my wife. I would have never believed we could resolve conflict so easily.

You probably know stories of couples who never fight or argue and then suddenly to everyone's surprise they decide to get a divorce. In many of these cases, the woman has suppressed her negative feelings to avoid having fights. As a result she becomes numb and unable to feel her love. When negative feelings are suppressed positive feelings become suppressed as well, and love dies. Avoiding arguments and fights certainly is healthy but not by suppressing feelings.

One of the most difficult challenges in our loving relationships is handling differences and disagreements. Often when couples disagree their discussions can turn into arguments and then without much warning into battles. Suddenly they stop talking in a loving manner and automatically begin hurting each other: blaming, complaining, accusing, demanding, resenting, and doubting.

Some couples fight all the time, and gradually their love dies. On the other extreme, some couples suppress their honest feelings in order to avoid conflict and not argue. As a result of suppressing their true feelings they lose touch with their loving feelings as well. One couple is having a war while the other is having a cold war.

sometimes the best solution for avoiding conflict is to see it coming and lie low for a while. Take a time-out to center yourself so that you can then come together again with greater understanding, acceptance, validation, and approval.

When men and women are on the verge of arguing, they are generally misunderstanding each other.

Belief in the liberating power of knowledge has become the ruling illusion of modern humankind. Most want to believe that some kind of explanation or understanding will deliver them from their conflicts. Yet being divided from yourself goes with being self-aware. This is the truth in the Genesis myth: the Fall is not an event at the beginning of history but the intrinsic condition of self-conscious beings.

Most arguments escalate when a man begins to invalidate a woman's feelings and she responds to him disapprovingly.

For a woman, being happy when the person you love is upset just doesn't seem right.

As long as she was happy and nice, I loved back. But if she was unhappy or upset, I would feel blamed and then argue or distance myself.

Men mistakenly expect women to think, communicate, and react the way men do; women mistakenly expect men to feel, communicate, and respond the way women do. We have forgotten that men and women are supposed to be different. As a result our relationships are filled with unnecessary friction and conflict.

Humanity' does not exist. There are only humans, driven by conflicting needs and illusions, and subject to every kind of infirmity of will and judgement