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Quotes About Conflict

We go on having stupid wars that we justify and get passionate about, but in the end, all they do is kill huge numbers of people, maim others, impoverish still more, spread disease and hunger, and set the stage for the next war. And when we look at all of that in history, we just shrug our shoulders and say, well, that's the way things are. That's the way things always have been.
~ Octavia E. Butler
People are setting fires to get rid of whomever they dislike from personal enemies to anyone who looks or sounds foreign or racially different. People are setting fires because they're frustrated, angry, hopeless. They have no power to improve their lives, but they have the power to make others even more miserable. And the only way to prove to yourself that you have power is to use it.
~ Octavia E. Butler
Your body said one thing. Your words said another." It moved a sensory arm to the back of his neck, looping one coil loosely around his neck. "This is the position," it said. "I'll stop now if you like.
~ Octavia E. Butler
Human competitiveness and territoriality were often at the root of particularly horrible fashions in oppression.
~ Octavia E. Butler
Human beings are more alike than different—damn sure more alike than we like to admit. I wonder if the same thing wouldn't have happened eventually, no matter which two cultures gained the ability to wipe one another out along with the rest of the world.
~ Octavia E. Butler
When we have no difficult, long-term purpose to strive toward, we fight each other. We destroy ourselves. We have these chaotic, apocalyptic periods of murderous craziness.
~ Octavia E. Butler
Humans said one thing with their bodies and another with their mouths and everyone had to spend time and energy figuring out what they really meant. And once we did understand them, the Humans got angry and acted as though we had stolen thoughts from their minds.
~ Octavia E. Butler
I sat where I was, more depressed than ever, hating the whole hopeless, stupid business and wondering whether the human species would ever grow up enough to learn to communicate without using fists of one kind or another.
~ Octavia E. Butler
Jarret's supporters are more than a little seduced by Jarret's talk of making America great again. He seems to be unhappy with certain other countries. We could wind up in a war. Nothing like a war to rally people around flag, country, and great leader.
~ Octavia E. Butler
They consider it a sin to take any life, yet they kill and kill.
~ Octavia E. Butler
You're supposed to be dirty now. If you're clean, you make a target of yourself. People think you're showing off, trying to be better than they are. Among the younger kids, being clean is a great way to start a fight.
~ Octavia E. Butler
Nothing like a war to rally people around flag, country, and great leader.
~ Octavia E. Butler
I like Curtis Talcott a lot. Maybe I love him. Sometimes I think I do. He says he loves me. But if all I had to look forward to was marriage to him and babies and poverty that just keeps getting worse, I think I'd kill myself.
~ Octavia E. Butler
struggles Are essentially power struggles. Who will rule, Who will lead, Who will define, refine, confine, design, Who will dominate. All struggles Are essentially power struggles, And most are no more intellectual than two rams knocking their heads
~ Octavia E. Butler
West," I said bitterly. "That's where they're doing it to the Indians instead of the blacks!" He looked at me strangely. He had been doing that a lot lately.
~ Octavia E. Butler
It's a good thing your people don't eat meat. If you did, the way you talk about us, our flavors and your hunger and your need to taste us, I think you would eat us instead of fiddling with our genes." And after a moment of silence, "That might even be better. It would be something we could understand and fight against.
~ Octavia E. Butler
Drowning people Sometimes die Fighting their rescuers. EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING
~ Octavia E. Butler
Drowning people Sometimes die Fighting their rescuers. EARTHSEED:
~ Octavia E. Butler
All struggles Are essentially power struggles. Who will rule, Who will lead, Who will define, refine, confine, design, Who will dominate. All struggles Are essentially power struggles, And most are no more intellectual than two rams knocking their heads
~ Octavia E. Butler
Naturally, trouble makes for greater drama than does happiness, and it asks more in the way of human response
~ Octavia E. Butler
These were stupid affairs—wastes of life and treasure. They were fought, ostensibly, to defend against vicious foreign enemies. All too often, they were actually fought because inadequate leaders did not know what else to do.
~ Octavia E. Butler
All struggles Are essentially power struggles.
~ Octavia E. Butler
All struggles Are essentially power struggles, And most are no more intellectual than two rams knocking their heads together.
~ Octavia E. Butler
People are setting fires to get rid of whomever they dislike from personal enemies to anyone who looks or sounds foreign or racially different. People are setting fires because they're frustrated, angry, hopeless. They have no power to improve their lives, but they have the power to make others even more miserable. And the only way to prove to yourself that you have power is to use it.
~ Octavia E. Butler