Quotes About Conflict

The fact that the root of Fourth Generation war is a political, social, and moral phenomenon, the decline of the state, means there can be no purely military solution to Fourth Generation threats. Military force is incapable, by itself, of restoring legitimacy to a state.

War always changes. Our enemies learn and adapt, and we must do the same or lose. But today, war is changing faster and on a larger scale than at any time in the last 350 years. Not only are we facing rapid change in how war is fought, we are facing radical changes in who fights and what they are fighting for. All over the world, state militaries find themselves fighting non-state opponents.

At the most powerful level of war, the moral level, the key to victory is to convince the local people to identify with the state, or at least to acquiesce to it, rather than identifying with non-state entities.

This leads to the central dilemma of Fourth Generation war: what works for you on the physical (and sometimes mental) level often works against you at the moral level.

At the mental level, Fourth Generation war turns Clausewitz on his head. Clausewitz wrote that war is the extension of politics by other means. At the mental level of Fourth Generation war, politics is the extension of war by other means. Not only are all politics local, but everything local is politics.

This is a war universe. War all the time. That is its nature. There may be other universes based on all sorts of other principles, but ours seems to be based on war and games. All games are basically hostile. Winners and losers. We see them all around us: the winners and the losers. The losers can oftentimes become winners, and the winners can very easily become losers.

"You have of late stood out against your brother, and he hath taken you newly into his grace; where it is impossible you should take true root but by the fair weather that you make yourself: it is needful that you frame the season for your own harvest

I speak of peace, while covert enmity under the smile of safety wounds the world

When valour preys on reason, it eats the sword it fights with.

Conscience is a thousand swords.

Temptation is the fire that brings up the scum of the heart.

If I can catch him once upon the hip,I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him.

In Aleppo once,Where a malignant and a turban'd TurkBeat a Venetian and traduc'd the state,I took by the throat the circumcised dog,And smote him thus.

Macbeth: What is the night?Lady Macbeth: Almost at odds with morning, which is which.

Take but degree away, untune that string,And, hark! what discord follows; each thing meetsIn mere oppugnancy: the bounded watersShould lift their bosoms higher than the shores,And make a sop of all this solid globe.

And do as adversaries do in law,Strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends.

And sometimes we are devils to ourselvesWhen we will tempt the frailty of our powers,Presuming on their changeful potency.

Mine enemy's dog,Though he had bit me, should have stood that nightAgainst my fire.

A plague o' both your houses!They have made worms' meat of me.

The cankers of a calm world and a long peace.

The sun's o'ercast with blood: fair day, adieu!Which is the side that I must go withal?I am with both: each army hath a hand;And in their rage, I having hold of both,They whirl asunder and dismember me.

Thou art the Mars of malcontents.

Some to kill cankers in the musk-rose buds,Some war with rere-mice for their leathern wings,To make my small elves coats.

All hell shall stir for this.