Quotes About Conflict

Human war has been the most successful of our cultural traditions.

We were born of risen apes, not fallen angels, and the apes were armed killers besides. And so what shall we wonder at? Our murders and massacres and missiles, and our irreconcilable regiments?

Therefore, when children of different racial groups are thrown into the incessant, harsh competition of the standard American classroom, we ought to—and do—see hostilities worsen.

the recipe for disharmony was quick and easy: Just separate the participants into groups and let sit for a while in their own juices.

Over the course of time this gave us a deep respect for ideas, both our own and those of others, and an understanding that conflict through debate is a powerful means of revealing truth.

Americans who are angry and suspicious of one another will fight over the crumbs rather than join together against those who have run off with most of the pie.

Their aim is to divide and conquer: pit unionized workers against nonunionized, public sector workers against nonpublic, older workers within sight of Medicare and Social Security against younger workers who don't believe these programs will be there for them, and the middle class against the poor.

Whenever communities, families, nations, churches are divided, we sniff out the diabolic.

There is an ongoing battle between conscience and self-interest in which, at some point, we have to take sides.

It's a nasty divorce when they can't agree on how to divvy up the His and Hers towels.

The trouble with selfish motives is that they harden into principles, and you end up sending your kids to war for them.

The clash between child and adult is never so stubborn as when the child within us confronts the adult in our child.

One must look hard through history to find when a clear understanding of the truth moved anyone to fire the first shot.

Man, in his sensitivity, does not give names to animals he intends to eat but goes on giving names to children he intends to send to war.

A lovers' quarrel is always about every quarrel you ever had.

Jove strikes the Titans down Not when they set about their mountain-piling But when another rock would crown the work.

Rats!They fought the dogs and killed the cats,And bit the babies in the cradles,And ate the cheeses out of the vats,And licked the soup from the cooks' own ladles.

The only animal capable of giving man a fair fight is man. Actually, among ourselves, we fight unfairest of all, and the more we practice, the nastier we get.

Old friends become bitter enemies on a sudden for toys and small offenses.

Hinc quam sic calamus saevior ense, patet. The pen worse than the sword.

The Japanese were aware that there was a tendency among these young men to close their eyes just before the crash, a very human reaction to the situation. They were repeatedly exhorted to keep their eyes open and to continue aiming their aircraft to the last moment. It is impossible to forget that these were very young men on both sides of this story.

On February 15, 1921, the Red Army invaded Georgia.

Moscow sought to camouflage its Georgian operation from the international public—and the Soviet public as well—by presenting it as an intervention in an Armenian-Georgian conflict during which internal revolutionary changes happened to occur.

Born in strife, the original party of Russian Marxists died in schism.