Quotes About Conflict

Our heroic projects that are aimed at destroying evil have the paradoxical effect of bringing more evil into the world.

There are few situations in life that cannot be resolved promptly, and to the satisfaction of all concerned, by either suicide, a bag of gold, or thrusting a despised antagonist over a precipice on a dark night.

Wars did not cease in the twentieth century, notwithstanding the growth of international trade: it was not GATT but MAD, mutually assured destruction, which prevented large-scale wars after 1945.

They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.

God knows I had not wanted to fall in love with her. I had not wanted to fall in love with any one. But God knows I had and I lay on the bed in the room of the hospital in Milan and all sorts of things went through my head but I felt wonderful...

Listen, I told him. Don't be so tough so early in the morning. I'm sure you've cut plenty of people's throats. I haven't even had my coffee yet.

Fish, he said, I love you and respect you very much. But I will kill you dead before this day ends.

Being against evil doesn't make you good. Tonight I was against it and then I was evil myself. I could feel it coming just like a tide... I just want to destroy them. But when you start taking pleasure in it you are awfully close to the thing you're fighting.

It could be worse,' Passini said respectfully. There is nothing worse than war. Defeat is worse. I do not believe it, Passini said still respectfully. What is defeat? You go home.

War is not won by victory.

My father was a deeply sentimental man. And like all sentimental men, he was also very cruel.

You never kill anyone you want to kill in a war, he said to himself.

We have very primative emotions. It's impossible not to be competitive. Spoils everything, though.

World War I was the most colossal, murderous, mismanaged butchery that has ever taken place on earth. Any writer who said otherwise lied, So the writers either wrote propaganda, shut up, or fought.

Perhaps wars weren't won anymore. Maybe they went on forever. Maybe it was another Hundred Years' War.

Blood is thicker than water, The young man said As he knifed his friend For a drooling old bitch And a house full of lies.

He had never quarreled much with this woman, while with the women that he loved he had quarreled so much they had finally, always, with the corrosion of the quarreling, killed what they had together. He had loved too much, demanded too much, and he wore it all out.

I have watched them all day and they are the same men that we are. I believe that I could walk up to the mill and knock on the door and I would be welcome except that they have orders to challenge all travelers and ask to see their papers. It is only orders that come between us. Those men are not fascists. I call them so, but they are not. They are poor men as we are. They should never be fighting against us and I do not like to think of the killing.

Fish, the old man said. Fish, you are going to have to die anyway. Do you have to kill me too?

This was Brett that I had felt like crying about. Then I thought of her walking up the street and stepping into the car, as I had last seen her, and of course in a little while I felt like hell again. It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night is another thing.

Besides, he thought, everything kills everything else in some way. Fishing kills me exactly as it keeps me alive.

I believe that all the people who stand to profit by a war and who help provoke it should be shot on the first day it starts by accredited representatives of the loyal citizens of their country who will fight it.

The fish is my friend too, he said aloud. I have never seen or heard of such a fish. But I must kill him. I am glad we do not have to try to kill the stars.

There are the two curses of Spain, the bulls and the priests.