Quotes About Conflict

Put two macho groups together and give the first desperation and numbers, and the second truncheons and protective clothing, and the result is like a laboratory civil war.

If more women were in power, they wouldn't let wars break out, she said. Women can't be bothered with all this fighting. We see war for what it is- a matter of broken bodies and crying mothers.

Irene gasped. Have you taken leave of your senses, Stuart? she hissed. Have you? Stuart closed his eyes. No, he said. Au contraire. It was strong language for the Edinburgh New Town, but he had to say it. Don't au contraire me, said Irene. But it was too late. He had.

Charming people, when not actively shooting one another, a friend had once said, which was so unkind, but, like so many unkind comments, had a grain of truth in it. They did shoot one another and had been doing so for centuries. They did bicker over and brood on long-dead history--or history that should be long dead. The problem with history was that it refused to lie down and die.

The trouble with technology is that it's dehumanised us – it's removed the restraints of ordinary human interactions. So we lose the notion that the person with whom we're dealing is a person like us, with failings and feelings. It's exactly the same as in wartime. When people are engaged in conflict, they very easily lose sight of the humanity of the other. They become capable of doing things that they would never do in their ordinary lives.

There are so many people who would love to be able to live in peace, but there are so many others who do not want to let them. Mr.

I suppose that's the way affairs come to an end. Somebody grabs a fork and stabs the other in the hand. And that's it

If people came at you and started to scratch you, then of course you had the right to sit on them.

If more women were in power, they wouldn't let wars break out," she said. "Women can't be bothered with all this fighting. We see war for what it is—a matter of broken bodies and crying mothers.

Hate is very easy to unleash, the Duke continued. All you need is the Other. And then people will take over from you and do all the hating that needs to be done, all the belittling, all the insulting and bullying.

She imagined what it must be like to have Charlie's mind - to believe that red shoes are faster then other shoes; to believe, as he did, that ducks could drive fire engines and that pigs built houses out of bricks and straw. There were plenty of people who weren't three-and-three-quarters who believed equally implausible things...and when to war over them.

Metaphors were so bloody: people shot messengers,, flogged dead horses, cut the throats of their competitors. Perhaps that was life; perhaps that's what it was really like.

He knew that one should not punch people who annoyed one, although there was a case for it at times, a seemingly irresistible case.

Yes, but not in chairs that don't belong to us," countered Mma Makutsi. "That's the trouble with this country, Mma—there are too many people sitting down in other people's chairs.

But the problem is that even if you know that is the best thing to do, you often don't do it. ...it is true. It's as if there were two people inside you. One says: do this. Another says: do that. But both voices are inside the same person.

The more that people are in the wrong, she thought, the louder their protestations on being brought to book.

One day Felix came to me and complained that somebody had whipped him very badly. He took off his shirt and I saw the skin covered with wheals. I asked him who had done this and he replied that it had been the supervisor at a local mission. I drove with Felix to make a complaint to the missionary, who interrogated his supervisor. The supervisor admitted that he had whipped Felix, but said that this was because Felix had gone round the mission station biting his enemies.

Have you ever watched a group of boys together? Look at them. They punch one another. They push. There's a lot of aggression, even if it looks like friendly aggression. It's really odd, but it explains a lot about how males are. And about the world, I suppose. About wars and ecological irresponsibility and bad behaviour generally.

Do not take on a traditionally built person unless you are prepared for a heavyweight bout.

Women always had private business to raise with men [...] There was always something going on in the background—some plotting or mulling over some slight or lack of attention, quite unintended, of course, but noted and filed away for subsequent scrutiny. And much of the time men would be unaware of it, until it all came out in a torrent of recrimination and tears.

If you don't have things to keep you busy, you end up starting fights with your neighbours.

for most of us there was a central, unavoidable problem— the world was populated by people who were unlike us . That explained so many wars— particularly religious ones; that explained persecutions and injustices; that explained simple everyday irritation with one's fellow man: They were just not like us.

A marriage, she had learned, is seldom what it seems to be on the surface; what appears to be the most equable, well settled of arrangements might be a seething mass of discontent and resentment underneath. And conversely, chaotic and noisy relationships, littered with conflict and infidelity, might prove to be the most durable of unions.

I have warned you. Glasgow is full of Campbells.