Quotes About Conflict

Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons

I found one day in school a boy of medium size ill-treating a smaller boy. I expostulated, but he replied: The bigs hit me, so I hit the babies; that's fair. In these words he epitomized the history of the human race.

Love is wise, Hatred is foolish

Few people can be happy unless they hate some other person, nation, or creed.

The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.

To discover a system for the avoidance of war is a vital need for our civ ilisation; but no such system has a chance while men are so unhappy that mutual extermination seems to them less dreadful than continued endurance of the light of day

War grows out of ordinary human nature.

The special skill of the politician consists in knowing what passions can be most easily aroused, and how to prevent them, when aroused, from being harmful to himself and his associates...Moreover, since politicians are divided into rival groups, they aim at similarly dividing the nation, unless they have the good fortune to unite it in war against some other nation.

In time of war there is a unification of interests, especially if the war is fierce; but in time of peace the clash may be very great between the interests of one class and those of another.

Our instinctive apparatus consists of two parts- the one tending to further our own life and that of our descendants, the other tending to thwart the lives of supposed rivals.

We love those who hate our enemies, and if we had no enemies there would be very few people whom we should love.

Prudence versus passion is a conflict that runs through history. It is not a conflict in which we ought to side wholly with either party.

It is hard to fight with one's heart's desire. Whatever it wishes to get, it purchases at the cost of soul.

Consequently people fight for and against quite irrelevant measures, while the few who have a rational opinion are not listened to because they do not minister to any one's passions.

Heraclitus believes in war. "War," he says, "is the father of all and the king of all; and some he has made gods and some men, some bond and some free.

It was so obvious to him that war between nation states was unnecessary, and therefore deeply stupid, that he found it hard to believe that anything could explain it other than a passion for destruction and a desire by the combatants to inflict suffering on others at no matter what price in suffering for themselves.

The world at present is full of angry self-centred groups, each incapable of viewing human life as a whole, each willing to destroy civilization rather than yield an inch

Two people between whom there is love succeed or fail together, but when two people hate each other the success of either is the failure of the other. If

In the Second World War he took no public part, having escaped to a neutral country just before its outbreak. In private conversation he was wont to say that homicidal lunatics were well employed in killing each other, but that sensible men would keep out of their way while they were doing it. Fortunately this outlook, which is reminiscent of Bentham, has become rare in this age, which recognizes that heroism has a value independent of its utility. The Last Survivor of a Dead Epoch

Not all of the Greeks, but a large proportion of them, were passionate, unhappy, at war with themselves, driven along one road by the intellect and along another by the passions, with the imagination to conceive heaven and the wilful self-assertion that creates hell.

To discover a system for the avoidance of war is a vital need of our civilization; but no such system has a chance while men are so unhappy that mutual extermination seems to them less dreadful than continued endurance of the light of day.

Prudence versus passion is a conflict that runs through history.

Sin duda el ideal es una cierta rigidez de acción, más una cierta flexibilidad de pensamiento, pero esto es difícil de lograr en la práctica excepto durante los breves períodos de transición. Y parece probable que, si las viejas ortodoxias decaen, surjan nuevos códigos rígidos según las necesidades del conflicto.

If there is to be less envy, means must be found for remedying this state of affairs, and if no such means are found our civilization is in danger of going down to destruction in an orgy of hatred.