Quotes About Conflict

Republicans will criticize whatever President Obama does because that is what they do.

I don't remember a big fight between the Republicans and Democrats in the Nixon administration or President Gerald Ford and so on.

On some issues, Republicans and Democrats disagree so sharply that compromise is nearly impossible. Republicans are not going to support a cap-and-trade program to limit greenhouse gases, and Democrats won't support a 1,000-mile wall on the border with Mexico.

Nothing hurts so much the interest and reputation of America as to hear of their intestine quarrels.

I'm difficult for management. That's why I have the reputation because nobody challenges management.

Could you imagine if the U.N. had endorsed the war in Iraq, what our reputation would be like?

Since the election of Shinzo Abe as the new Japanese prime minister, by reputation a fervent nationalist, relations between Japan and China have paradoxically improved a little.

Peacemaking and democratic state-building require blood and magic.

The hardest problems of all in law enforcement are those involving a conflict of law and local customs. History has recorded many occasions when the moral sense of a nation produced judicial decisions, such as the 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which required difficult local adjustments.

Character drives the story, and the story drives the book. I don't think about where the action should go, or how much there should be, until it's required by the characters. When I find myself adding conflict just because I'm afraid that the reader might get bored, I know I've taken a wrong turn somewhere.

Having committed ourselves to Iraq, we must prevail, and to prevail, we must fund all of the requirements for our military. We must do it adequately and promptly, and the administration is doing neither.

I think the diplomatic-security needs in Iraq were an anomaly. There's never been a bulge of requirements that large ever before.

The public weal requires that men should betray, and lie, and massacre.

A peace deal requires agreements, and you don't make agreements with your friends, you make agreements with your enemies.

I think it is a mistake to focus - as we most often do - only on the sacrifice of life that war requires. War also requires that we sacrifice our normal unwillingness to kill.

MSNBC policy requires journalists to report any potential conflict of interest and to seek approval from the president of NBC News before making any political contribution.

Saddam Hussein has been brutal against his people, but when he was committing those crimes, the international community did not come to the rescue of the Iraqis.

If Israel does not find the way to disengage from the Palestinians, its future might resemble the experience of Belfast or Bosnia - two communities bleeding each other to death for generations.

I resemble the father I once hated.

What takes place in the Security Council more closely resembles a mugging than either a political debate or an effort at problem-solving.

It resembles a pair of shears, so joined that they cannot be separated, often moving in opposite directions, yet always punishing anyone who comes between them.

Awkward conversations are painful, but they're way easier than divorce, resentment, and heartbreak.

There is an attitude that Okinawans have about Japan itself. There is a resentment.

My sense is that the majority of Conservatives share my reservations about how we got into Iraq.