quotations about conflict
Put new people in power, write new laws, erase old ones, build cities out of nothingness -- but the wars remain, the underlying conflicts are unaffected. Only power shifts the scales, and people build power only when they come together. When they find in each other the strength to stop being afraid.
SAM J. MILLER
Blackfish City
The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.
THOMAS PAINE
The Crisis: A Work Written While with the Army of the Revolution
Seeking an end to conflict is not for the timid or the tentative. It takes courage, perseverance, and steady nerves in the face of violence.
GEORGE J. MITCHELL
The Sadat Lectures: Words and Images on Peace, 1997-2008
Any system based on competition will inherently promote inequality, division, and conflict.
JOSEPH RAIN
The Unfinished Book About Who We Are
Peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of creative alternatives for responding to conflict.
DOROTHY THOMPSON
"Conflict Resolution"
Every period of human development has had its own particular type of human conflict---its own variety of problem that, apparently, could be settled only by force. And each time, frustratingly enough, force never really settled the problem. Instead, it persisted through a series of conflicts, then vanished of itself---what's the expression---ah, yes, "not with a bang, but a whimper," as the economic and social environment changed. And then, new problems, and a new series of wars.
ISAAC ASIMOV
I, Robot
Behold a worthy sight, to which the God, turning his attention to his own work, may direct his gaze. Behold an equal thing, worthy of a God, a brave man matched in conflict with evil fortune.
LUCIUS ANNAEUS SENECA
attributed, The Routledge Dictionary of Latin Quotations
A conflict is like an SOS emerging from the recesses of your relationship ... its purpose is to alert you that something needs attention.
JUDITH SHERVEN
Be Loved for Who You Really Are
When the Pawn hits the conflicts, he thinks like a King.
FIONA APPLE
"When the Pawn..."
There is also the ego's need to be periodically in conflict with something or someone in order to strengthen its sense of separation between me and the other, without which it cannot survive.
ECKHART TOLLE
Stillness Speaks
If a disagreement goes for long enough, and is important enough, people start to take sides. Once people start to take sides, conflict is inevitable.
ZACHARY RAWLINS
The Academy
Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.
WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING
Managing Conflict
Resolution, like responsibility, is a product of ownership, and kids can't resolve a conflict until they figure out how they contributed to it.
RICHARD EYRE
The Entitlement Trap
All human conflict is ultimately theological.
HENRY EDWARD MANNING
attributed, The Cruise of the "Nona"
Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. If this is to be achieved, man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Dec. 10, 1964
It is said that there is a principle of conflict which originated with the single cell and has never deteriorated.
FRANK HERBERT
God Emperor of Dune
Many scholars have complained of our tendency to see history only in conflicts, but I am not convinced they are right. It is in conflict that our values are exposed.
BERNARD BECKETT
Genesis
To live is to war with trolls.
HENRIK IBSEN
Peer Gynt
The love of conflict is most evident when opposing forces join sides to defeat the peacemaker.
CRISS JAMI
Killosophy
Real conflicts between two people, those which do not serve to cover up or to project, but which are experienced on the deep level of inner reality to which they belong, are not destructive. They lead to clarification, they produce a catharsis from which both persons emerge with more knowledge and more strength.
ERICH FROMM
The Art of Loving