Conflict Quotes

It is the dream of every white person to be able to resolve all conflicts by complaining to unrelated parties. Because of this, white people are able to endure years of frustration and anger without saying a word in the hopes that everything will just work itself out without having to make a scene.

~ Christian Lander

Argument need not be heated, it can be punctuated with courteous smiles - or sympathetic tears.

~ J. Sidlow Baxter

Fairy tales begin with conflict because we all begin our lives with conflict. We are all misfit for the world, and somehow we must fit in, fit in with other people, and thus we must invent or find the means through communication to satisfy as well as resolve conflicting desires and instincts.

~ Jack D. Zipes

The 'peace' the gospel brings is never the absence of conflict, but an ineffable divine reassurance within the heart of conflict; a peace that surpasses understanding.

~ Walter Wink

Happiness is a garden walled with glass: there's no way in or out. In Paradise there are no stories, because there are no journeys. It's loss and regret and misery and yearning that drive the story forward, along its twisted road.

~ Margaret Atwood

Nothing moves forward in a story except through conflict. Writers who cannot grasp this truth, the truth of conflict, writers who have been misled by the counterfeit comforts of modern life into believing that life is easy once you know how to play the game. These writers give conflict a false inflection. The scripts they write fail for one of two reasons, either a glut of banal conflict or a lack of meaningful conflict. The former are exercises in turbo special effects written by those who follow textbook imperatives to create conflict but because they're disinterested in or insensitive to the honest struggles of life, devise overwrought excuses for mayhem. The latter are tedious portraits written in reaction against conflict itself, these writers take the pollyanna view, that life would really be nice if it weren't for conflict. What writers at these extremes fail to realize is that while the quality of conflict in life changes as it shifts from level to level, the quantity of conflict is constant. When we remove conflict from one level of life, it amplifies ten times over on another level. When, for example, we don't have to work from dawn to dark to put bread on the table, we now have time to reflect on the great conflict within our mind and heart or we may become aware of the terrible tyrannies and suffering in the world at large. As Jean-Paul Sartre expressed it, The essence of reality is scarcity. There isn't enough love in the world, enough food, enough justice, enough time in life. To gain any sense of satisfaction in our life we must go in to heady conflict with the forces of scarcity. To be alive is to be in perpetual conflict at one or all three levels of our lives.

~ Robert Mckee

When writing, I uncage KAT: Keep Adding Tension. Even if I don't know where the story's going, petting the KAT keeps it purring.

~ Don Roff

As a screenwriter - if you are completely honest with yourself - you can’t help but admit that your greatest threat is the audience, where audience is not understood as a demographic category but as a character outside the script to whom the story is addressed. A good part of the drama necessary for uncovering the story resides in the conflict between the storyteller and his/her audience. Audience plays the part of antagonist to the writer’s role as protagonist. The writer drives the action, which is forever complicated, frustrated and undermined by the audience’s needs and sensibilities. Audience wants you to prove it. Audience has a chip on its shoulder, and doesn’t give a damn. Audience has been there and done that in the guise of your mother, your father, your ex-, your worst enemy. Audience laughs at your stupidity and dares you to change its view of you and the story world that you would have it care about. Audience is defiant. It has your number. The only way you can defeat it is by carrying a bigger stick - your only defence is an inspired offence, namely the story.

~ Billy Marshall Stoneking

Accepting conflict brings you closer to knowing peace.

~ Bryant Mcgill

Sometimes in life there's no problem and sometimes there solution. Within this space - between these apparent poles - life flows.

~ Rasheed Ogunlaru

Conflict is a natural part of existence. Life is a struggle for survival for every organism at every level.

~ Bryant Mcgill

All governments lie, as I.F. Stone pointed out, including Israel and Hamas. But Israel engages in the kinds of jaw-dropping lies that characterize despotic and totalitarian regimes. It does not deform the truth; it inverts it. It routinely paints a picture for the outside world that is diametrically opposed to reality. And all of us reporters who have covered the occupied territories have run into Israel’s Alice-in-Wonderland narratives, which we dutifully insert into our stories—required under the rules of American journalism—although we know they are untrue.

~ Chris Hedges

Violence is formed by the scarcity of nature, and will stay with us as long as we live in scarcity.

~ Haroutioun Bochnakian

Before reacting to any conflicting situation in life. Ask yourself a simple question: You want to be happy or you want to be right?

~ Aditya Ajmera

Egos clash. That's the nature of egos.Treat these outbursts as sneezing fits.

~ Hugh Prather

There is a dreamlike quality to the 1936 Basque government, the fulfillment of a historic longing that was to be crushed only nine months later in carnage the scale of which had never before been seen on earth.

~ Mark Kurlansky

Sometimes what we seek to gain through winning a conflict is not worth what we're refusing to sacrifice. And true compromise often involves sacrifice: As on the path between Scylla and Charybdis, the monsters of Greek mythology who lie on either side of a narrow strait to devour sailors and ships, either way you go there will be losses. Through life experience we gradually learn to differentiate between the ideals, values and principles which can, and those which cannot, be compromised.

~ Alexandra Katehakis

There is an enlightened way to flow with, in, and through conflict.

~ Bryant Mcgill

He stopped the flyersAnd by his rare example made the cowardTurn terror into sport. As weeds beforeA vessel under sail, so men obeyedAnd fell below his stem. His sword, Death's stamp,Where it did mark, it took; from face to footHe was a thing of blood, whose every motionWas timed with dying cries. Alone he enteredThe mortal gate o' th' city, which he paintedWith shunless destiny; aidless came offAnd with a sudden reinforcement struckCorioles like a planet. Now all's his,When by and by the dim of war gan pierceHis ready sense; then straight his doubled spiritRequickened what in flesh was fatigate,And to the battle came he, where he didRun reeking o'er the lives of men as if'Twere a perpetual spoil; and till we calledBoth field and city ours, he never stoodTo ease his breast with panting.

~ William Shakespeare

Ideas stand in the corner and laugh while we fight over them.

~ Marty Rubin

Online life is so delicious because it is socializing with almost no friction.

~ David Brooks

On the surface, humans appear to hate conflict, but in reality, they seek it.

~ Nagaru Tanigawa

If she fully embraced life with all its conflicts, she would suffer a breakdown.

~ Dean Koontz

That was what finally decided me. I wanted to be near him, to touch him, but what I really wanted more than that was answers, for the conflict within me to end. I needed control.

~ Cristina Rayne

I know what I'm talking about, Alecto! When I think of Jud, I think of the times he wanted to be a coal miner, the times he took Wendy and me sailing in the harbour, the times he showed me how to play soccer, but I forgot all the bullying and I’ll never understand why. And now you ask me, you ask me what happened once we were in high school. You said you didn’t understand what having a family was like, so ask me!” Mandy was shouting at him without even realizing it, her words sharp and unforgiving.“I….” Alecto started, hesitating for a moment. “You don’t seem like yourself Mandy Valems, not at all….”“No, go ahead! You want to know what having a real family is like?” Mandy snapped, turning to stare at him coldly. “Ask me what happened, I’ll tell you anything you want to know!”“…What happened?” Alecto asked quietly, looking nervous and confused.“I stayed late after school in shop class when I was in grade 9, trying to keep my lousy grades up. I was building a birdhouse, something like that, and that was when Jud and all his popular jock friends came storming in, laughing and swearing like a bunch of pigs,” Mandy continued. “So ask me what happened next.”“I… I don’t want to ask you what happened,” Alecto replied.“Ask me!” Mandy yelled.“Alright, what happened next…?” Alecto questioned.

~ Rebecca Mcnutt

In marriage, God rarely starts with the issues on the table. He starts with the ones in our hearts

~ Ngina Otiende

America isn't breaking apart at the seams. The American dream isn't dying. Our new racial and ethnic complexion hasn't triggered massive outbreaks of intolerance. Our generations aren't at each other's throats. They're living more interdependently than at any time in recent memory, because that turns out to be a good coping strategy in hard times. Our nation faces huge challenges, no doubt. So do the rest of the world's aging economic powers. If you had to pick a nation with the right stuff to ride out the coming demographic storm, you'd be crazy not to choose America, warts and all.

~ Pew Research Center

My life has a mysterious purpose that I don't understand, and day by day, conflict by conflict, I learn by going where I have to go.

~ Dean Koontz

THE ABUSER’S PROBLEM IS NOT THAT HE RESPONDS INAPPROPRIATELY TO CONFLICT. HIS ABUSIVENESS IS OPERATING PRIOR TO THE CONFLICT: IT USUALLY CREATES THE CONFLICT, AND IT DETERMINES THE SHAPE THE CONFLICT TAKES.

~ Lundy Bancroft

While you were busy trying to prove God stands behind you, God was before me lighting the trail, so he could lead us both.

~ Shannon L. Alder

Sometimes in life there's no problem and sometimes in there is no solution. In this space - between these apparent poles - life flows.

~ Rasheed Ogunlaru

The reason everything falls apart around me, but I don’t is because my angels keep me standing up.

~ Shannon L. Alder

The mentality of who is your uncle—an ethnocentric way of thinking, is one of the leading causes of South Sudan’s internal conflicts.

~ Duop Chak Wuol

Peace ain't worth fighting for.

~ Brian Spellman

I submit a body of facts which cannot be invalidated. My opinions may be doubted, denied, or approved, according as they conflict or agree with the opinions of each individual who may read them; but their worth will be best determined by the foundation on which they rest—the incontrovertible facts.

~ William Beaumont

They are from another world, another way of life that somehow has merged with our own. These worlds are kept separate for the safety of everyone. And yet, I connect them. You do.

~ Meredith T. Taylor

Lust shouts. Love whispers. Only the heart knows the difference.

~ Jan Hurst-Nicholson

Empathy is the key to negotiating and resolving conflict.

~ Arthur P. Ciaramicoli

Empathy is a big part of Sparkleponies, because it’s also my belief (as a history and political science major) that societies that don’t practice rational empathy inevitably collapse – either by fomenting conflict from within by oppressing a segment/s of their populace, or seeking conflict from without by taking from others and eventually getting into a fight they can’t win.

~ Chris Kluwe

For kids like me, the part of the brain that deals with stress and conflict is always activated...We are constantly ready to fight or flee, because there is a constant exposure to the bear, whether that bear is an alcoholic dad or an unhinged mom (p228)....I see conflict and I run away or prepare for battle. (p246)

~ J.d. Vance