Quotes & Sayings About Adversaries

The task of the intellectual is not one of blending into the opaque consciousness of the tumultuous mob around him, his voice drowned in a cacophony of misdirected protests. His task is to remind them of who they are and what they ought to be. Our values are not to be taken from conduct of our adversaries but from the great heritage of our people. — Sanusi Lamido Sanusi

Education without social action is a one-sided value because it has no true power potential. Social action without education is a weak expression of pure energy. Deeds uninformed by educated thought can take false directions. When we go into action and confront our adversaries, we must be as armed with knowledge as they. Our policies should have the strength of deep analysis beneath them to be able to challenge the clever sophistries of our opponents. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Sword rang on sword, the metallic sounds echoing throughout the wide market place and filling the crannies of every dark alley. Strength waged against strength, as, indeed, rivals of evil have ever-battled the adversaries of truth. The face of one combatant appeared cool and certain, the other passionate in his resolve, intent upon seeing the battle through and winning the day with valor... — Alicia A. Willis

A man who knows a thing, recognizes a given danger, and sees with his own eyes the possibility of a remedy, damned well has the duty and the obligation not to work 'silently', but to stand up openly against the evil and for its cure. If he does not do so then he is a faithless, miserable weakling who fails either from cowardice or from laziness and incompetence ... Every last agitator who possesses the courage to defend his opinions with manly forth-rightness, standing on a tavern table among his adversaries, accomplishes more than a thousand of these lying, treacherous sneaks. — George Lincoln Rockwell

His joy was a release of Paul's conversion, not the heavy backslapping practical-joking humor of the Victorians, nor the cynical satire or the flippancy of the twenty first century mass media, just the gift of not taking himself or his adversaries too seriously. — John Charles Pollock

It's so graceless, being a martyr. It's honoring your adversaries too much. — Ayn Rand

It's important that these people think of their adversaries specifically as assholes. That's what gives the modern rhetoric of polarization its singular stamp and makes it different from the execrations of other ages. Seeing our antagonists as assholes means, for one thing, that the enmity is personal. (189) — Geoffrey Nunberg

We really are immortal in the sense that Christ's Atonement conquers death, both physical and spiritual. And provided we have so lived Today that we have claim on the Atonement's cleansing grace, we will live forever with God. This life is not so much a time for getting and accumulating as it is a time for giving and becoming. Mortality is the battlefield upon which justice and mercy meet. But they need not meet as adversaries, for they are reconciled in the Atonement of Jesus Christ for all who wisely use Today. — Lance B. Wickman

Gabriel,' said Jerott firmly, 'is now at Birgu, Malta, engaged in a life-and-death struggle for the Grand Mastership of the Order of St John. He is unlikely to spend a large part of his time arranging esoteric disasters for his adversaries. He is far more likely to arrange to kill them stone dead.'

'All right. You go and get killed stone dead on that side of the garden, and I'll stick to this,' said Lymond. — Dorothy Dunnett

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States and China are more likely to view each other as competitors if not adversaries. But the die has not been cast. The best possible outcome is a new understanding that when they cannot cooperate, they will coexist and allow all countries in the Pacific to grow and thrive. — Lee Kuan Yew

Passing: the righteous, fair-skinned Nephites, led by Nephi, and their bitter adversaries, the Lamanites, as the followers of Laman were known. The Lamanites were "an idle people, full of mischief and subtlety," whose behavior was so annoying to God that He cursed the whole lot of them with dark skin to punish them for their impiety. — Jon Krakauer

I assure you by the Lord, your adversaries shall get no advantage against you, except you sin, and offend your Lord, in your sufferings. — Samuel Rutherford

It has been very humbling and gratifying to have these men as our role models ... Your generation enabled America to close out the twentieth century as the greatest nation in the history of mankind, the only remaining superpower, the world's leading economy and the world's most respected and feared military force in the world- respected by our friends and allies, feared by our adversaries. — Eric Shinseki

It is hard to make your adversaries real people unless you recognize yourself in them - in which case, if you don't watch out, they cease to be adversaries. — Flannery O'Connor

A key legitimator is the perception that the system is set up in such a way that a person, and more importantly the person's adversaries, face a constant chance of being punished if they break the law, so that they all may internalize inhibitions against predation, preemptive attack, and vigilante retribution. — Steven Pinker

All varieties of the producers' policy are advocated on the ground of their alleged ability to raise the party members' standard of living. Protectionism and economic self-sufficiency, labor union pressure and compulsion, labor legislation, minimum wage rates, public spending, credit expansion, subsidies, and other makeshifts are always recommended by their advocates as the most suitable or the only means to increase the real income of the people for whose votes they canvass. Every contemporary statesman or politician invariably tells his voters: My program will make you as affluent as conditions may permit, while my adversaries' program will bring you want and misery. — Ludwig Von Mises

U.S. adversaries exploit power gaps. It's easier for Russia to invade Ukraine with irregular forces out of uniform, the so-called 'little green men,' than to send a conventional army that would challenge NATO. — David Ignatius

Sincere
that was the hell of it. From a distance, one's adversaries seemed fiends, but with a closer view, one saw the sincerity and it was as great as one's own. Perhaps Satan was the sincerest of the lot. — Walter M. Miller Jr.

The ears of our generation have been made so delicate by the senseless multitude of flatterers that, as soon as we perceive that anything of ours is not approved of, we cry out that we are being bitterly assailed; and when we can repel the truth by no other pretence, we escape by attributing bitterness, impatience, intemperance, to our adversaries. — Martin Luther

Grim-visaged war hath smoothed his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute. — William Shakespeare

What most people want in a leader is something that's very difficult to find: we want someone who listens ... The secret, Reagan's secret, is to listen, to value what you hear, and then to make a decision even if it contradicts the very people you are listening to. Reagan impressed his advisers, his adversaries, and his voters by actively listening. People want to be sure you hear what they said - they're less focused on whether or not you do what they said. — Seth Godin

7For I do not want to see you now n just in passing. I hope to spend some time with you, o if the Lord permits. 8But I will stay in Ephesus until p Pentecost, 9for q a wide door for effective work has opened to me, and r there are many adversaries. — Anonymous

On our plane knowledge and ignorance are the immemorial adversaries. — Frederick Soddy

Cyberspace is the battlefield of tomorrow ... Instead of confronting us head-to-head on the traditional battlefield, adversaries will confront the U.S. at its point of least resistance- our information infrastructure. — Fred Thompson

We have treated our most serious adversaries, such as Iran and North Korea, in the most juvenile manner - by giving them the silent treatment. In so doing, we have weakened, not strengthened, our bargaining position and our leadership. — Theodore C. Sorensen

Give more, so that we can build more, put interest in understanding another more in whatever actions one might carry out in life. Because we all are fighting for survival against adversaries and are sometimes falling, but if we stand together and help shield and strengthen one another, imagine the world that we will live in together, having more happiness with one another, at one another's side. — Jonathan Anthony Burkett

Three-fourths of the miseries and misunderstandings in the world will disappear if we step into the shoes of our adversaries and understand their standpoint. — Mahatma Gandhi

And do as adversaries do in law, strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends. — William Shakespeare

My adversaries were those with a traditional mind-set, the usual opponents of any idea "not invented here," those fearful that what I was trying to do threatened their existing programs and procurements. — Robert M. Gates

You must understand that even if your adversaries seem to be harming you, in the end their destrucive activity will turn against them. — Dalai Lama XIV

A spectre is haunting Europe-the spectre of Communism. All the Powers of old Europe have entered into holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Czar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies. Where is the Party in opposition that has not been decried as Communistic by its opponents in power? Where the Opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of Communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries? — Karl Marx

We have to use all of America's strengths to build a world with more partners and fewer adversaries, more shared responsibility and fewer conflicts, more good jobs and less poverty, more broadly based prosperity with less damage to our environment. — Hillary Clinton

Those who attack the rationale of the game, and not the players, are its most formidable adversaries. — James J. Martin

The $52.6 billion U.S. intelligence arsenal is aimed mainly at unambiguous adversaries, including al-Qaida, North Korea and Iran. But top-secret budget documents reveal an equally intense focus on one purported ally: Pakistan. — Barton Gellman

I just know that sameness, repetition, and conceptualizing are the acting craft's adversaries, and it seems more intelligent to start off within a framework where those things are, to some degree, taken out of your hands. — Jack Nicholson

It's much more important for U.S. to be able to defend against foreign attacks than it is to be able to launch successful attacks against foreign adversaries. — Edward Snowden

May I introduce you all to the main course?" Morpheus spreads out an arm with a dramatic flare. "Dinner, meet your worthy adversaries, the hungry guests. — A.G. Howard

The most hurtful thing is not what comes from our adversaries, it's what comes from our friends. — Gloria Steinem

They were doing what they thought they had to do. Their intentions were as good as those of most political and religious purists. In the time of Julius Caesar, Brutus was known as the most moral man in Rome. Whenever we think of what he did and of what then became of him, we are reminded that unduly virtuous men can be as great a danger to themselves and their own causes as they are to their adversaries. — James R. Mills

On many questions and specially in view of the marriage bed, the Puritans were the indulgent party, ... they were much more Chestertonian than their adversaries. The idea that a Puritan was a repressed and repressive person would have astonished Sir Thomas More and Luther about equally. — C.S. Lewis

But I am a just man, even to my enemy - and I will acknowledge, beforehand, that they are cleverer brains than I thought them. — Wilkie Collins

You are well aware that it is not numbers or strength that bring the victories in war. No, it is when one side goes against the enemy with the gods' gift of a stronger morale that their adversaries, as a rule, cannot withstand them. I have noticed this point too, my friends, that in soldiering the people whose one aim is to keep alive usually find a wretched and dishonorable death, while the people who, realizing that death is the common lot of all men, make it their endeavour to die with honour, somehow seem more often to reach old age and to have a happier life when they are alive. These are facts which you too should realize (our situation demands it) and should show that you yourselves are brave men and should call on the rest to do likewise. — Xenophon

I think Barack Obama had the right idea [on negotiations with enemies], and the bottom line is that of course there have to be conditions. But, of course it doesn't do us any good to not talk with our adversaries. — Hillary Clinton

I have found that the players who have played in that game really do have respect for their adversaries. — Darrell Royal

Our adversaries - our Democratic adversaries - like to be able to portray the Republican Party as a bunch of wingnuts - narrow based, always have some agenda that's not attractive to the public ... That's easier for them, and more fun, than dealing with their own problems. And I think their problems are significant. — Dick Cheney

We may be doomed, but why not enjoy ourselves? It will lessen the victory of our adversaries. — Brandon Mull

We must, all of us, learn actually not to have enemies, but only confused adversaries who are ourselves in disguise. — Alice Walker

Marriage, in my view, should be a balanced stalemate between equal adversaries. — Elizabeth Peters

Obama is hardly the first president to seek rapprochement with our adversaries and reconciliation with our enemies, of course. But his determination to make nice - even in the face of clear and repeated rejection from the other side - is unparalleled. For Obama and his team, diplomacy with rogue regimes is an end in itself, and any deal, however one-sided, is a win, especially one that the White House communications mavens think that friendly media will call a 'breakthrough' or 'historic.' — Stephen F. Hayes

Each FBI employee understands that to defeat the key threats facing our nation, we must constantly strive to be more efficient and more effective. Just as our adversaries continue to evolve, so, too, must the FBI. — James Comey

America has learned what our repressive and terrorist adversaries do not understand: that liberty without law is anarchy, liberty to defy law is rebellion, but liberty limited by law is the cornerstone of civilization. — David Jeremiah

Al forms of consensus about 'great' books and 'perennial' problems, once stabilized, tend to deteriorate eventually into something philistine. The real life of the mind is always at the frontiers of 'what is already known.' Those great books don't only need custodians and transmitters. To stay alive, they also need adversaries. The most interesting ideas are heresies. — Susan Sontag

If your heart is large enough to envelop your adversaries, you can see right through them and avoid their attacks. And once you envelop them, you will be able to guide them along the path indicated to you by heaven and earth. — Morihei Ueshiba

Being daily better informed about their knowledge than my adversaries themselves, I argued till finally one day they applied the one means that wins the easiest victory over reason: terror and force. — Adolf Hitler

Every character needs an adversary - one who is both challenging and a contrast for the hero. The best adversaries reveal something about the character they're contrasting. — Greg Rucka

A politician knows that his friends are not always his allies, and that his adversaries are not always his enemies. — Richard M. Nixon

The door of conciliation and compromise is finally closed by our adversaries, and it remains only to us to meet the conflict with the dignity and firmness of men worthy of freedom. — Robert Toombs

Dialogue does not happen when we are adversaries. — Zalman Schachter-Shalomi

Adversaries are divided not just by their competitive spin-doctoring but by the calendars with which they measure history and the importance they put on remembrance. The victims of a conflict are assiduous historians and cultivators of memory. The perpetrators are pragmatists, firmly planted in the present. — Steven Pinker

For the sake of historical truth I must verify that only the Greeks, of all the adversaries who confronted us, fought with bold courage and highest disregard of death. — Adolf Hitler

All American wars (except the Civil War) have been fought with the odds overwhelmingly in favor of the Americans. In the history of armed combat such affairs as the Mexican and Spanish-American Wars must be ranked, not as wars at all, but as organized assassinations. In the two World Wars, no American faced a bullet until his adversaries had been worn down by years of fighting others. — H.L. Mencken

Therefore, your enemies are not the adversaries who were put there to test your courage. They are the cowards who were put there to test your weakness. — Paulo Coelho

The authentic rebel knows that the silencing of all his adversaries is the last thing on earth he wishes: their extermination would deprive him and whoever else remains alive from the uniqueness, the originality, and the capacity for insight that these enemies being human also have and could share with him. If we wish the death of our enemies, we cannot talk about the community of man. In the losing of the chance for dialogue with our enemies, we are the poorer. — Rollo May

Those who protest against "Western ethnocentrism" imagine themselves to owe nothing to the West, since after all they rage furiously against it. But in fact theirs is the most Western perspective of all, more Western than that of their adversaries.

Not only is the revolt against ethnocentrism an invention of the West, it cannot be found outside the West. — Rene Girard

In addition to anti-American terrorists with global reach, our adversaries include organizations - some nation states, some private and some criminal - that proliferate weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them. — Dennis C. Blair

Dialogue is the basis of Indian culture, and we don't want to make any enemies. Political and ideological adversaries, perhaps, but not enemies. — Evo Morales

I cannot understand how people can still call themselves Christians and not be furious adversaries of Hitler's regime. — Henning Von Tresckow

Strong countries and strong presidents talk to their adversaries. That's what Kennedy did with Khrushchev. That's what Reagan did with Gorbachev. That's what Nixon did with Mao. I mean think about it. Iran, Cuba, Venezuela - these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don't pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us. And yet we were willing to talk to the Soviet Union at the time when they were saying we're going to wipe you off the planet. — Barack Obama

First ... a new theory is attacked as absurd; then it is admitted to be true, but obvious and insignificant; finally it is seen to be so important that its adversaries claim that they themselves discovered it. — William James

Peace is something you make with your adversaries, not with your friends. — Johan Galtung

We'd spent years as adversaries, two predators sharing territory and a certain, unwelcome attraction. Somehow, during all those years I spent outwardly acquiescing to his demands while making sure I held my own, I'd won his respect. I'd had werewolves love me and hate me, but I'd never had one respect me before. Not even Samuel. Adam respected me enough to act on my suspicions. It meant a lot. — Patricia Briggs

Christ willed to suffer and be despised and do you dare complain of the same? Christ had adversaries and backbiters; and do you wish to have all men your friends and benefactors? When shall your patience attain her crown if no adversity befalls you? If you are willing to suffer naught that is against you, how will you be the friend of Christ? — Thomas A Kempis

Most women have all other women as adversaries; most men have all other men as their allies. — Gelett Burgess

One great lesson from history we need to keep on re-learning. It is that sometimes your adversaries tell you exactly what they're going to do. How many times did [Osama] bin Laden say prior to 9/11 that he was coming after the U.S.? ISIS made clear that when they established their caliphate in Iraq and Syria, they were coming after the United States too. — Michael Morell

As president, I will stand up to the great human rights tests of our time - in China, Russia, and the Middle East. We must send a signal to our allies and adversaries that America is back in the leadership business. — Carly Fiorina

If we demand perfection from ourselves we are not living in the real world ... The inherent problem in the relationship between the ideal & the real is that the ideal judges the real as unacceptable and brings down condemnation and wrath on the real. This sets up an adversarial relationship between the two and like all adversaries, they move further and further apart. — Henry Cloud

Philosophy, as long as a drop of blood shall pulse in its world-subduing and absolutely free heart, will never grow tired of answering its adversaries with the cry of Epicurus:
"Not the man who denies the gods worshiped by the multitude, but he who affirms of the gods what the multitude believes about them, is truly impious"
Philosophy makes no secret of it. The confession of Prometheus:
"In simple words, I hate the pack of gods"
is its own confession, its own aphorism against all heavenly and earthly gods who do not acknowledge human self-consciousness as the highest divinity. — Karl Marx

Children," Mrs. Oakenfeld sighed.
"I do not want you to be good to avoid being punished. I do not want you to be good so that you can receive rewards. I want you to be good," she stressed, "because it is the right thing to do.
You are very formidable adversaries, but don't you see that when you work against eachother, you just cancel eachother out? — Dale Peck

It was a basic tenet of faith with men of Ranulf's class that a knight, trained in the ways of war since boyhood, could easily vanquish lesser foes, as much a belief in the superiority of blood and breeding as in the benefits of battle lore and killing competence. Ranulf had accepted this comforting conviction, too, but no one seemed to have told his assailants that they were inferior adversaries. — Sharon Kay Penman

Let us put an end to self-inflicted wounds. Let us remember that our national unity is a most priceless asset. Let us deny our adversaries the satisfaction of using Vietnam to pit Americans against Americans. — Gerald R. Ford

Those who truly seek wisdom are those who will acknowledge the virtue in their adversaries and who will learn from those who disabuse them of error. — Brandon Sanderson

Anarchy is a word that comes from the Greek, and signifies, strictly speaking, "without government": the state of a people without any constituted authority. Before such an organization had begun to be considered possible and desirable by a whole class of thinkers, so as to be taken as the aim of a movement (which has now become one of the most important factors in modern social warfare), the word "anarchy" was used universally in the sense of disorder and confusion, and it is still adopted in that sense by the ignorant and by adversaries interested in distorting the truth. — Errico Malatesta

We cannot hope to control what we do not understand, nor to confront our adversary, war, with our eyes averted. — Carl Mydans

So long as he was personally present, [Alcibiades] had the perfect mastery of his political adversaries; calumny only succeeded in his absence. — Plutarch

The commendation of adversaries is the greatest triumph of a writer, because it never comes unless extorted. — John Dryden

That it was an advantage to him to be interrupted in speaking, and that his adversaries were afraid to nettle him, lest his anger should redouble his eloquence. — Michel De Montaigne

Concessions to adversaries only end in self reproach, and the more strictly they are avoided the greater will be the chance of security. — Thucydides

He had a simple maxim for all competitive or adversarial situations: work out what the other party least wants you to do, and then do it. Relieving your feelings was fun, but the best course of action was to make things as difficult as possible for the person trying to make things difficult for you. — John Lanchester

However, the Bible is called the Word of God because the whole transcript is an inspired, faithful, and infallible record of what God determined essential for us to know about Himself, the cosmos in which we live, our spiritual allies and adversaries, and our fellow man. — Walter Martin

I never went to college. I went to the school of hard knocks and paid for my education by getting ripped off. It's been a great adventure, and I've outlived my adversaries. — Jim "Dandy" Mangrum

Our policy is simple: We are not going to betray our friends, reward the enemies of freedom, or permit fear and retreat to become American policies ... None of the four wars in my lifetime came about because we were too strong. It is weakness ... that invites adventurous adversaries to make mistaken judgments. — Ronald Reagan

Our greatest battles lie deep within our own psyches as we face fear, insecurity, and self-doubt. These internal adversaries pose a far greater threat to our lives and our well-being than the external difficulties of daily life. Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. Plato — Dan Millman

But though it had prevailed against such fierce adversaries as fire and flood, it had fallen victim softly and swiftly to television in the 1960's. — Kate Morton

The enlightened rational man is not unlike the title character in Mozart's opera "Don Giovanni": a likeable rake, intelligent and enterprising, free to do as he pleases, outmaneuvering his honorable, tradition-bound adversaries at every step. One cannot begrudge him his liberty and pursuit of happiness, but looming large above him is his fatal flaw: his mind's maturity does not match his freedom. His pursuits are frivolous, tawdry and destructive. And this, we maintain, is the historical moment of our techno-scientific world: like some allegorical alien race in a science fiction story, we have placed broad freedoms and enormous power in the hands of a flawed creature: ourselves. Empirical reason has brought us here, and by its light we will have to find a way forward. — Danko Antolovic

Langdon quickly explained how most people pictured satanic cults as devil-worshiping fiends, and yet Satanists historically were educated men who stood as adversaries to the church. Shaitan. The rumors of satanic black-magic animal sacrifices and the pentagram ritual were nothing but lies spread by the church as a smear campaign against their adversaries. Over time, opponents of the church,
wanting to emulate the Illuminati, began believing the lies and acting them out. Thus, modern Satanism was born. — Dan Brown

He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion ... Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them ... he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form. — John Stuart Mill

I'm a lobbyist and had a career lobbying. The guy who gets elected or the lady who gets elected president of the United States will immediately be lobbying. They would be advocating to the Congress, they'll be lobbying our allies and our adversaries overseas. They'll be asking the business community and labor unions. — Haley Barbour

Just as our adversaries and threats continue to evolve, so, too, must the FBI. The key to this evolution lies with our greatest assets: our people and our partnerships. Every FBI professional understands that thwarting the threats facing our nation means constantly striving to be more effective and more efficient. — James Comey

Had Harry been born under a star less kind, he might well have ended up among the city's nomadic visionaries, his days taken up with begging for enough money to buy some liquid oblivion, his nights spent trying to find a place where he could not hear the adversaries singing as they went about their labors of the dark. They had only ever sung one song within earshot of Harry, and that was "Danny Boy," that hymn to death and maudlin sentiment that Harry had heard so often that he knew the words by heart. — Clive Barker

Our adversaries consider that an activity which is neither aided by supplies, nor regulated by government, is an activity destroyed. We think just the contrary. Their faith is in the legislator, not in mankind; ours is in mankind, not in the legislator. — Frederic Bastiat