Conflicts And Wars Quotes & Sayings

Major international interventions are doomed unless the US is directly or indirectly involved. But if American politicians, officials and servicemen are to be put at risk of arrest and prosecution, the United States will be most reluctant to act in order to curb aggression or prevent genocide. So the effect of the court may well be to diminish, not increase, the numbers of (in the words of the UN Secretary General) 'innocents of distant wars and conflicts'. — Margaret Thatcher

The subsequent course of events there (in the Republic of Georgia) confirmed the truth that if America or the West as a whole fails to shape the aftermath of wars in areas of vital interests, unfriendly powers will do so, and with dangerous consequences for the West. Among the likely consequences of Russia's successful aggression in this instance are the likely permanent truncation of Georgia, its long-term exclusion from NATO, further division within NATO, and the emboldening of Russia to take further military actions in neighboring countries when it considered it necessary to do so. — Svante E. Cornell

Wars and conflicts are not inevitable. They are caused by human beings. — Martti Ahtisaari

All wars leave a legacy of bitterness and hatred, but internecine conflicts create the deepest scars. There is something different about such intrafamilial conflicts. People who once were part of one national family divide, define each other as the hateful enemy, and aim for the jugular. On both sides of an internecine conflict there is a feeling of betrayal, a sense that those who were brothers or sisters have been traitorous to their commitments or to the nation [1]. — Paul D. Escott

Case studies of Cold War-era conflicts suggest two ironclad, unwritten rules: first, no nuclear power may use military force against another nuclear power; and, second, a nuclear power, using military force against a non-nuclear nation, may not use nuclear weapons. Moreover, possessing nuclear weapons did not necessarily deter a non-nuclear nation from waging war with a client state of a nuclear power, as the United States found out in the Korean and Vietnam Wars. — Joseph M. Siracusa

As recently as the September 11 event, the majority of Muslims were, as the rest of the world was, against its violence. However, if despair and humiliation continue in the population of more than one billion Muslims, the world will face increasing risks of conflicts and wars. — Ahmed Zewail

The destruction of the environment, its improper or selfish use, and the violent hoarding of the Earth's resources cause grievances, conflicts and wars, precisely because they are the consequences of an inhumane concept of development. — Pope Benedict XVI

The third dimension is that the rebel is not interested in domination over others. He has no lust for power, because that is the ugliest thing in the world. The lust for power has destroyed humanity and has not allowed it to be more creative, to be more beautiful, to be more healthy, to be more wholesome. And it is this lust for power that ultimately leads to conflicts, competitions, jealousies, and finally to wars. Lust for power is the foundation of all wars. If you look at human history, the whole of it is nothing but a history of wars, man killing man. Reasons have changed, but the killing continues. — Osho

Condemning war has not curbed armed conflict. Religion and education did not eliminate war. Warfare did not terminate more wars. Armed combat simply breeds endless wars. — Kilroy J. Oldster

I was reminded as I was reviewing my life, that I have been in too many conflicts, too many wars, political battles, military battles, civil strifes in government. And always one lesson stands out and that is, those whom you fight most passionately often turn out to be your best friends. — Ferdinand Marcos

Which war are you referring to, I asked, when you say the "last"? I meant the big one, the world war, he answered, because little ones, like ours, don't count as real wars. For those who are no longer alive, I said, every war is real. That is correct agreed Isak Levi, but a local war is actually abuse of the noun war, since it is most often armed conflict of limited intensity being waged on limited territory. Of course, he said, most of the conflicts registered in history belong to that category, I admit, and there are few wars that were truly grandiose. You speak of wars, I said, at least of the big ones, as though you admire them, and I see no justification for that. He saw no reason to admire them either, Isak Levi replied, but if they did exist, there was no point in closing one's eyes to the fact. — David Albahari

For many people in the U.N., the 1990s was the worst decade the organization experienced. This was the decade of Somalia, Srebrenica, of Rwanda and so forth, and yet the reality is, during this period, although there were these awful conflicts, the overall number of wars had gone down. — Andrew Mack

As long as we have all these conflicts, it is the women who will continue to suffer, so that is one reason why I guess as women we should really work for peace, because we know how painful wars can be to us and our daughters. — Wangari Maathai

In the wars against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, as in so many later conflicts, British women seem to have been no more markedly pacifist than men. Instead, and exactly like so many of their male countrymen, some women found ways of combining support for the national interest with a measure of self-promotion. By assisting the war effort, women demonstrated that their concerns were by no means confined to the domestic sphere. Under cover of a patriotism that was often genuine and profound, they carved out for themselves a real if precarious place in the public sphere. — Linda Colley

Comma in 'Beginning with a Comma' is the hiccup, not only a pause. One can never imagine where a breath pauses, where adolescence can get acquainted with adulthood, its shadow lines, blurred realities that make the appearance and likeliness a mere binary to each other! Comma is a mental conflict, therefore, I call it a hiccup, an 'uncomfortable' pause- one that either continues till you gulp down something else or vanishes forever, miraculous!
Gita, Crusades, Khalsa or Jihad- War has never been alien to world religions. But it is not the physical combat these wars symbolise, but the inner conflicts. In Gita, while Arjuna symbolizes a person who seeks salvation, Krishna is the God himself and it is the mental conflict which is Kurukshetra.

Epilogue, Beginning with a Comma — Amrit Sinha

Indeed, Russia and the U.S. were allies during the two tragic conflicts of the Second and the First World Wars, which allows us to think there's something objectively bringing us together in difficult times, and I think - I believe - it has to do with geopolitical interests and also has a moral component. — Vladimir Putin

War cannot eliminate differing ideas and viewpoints, and partisans of the defeated side do not disappear. Though subjugated, they become a sizable political constituency in the postwar period. A dictator may be able to repress them, and in democracies a numerical majority may outvote them, but neither can change their thoughts. Since civil wars are, by nature, deep and fundamental conflicts, the competition between the views that led to war is likely to resurface. The defeated side may be chastened or subdued, but its values and ways of seeing the world reappear, in some form, in politics [107]. — Paul D. Escott

..."the unpredictability of war - that once the first shots are fired or first bombs fall, as Churchill said, the political leader loses control. Events are in the saddle. It seems that every war is begun with the assumptions it will be short. In nearly every instance, going back far into history, that assumption has been wrong. And so it happened again in Iraq and Afghanistan, as swift and successful regime changes gave way to long and bloody conflicts. In light of history, how could anyone have been surprised that our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan took unanticipated turns? — Robert M. Gates

In the original 'Guild Wars,' one of the big conflicts was the humans versus the charr. The humans and charr are both playable races in 'Guild Wars 2,' and they are on the same side, more or less. They don't hate each other. — Jeff Grubb

The food surpluses produced by peasants, coupled with new transportation technology, eventually enabled more and more people to cram together first into large villages, then into towns, and finally into cities, all of them joined together by new kingdoms and commercial networks. Yet in order to take advantage of these new opportunities, food surpluses and improved transportation were not enough. The mere fact that one can feed a thousand people in the same town or a million people in the same kingdom does not guarantee that they can agree how to divide the land and water, how to settle disputes and conflicts, and how to act in times of drought or war. And if no agreement can be reached, strife spreads, even if the storehouses are bulging. It was not food shortages that caused most of history's wars and revolutions. The — Yuval Noah Harari

All conflicts can be resolved. Wars and conflicts are not inevitable. They are caused by human beings. There are always interests that are furthered by war. Therefore those who have power and influence can also stop them. Peace is a question of will. — Martti Ahtisaari

Wars and conflicts begin in the mind, then they are expressed in words and then executed through physical action, so personal transformation is intricately connected with the social and political transformation. — Satish Kumar

THE VIOLENCE OF early modernity was expressed nowhere more purely or on a grander scale than in the international and internecine conflicts of the period, which custom dictates should be called "the wars of religion." Given, though, the lines of coalition that defined these conflicts, and given their ultimate consequences, they ought really to be remembered as the first wars of the modern nation-state, whose principal purpose was to establish the supremacy of secular state authority over every rival power, most especially the power of the church. — David Bentley Hart

So if we are going to find lasting solutions to difficult conflicts or external wars we find ourselves in, we first need to find our way out of the internal wars that are poisoning our thoughts, feelings, and attitudes toward others. If we can't put an end to the violence within us, there is no hope for putting an end to the violence without. — The Arbinger Institute

The great mountains of wars and conflicts in the world can only be removed by picking up tiny stones of hatred and anger bit by bit. We must all be involved! — Israelmore Ayivor

Have you ever attempted to organize something like peace? The moment you do, you have power conflicts and group wars within the organization. The only way to have peace is to let it grow wild. — Anthony De Mello

It is a fact that many of the wars and conflicts happening all over the world are aggravated or fought strictly for geopolitical fossil fuel energy interests, and many of the world's most dangerous regimes are funded by fossil fuel dollars. — Mark Ruffalo

And, what is more, we know how an all-consuming passion for freedom in the world never fails to lead to conflicts and wars which are no less consuming. — Jean Paulhan

The Thirty Years' War, 1618-1648, was a series of conflicts that became the last great struggle of religious wars in Europe. It was fought almost exclusively on German soil ... but before the war ended, it involved most of the nations of Europe. The underlying cause of the war was the deep-seated hostility between the German Protestants and German Catholics - with the Jesuits and Cardinal Richelieu, who was the real ruler of France, fanning the fires to accomplish their ends. — John Daniel

The most intense wars are civil wars, just as the most vivid and rending personal conflicts are internal ones, and what I hope to do now is give some idea of what it is like to fight on two fronts at once, to try and keep opposing ideas alive in the same mind, even occasionally to show two faces at the same time. — Christopher Hitchens

In the 20th century, the United States endured two world wars and other traumatic and expensive military conflicts; the Depression; a dozen or so recessions and financial panics; oil shocks; a flu epidemic; and the resignation of a disgraced president. Yet the Dow rose from 66 to 11,497. — Warren Buffett

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

Working with the UN's diplomacy and development arms, we can prevent minor differences from escalating into wars. When conflicts do break out, UN peacekeepers should play a role in defusing and settling them. Without giving up our sovereignty, we can help the UN with better training and better command and control in order to develop more effective peacekeeping forces. — Bill Bradley

A country which accepts wars as contests between good and evil is suffering from the delusion that the morality play symbolizes real political conflicts. — Pauline Kael

What is surprising is not the magnitude of our forecast errors, but our absence of awareness of it. This is all the more worrisome when we engage in deadly conflicts: wars are fundamentally unpredictable (and we do not know it). Owing to this misunderstanding of the causal chains between policy and actions, we can easily trigger Black Swans thanks to aggressive ignorance-like a child playing with a chemistry kit. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb