Escalation Quotes & Sayings

It's almost inevitable there's going to be an escalation on both sides. — Bill Luther

A lot of people recoil from the word "drugs" - which is understandable given today's noxious street drugs and their uninspiring medical counterparts. Yet even academics and intellectuals in our society typically take the prototypical dumb drug, ethyl alcohol. If it's socially acceptable to take a drug that makes you temporarily happy and stupid, then why not rationally design drugs to make people perpetually happier and smarter? Presumably, in order to limit abuse-potential, one would want any ideal pleasure drug to be akin - in one limited but important sense - to nicotine, where the smoker's brain finely calibrates its optimal level: there is no uncontrolled dose-escalation. — David Pearce

The American escalation of the war in Laos provoked a response by the Communist forces, which now control more of Laos than ever before. — Noam Chomsky

The press doesn't stop publishing, by the way, in a fascist escalation; it simply watches what it says. That too can be an incremental process, and the pace at which the free press polices itself depends on how journalists are targeted. — Naomi Wolf

The escalation to attack undefended civilian targets is just a classic illustration of terrorism. — Noam Chomsky

Reversing the escalation of health care costs is going to need more than legislation, yet it can be done without imposing rationing, as critics of reform fear. — Mitch Kapor

We cannot simply speak out against an escalation of troops in Iraq, we must act to prevent it ... There can be no doubt that the Constitution gives Congress the authority to decide whether to fund military action, and Congress can demand a justification from the president for such action before it appropriates the funds to carry it out. — Edward Kennedy

Blackwater is a company whose business depends on war and conflict to thrive. It operates in a demand-based industry where corporate profits are intimately linked to an escalation of violence. That — Jeremy Scahill

Many political scientists used to assume that people vote selfishly, choosing the candidate or policy that will benefit them the most. But decades of research on public opinion have led to the conclusion that self-interest is a weak predictor of policy preferences. Parents of children in public school are not more supportive of government aid to schools than other citizens; young men subject to the draft are not more opposed to military escalation than men too old to be drafted; and people who lack health insurance are not more likely to support government-issued health insurance than people covered by insurance.35 Rather, people care about their groups, whether those be racial, regional, religious, or political. The political scientist Don Kinder summarizes the findings like this: "In matters of public opinion, citizens seem to be asking themselves not 'What's in it for me?' but rather 'What's in it for my group?' "36 Political opinions function as "badges of social membership."37 — Jonathan Haidt

When we are anxiously attached, our inability to trust the intentions and behaviors of others will often lead us to escalate situations and then reject attempts to reassure us. It is a painful and dramatic spiral. — Mary Crocker Cook

Kissing is not just kissing. It is a major escalation or de-escalation point in a powerful process of mate choice. — Helen Fisher

We have FCC, abandoned alimony payments, assault and battery, Homeland Security escalation, and that's before we invite the IRS to take a walk on your wild side. — Ken Goldstein

Many students, especially those who are poor, intuitively know what the schools do for them. They school them to confuse process and substance. Once these become blurred, a new logic is assumed: the more treatment there is, the better are the results; or, escalation leads to success. The pupil is thereby "schooled" to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new. His imagination is "schooled" to accept service in place of value. — Ivan Illich

Between my leaping upstairs and my escalation on the stairs there is an intimate connection, think on your feet! — Sam Houssami

The cell phone has transformed public places into giant phone-a-thons in which callers exist within narcissistic cocoons of private conversations. Like faxes, computer modems and other modern gadgets that have clogged out lives with phony urgency, cell phones represent the 20th Century's escalation of imaginary need. We didn't need cell phones until we had them. Clearly, cell phones cause not only a breakdown of courtesy, but the atrophy of basic skills. — Mary Schmich

Unfortunately, the real minimum wage is always zero, regardless of the laws, and that is the wage that many workers receive in the wake of the creation or escalation of a government-mandated minimum wage, because they lose their jobs or fail to find jobs when they enter the labor force. Making it illegal to pay less than a given amount does not make a worker's productivity worth that amount - and, if it is not, that worker is unlikely to be employed. — Thomas Sowell

As individuals we tend to climb to our levels of incompetence. We behave as though up is better and more is better, and yet all around us we see the tragic victims of this mindless escalation. — Laurence J. Peter

Humans have a talent for escalation.
-Death — Markus Zusak

The most common motives for homicide are moralistic: retaliation after an insult, escalation of a domestic quarrel, punishing an unfaithful or deserting romantic partner, and other acts of jealousy, revenge, and self-defense. — Steven Pinker

Rivalistic desires are all the more overwhelming since they reinforce one another. The principle of reciprocal escalation and one-upmanship governs this type of conflict. This phenomenon is so common, so well known to us, and so contrary to our concept of ourselves, thus so humiliating, that we prefer to remove it from consciousness and act as if it did not exist. But all the while we know it does exist. This indifference to the threat of runaway conflict is a luxury that small ancient societies could not afford. — Rene Girard

It is a damned sight easier to start wars than to end them. This truth has been stated for as long and as often as it has been ignored. High time and thank God, we are at least moving toward de-escalation in Vietnam. The road to extrication will be long, painful, bitter. But it must be trod. We are so bogged down in Vietnam that we cannot respond effectively anywhere else in the world to a military power play except through atomic bombardment. — Malcolm Forbes

Visualization is basically the process of making a movie in your mind. You want to see yourself in many different situations, using your martial arts skills or your de-escalation skills to walk away from specific conflicts victoriously. The key to successful visualization is that you always see yourself being victorious. You don't want to visualize yourself screwing up or making mistakes. Visualizing yourself losing or messing up, is like practicing your martial arts skills incorrectly, over and over again. — Bohdi Sanders

These are the strategic dialectics of anti-imperialist struggle: through the defensive reactions of the system, the escalation of counterrevolution, the transformation of the political martial law into military martial law, the enemy betrays himself, becomes visible. — Ulrike Meinhof

Kids don't care what party they have, right? They want cake and they want to run around. Nothing else matters. But in this escalation, all the kids want parties like their friends. So, if all the friends have an amazing, expensive party, they all want the same thing. If we all got to scale down as a coordinated effort, all the kids would have been just as happy. — Dan Ariely

Our numbers have increased in Vietnam because the aggression of others has increased in Vietnam. There is not, and there will not be, a mindless escalation. — Lyndon B. Johnson

Is there no end to this escalation of desire? — Marya Mannes

A moment can stop the escalation of fear, can break the concentration needed to get angry. A kindness can stop panic in its tracks, and eating a cookie can give you a moment to reflect. It is a tiny thing, kindness. In the right moment, it can move mountains, but few people give it the credit because it starts by moving one pebble. — Viola Grace

I noticed at once that Depp had a dangerously energized intelligence ... He was a suave little brute, but he had a wicked sense of humor and a rare instinct for escalation. — Hunter S. Thompson

Most Americans believe that escalation will not bring the war in Iraq to a responsible end, and that's why I've proposed not just a troop cap, but a phased redeployment that will start bringing our troops home. — Barack Obama

When downed American pilots were first taken prisoner in North Vietnam in 1964, U.S. policy became pretty much to ignore them - part and parcel of President Lyndon B. Johnson's determination to keep the costs of his increasingly futile military escalation in Southeast Asia from the public. — Rick Perlstein

We were much more frightening than Judge Ted Poe. The powerful, crazy, cruel people I usually write about tend to be in far-off places. The powerful, crazy, cruel people were now us. It felt like we were soldiers making war on other people's flaws, and there had suddenly been an escalation in hostilities. — Jon Ronson

I've always said I'm less interested in twists as I am about escalation. — Drew Goddard

Declare the United States the winner and begin de-escalation. — George Aiken

This stigma associated with drug use
the belief that bad kids use, good kids don't, and those with full-blown addiction are weak, dissolute, and pathetic
has contributed to the escalation of use and has hampered treatment more than any single other factor. — David Sheff

We don't really want a huge house, but we want the house to be slightly bigger than our neighbors, and a car that is bigger than our neighbor's, and they're going on vacation that's slightly more expensive, and this escalation happens that things got out of hand. — Dan Ariely

The term "escalation of commitment" was first coined by Barry Staw, a business professor at the University of California, Berkeley.4 It's defined as a decision-making pattern in which a person - for our purposes, a business leader - continues to support or believe in a strategy even after it has continually failed. Escalation of commitment is often described as the inability to let go, or as an obsessive need to try to succeed even when failure is inevitable. — Laurence G. Weinzimmer

For some years now, there has been proof that the devastating effects of the traumatization of children take their inevitable tollon society
a fact that we are still forbidden to recognize. This knowledge concerns every single one of us, and
if disseminated widely enough
should lead to fundamental changes in society; above all, to a halt in the blind escalation of violence. — Alice Miller

The Escalation programmers come from a completely different background, and the codebase is all STL this, boost that, fill-up-the-property list, dispatch the event, and delegate that. I had been harboring some suspicions that our big codebases might benefit from the application of some more of the various "modern" C++ design patterns, despite seeing other large game codebases suffer under them. I have since recanted that suspicion. — John Carmack

When it came to the Vietnam War, Mr. McNamara was an early advocate of escalation but came to realize the flaws in the American approach earlier than many of his colleagues. Yet in public, he continued to defend the war. — Samantha Power

Confidence cannot escalate to arrogance, it only happens if the blood of pride is running through your veins. — Michael Bassey Johnson

Both sanctions and bombing give the illusion of precision, calibration, and the capacity to ratchet up coercion in a gradual escalation. And both have the capacity to cause tremendous suffering among innocent third parties while having far less strategic effect than their advocates claim. — Mike Lofgren

After Obama's victory, 395 new voting restrictions were introduced in 49 states from 2011 to 2015. Following the Tea Party's triumph in the 2010 elections, half the states in the country, nearly all of them under Republican control - from Texas to Wisconsin to Pennsylvania - passed laws making it harder to vote. The sudden escalation of efforts to curb voting rights most closely resembled the Redemption period that ended Reconstruction, when every southern state adopted devices like literacy tests and poll taxes to disenfranchise African-American voters. — Ari Berman

I was at La Fenice opera house back in 1991 with friends, and we started talking about a conductor whom none of us liked. Somehow there was an escalation, and we started talking about how to kill him, where to kill him. This struck me as a good idea for a book. — Donna Leon

The consequence could be that we would have an escalation that would take place that would not only involve many lives, but I think it could consume the Middle East in a confrontation and a conflict that we would regret. — Leon Panetta

Peace cannot be achieved except after the cessation of military escalation and the economic and financial siege. — Yasser Arafat

The escalation of attitude's impressive, Ace. — Kristen Ashley

GATA must be willing to bind where terrorist organisations loose and loose where terrorist organisations bind. Anywhere there is an internal conflict, especially if there is a terrorist organisation which stands to benefit from the escalation of such conflict; GATA must come around to encourage a sustainable resolution. — Ray Anyasi

What's going on in the Senate is kind of a politics of escalation. We're getting sort of like the Mideast: pay back everybody when you're in charge. — Lindsey Graham

The fact is that when you make the other suffer, he will try to find relief by making you suffer more. The result is an escalation of suffering on both sides. — Thich Nhat Hanh

The real demon is success-the anxieties engendered by this quest are relentless, degrading, corroding. What is worse, there is no end to this escalation of desire. — Marya Mannes

And every historic effort to forge a democratic project has been undermined by two fundamental realities: poverty and paranoia. The persistence of poverty generates levels of despair that deepen social conflict the escalation of paranoia produces levels of distrust that reinforce cultural division. Rae is the most explosive issue in American life precisely because it forces us to confront the tragic facts of poverty and paranoia despair, and distrust. In short, a candid examination of race matters takes us to the core of the crisis of American democracy (p. 107). — Cornel West

In point of fact all Americans are automatically turned down by China these days because of the escalation of Johnson's war in Vietnam, which several times has intruded into China. — Anna Louise Strong

Regarding Syria, we already call for dialogue between Syria and all parties concerned, in order to avoid any kind of escalation in the region which may expose the whole area to chaos. — Ali Abdullah Saleh

We've protected thousands of people in Libya; we have not seen a single U.S. casualty; there's no risks of additional escalation. This operation is limited in time and in scope. — Barack Obama

At today's prices for medicines, doctors and hospitals-if the latter are available at any price-only millionaires can afford to be hurt or sick and pay for it. Very few people want socialized medicine in the U.S. But pressure for it is going to appear with the same hurricane force as the demand for pollution control if the medicine men and hospital operators don't take soon some Draconian measures ... At the present rate of doctor fees and hospital costs under Medicare and Medicaid plans [taxpayers] are shovelling in billions with nothing but escalation in sight. — Malcolm Forbes

Even though it is always difficult to abandon a project, it is much easier in the early stages of a venture, before there is an enormous escalation of committed time and energy. — Tina Seelig

Between an uncontrolled escalation and passivity, there is a demanding road of responsibility that we must follow. — Dominique De Villepin