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Conflict Quotes


"Forgiveness and Blame share an apartment, but not for long, because Blame can't live with Forgiveness, and Forgiveness can't live with Blame."


"Unprovoked hostility is often but displaced self-defense: 'I must stop him before he stops me.' In many of such environments, nobody is really hateful so much as they are just fearful."


"National hatred is something peculiar. You will always find it strongest and most violent where there is the lowest degree of culture."


"If each side had been frankly contending for its own real wish, they would all have kept within the bounds of reason and courtesy; but just because the contention is reversed and each side is fighting the other side's battle, all the bitterness which really flows from thwarted self-righteousness and obstinacy and from the accumulated grudges of the last ten years is concealed from them by the nominal or official "Unselfishness" of what they are doing or, at least, held to be excused by it."


"Blade, she thought. I swallowed it; now cuts my loins forever. Punishment. Married to a Jew and shacking up with a German assassin. She felt tears again in her eyes, boiling. For all I have committed. Wrecked. 'Let's go,' she said, rising to her feet. 'The hairdresser."



"How can you still count yourself a knight, when you have forsaken every vow you ever swore?" Jaime reached for the flagon to refill his cup. "So many vows...they make you swear and swear. Defend the king. Obey the king. Keep his secrets. Do his bidding. Your life for his. But obey your father. Love your sister. Protect the innocent. Defend the weak. Respect the gods. Obey the laws. It's too much. No matter what you do, you're forsaking one vow or the other."


"Sometimes you fight what you are, and sometimes you give in to it. And some nights you just don't want to fight yourself anymore, so you pick someone else to fight."


"Inside a jihadi brain, the neuropsychological elements of aggression and rage run rampant, due to socio-political conditions. These overwhelming mental elements of young souls, when attached to the sacred texts of the Quran, by the authoritarian groups of fundamentalists, become weapons of mass destruction in the pursuit of the exclusive supremacy of one religion over the others."


"Shevek saw that he had touched in these men an impersonal animosity that went very deep. Apparently they, like the tables on the ship, contained a woman, a suppressed, silenced, bestialized woman, a fury in a cage. He had no right to tease them. They knew no relation but possession. They were possessed."


"Mutually assured destruction."


"Where do you get the right to decide our lives? I'll tell you where. From that little hog's gut that hangs between your legs. Well, let me tell you something... you will need more than that. I don't know where you will get it or who will give it to you, but mark my words, you will need more than that.... You are a sad, pitiful, stupid, selfish, hateful man. I hope your little hog's gut stands you in good stead, and you take good care of it, because you don't have anything else."


"Yeah. She'd manipulated the second most powerful vampire in town into taking her side against a psycho bitch-queen sorority girl. She'd talked rationally about putting people's brains into computers. This was a normal day. No wonder she was screwed up."


"What do you want from me, Snow?""Nothing," he says. And he means it, the actual bastard."


"An apparently trivial indulgence in lust or anger today is the loss of a ridge or railway line or bridgehead from which the enemy may launch an attack otherwise impossible."



"Death, there will be death, aye. Your lordship lost a son at the Red Wedding. I lost four upon the Blackwater. And why? Because the Lannisters stole the throne. Go to King's Landing and look on Tommen with your own eyes, if you doubt me. A blind man could see it. What does Stannis offer you? Vengeance. Vengeance for my sons and yours, for your husbands and your fathers and your brothers. Vengeance for your murdered lord, your murdered king, your butchered princes. Vengeance!"



"Well he didn't treat my mother very well. He did some horrible things.""Like..." I hesitated. "Blood-whore things?""Like beating-her-up kinds of things" he replied flatly."Oh God," I said "That's horrible. And she...she just let it happen?""She did." The corner of his mouth turned into a sly, sad smile. "But I didn't""Tell me, tell me you beat the crap out of him"His smile grew, "I did."


"Damage report, sir? Skotchdopole asked, climbing off his console into his seat."To hell with that! he roared, this was no accidental side-effect of arriving " it was clear they were under attack by hostile aliens. "Fire! Shoot the crap outta them!"


"The love of conflict is most evident when opposing forces join sides to defeat the peacemaker."


"The battles may last for a long time, perhaps even years. There are powerful forces on both sides, and the war is important to both armies. It's not a battle of good against evil. It's a war between forces that are fighting for the balance of power, and, when that type of battle begins, it lasts longer than others-because Allah is on both sides."


"Your enemy is never a villain in his own eyes. Keep this in mind; it may offer a way to make him your friend. If not, you can kill him without hate - and quickly."


"Peace with non-fundamentalists terrifies the fundamentalist because to them, being Christian doesn't mean just being 'good' - it means being 'better' than others. Being better that others means having to see them as enemies - and making war on them. The fundamentalist views not being allowed to make war on their enemies as oppression of their faith, or defeat."


"When you give certain unnecessary people the reason and permission to oppose you, give them the power and strength to oppose you."


"They lit her wings with the flames, but she raised to the sky soaring over the clouds until the whole sky caught fire. She flew staring at the destruction with her cold eyes, while the clouds came down as the balls of fire and burnt everyone, who tried to take her wings away into ashes."


"War could bond men like a magnet, but like a magnet it could repel them, too. The things they saw, the things they did. Sometimes they just wanted to forget."


"What do you do with a master vampire that won't leave you alone? Good question. Unfortunately, what I needed was a good answer."


"I look coolly in to the blue eyes of the person who is now my greatest opponent, the person who would keep me alive at his own expense. And I promise myself I will defeat his plan."
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