The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.

- M. Scott Peck

It's time for us to turn to each other, not on each other.

- Jesse Jackson

I never make the mistake of arguing with people for whose opinions I have no respect.

- Edward Gibbon

I don't believe in war as a solution to any kind of conflict, nor do I believe in heroism on the battlefield because I have never seen any.

- Thor Heyerdahl

Where there is power, there is resistance.

- Foucault

Action has meaning only in relationship and without understanding relationship, action on any level will only breed conflict. The understanding of relationship is infinitely more important than the search for any plan of action.

- Jiddu Krishnamurti

If family violence teaches children that might makes right at home, how will we hope to cure the futile impulse to solve worldly conflicts with force?

- Letty Cottin Pogrebin

Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress.

- Mohandas K. Gandhi

Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.

- John Kenneth Galbraith

There's not one person in this crowd who's gonna agree with everything I say. Not one.

- Howard Dean

As men's habits of mind differ, so that some more readily embrace one form of faith, some another, for what moves one to pray may move another to scoff, I conclude ... that everyone should be free to choose for himself the foundations of his creed, and that faith should be judged only by its fruits.

- Baruch Spinoza

Change means movement. Movement means friction. Only in the frictionless vacuum of a nonexistent abstract world can movement or change occur without that abrasive friction of conflict.

- Saul Alinsky

Opinions cannot survive if one has no chance to fight for them.

- Thomas Mann

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. (paraphrasing Voltaire)

- Evelyn Beatrice Hall

Injustice can be eliminated, but human conflicts and natural limitations cannot be removed. The conflicts of social life and the limitations of nature cannot be controlled or transcended. They can, however, be endured and survived. It is possible for there to be a dance with life, a creative response to its intrinsic limits and challenges ... [A Feminist Ethic of Risk]

- Sharon Welch

[W]e are not going to deal with the violence in our communities, our homes, and our nation, until we learn to deal with the basic ethic of how we resolve our disputes and to place an emphasis on peace in the way we relate to one another.

- Marian Wright Edelman



Any problem, big or small, within a family, always seems to start with bad communication. Someone isn't listening.

- Emma Thompson



No matter how thin you slice it, there will always be two sides.

- Baruch Spinoza



There are three ways of dealing with difference: domination, compromise, and integration. By domination only one side gets what it wants; by compromise neither side gets what it wants; by integration we find a way by which both sides may get what they wish.

- Mary Parker Follett



Conflict is the gadfly of thought. It stirs us to observation and memory. It instigates to invention. It shocks us out of sheeplike passivity, and sets us at noting and contriving.

- John Dewey



You can't shake hands with a clenched fist.

- Indira Gandhi



The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations.

- David Friedman



No matter how you seem to fatten on a crime, there can never be good for the bee which is bad for the hive.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson



Schisms do not originate in a love of truth, which is a source of courtesy and gentleness, but rather in an inordinate desire for supremacy.

- Baruch Spinoza



Non-cooperation is a measure of discipline and sacrifice, and it demands respect for the opposite views.

- Mohandas K. Gandhi



Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds.

- Albert Einstein



Peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of creative alternatives for responding to conflict -- alternatives to passive or aggressive responses, alternatives to violence.

- Dorothy Thompson



Whenever two good people argue over principles, they are both right.

- Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach



My dear sir, they don't debate. Each of them merely issues an ultimatum, and in what a tone! It all goes to show what extraordinary people they are, each more unequivocal than the other. - "The Old Lady and the Bear"

- Colette



The torment of human frustration, whatever its immediate cause, is the knowledge that the self is in prison, its vital force and "mangled mind" leaking away in lonely, wasteful self-conflict.

- Elizabeth Drew



[I]n such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners.

- Albert Camus



True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice.

- Martin Luther King, Jr.



A successful work of art is not one which resolves contradictions in a spurious harmony, but one which expresses the idea of harmony negatively by embodying the contradictions, pure and uncompromised, in its innermost structure.

- Theodor Adorno



Conditions for creativity are to be puzzled; to concentrate; to accept conflict and tension; to be born everyday; to feel a sense of self.

- Erich Fromm



There are two dilemmas that rattle the human skull: How do you hang on to someone who won't stay? And how do you get rid of someone who won't go?

The War of the Roses

- Danny DeVito



All married couples should learn the art of battle as they should learn the art of making love. Good battle is objective and honest--never vicious or cruel. Good battle is healthy and constructive, and brings to a marriage the principle of equal partnership.

Ann Landers Says Truth Is Stranger..., 1968

- Ann Landers



Science cannot resolve moral conflicts, but it can help to more accurately frame the debates about those conflicts.

The Dreams of Reason, 1988

- Heinz Pagels



A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.

- Robert Frost



Don't be afraid of opposition. Remember, a kite rises against; not with; the wind.

- Hamilton Wright Mabie



The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time of great moral crises maintain their neutrality.

- Dante Aleghieri



The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.

- Thomas Paine



There is no squabbling so violent as that between people who accepted an idea yesterday and those who will accept the same idea tomorrow.

- Christopher Morley



Living with integrity means:

  • Not settling for less than what you know you deserve in your relationships.
  • Asking for what you want and need from others.
  • Speaking your truth, even though it might create conflict or tension.
  • Behaving in ways that are in harmony with your personal values.
  • Making choices based on what you believe, and not what others believe.

- Barbara De Angelis



Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win.

On Being a Teacher, 1981

- Jonathan Kozol



Truth springs from argument amongst friends.

- David Hume