Conflict

“ In a time of almost unprecedented excitement, when the minds of men have been bewildered by an apparent conflict of duties, and when multitudes have been unable to find solid ground on which to rest with security and peace, you have pointed out to a whole people the path of duty, have convinced the understanding and touched the conscience of a nation. ”

“ It is quite possible that neither we nor our rulers may clearly understand the nature of the conflict; and that we may be dealing blows in the dark, confusedly, and as a soldier suddenly awakened from slumber by an unknown adversary. ”

“ We can only conjecture dimly what difference holds between a balance and reconciliation of impulses and a mere rivalry or conflict. One difference is that a balance sustains one state of mind, but a conflict two alternating states. ”

“ In that terrible conflict they had learned the supreme and overwhelming importance of conduct, the necessity for those who would survive of fighting manfully for their lives and making a stand against the hostile powers around; the weakness and uselessness of solitary and selfish efforts, the necessity for a man who would be a man to lose his poor single personality in the being of a greater and nobler combatant—the nation. ”

“ Enough, and more than enough, debate has been already held on the complicated motives which have blended in your war, as in all other human concerns, and on the occasional acts of questionable spirit which must inevitably attend the public policy and sentiments of a nation engaged in deadliest conflict and bleeding at every pore. ”

“ We are now far enough away from the conflict—from its hatreds, its passions, its follies and its glories, to fairly and philosophically examine the causes and in some measure at least to appreciate the results. ”

“ The conflict within threatens to engulf the society in self-war, group against group. The vital traditions may be lost—not merely altered or reformed, but completely destroyed in this period of chaos and anarchy. ”

“ Quite as interesting and important as that of war is the natural history of discussion, including under that term political and religious controversy and social agitation, already referred to as impersonal or secondary conflict. ”

“ Hereafter, when we get a little farther away from the conflict, some brave and truth-loving man, with all the facts before him, uninfluenced by filial love and veneration for men, or party associations, or pride of name, will gather from here and there the scattered fragments, my small contribution perhaps among the number, and give to those who shall come after us an impartial history of this the grandest moral conflict of the century. Truth is patient and time is just. ”

“ See! the emulous forces in fiery conflict are kindled, Much, they effect when they strive, more they effect when they join. Thousands of hands by one spirit are moved, yet in thousands of bosoms Beats one heart all alone, by but one feeling inspired— Beats for their native land, and glows for their ancestors' precepts ”

“ Is the opposition final, the prophecy of man's ultimate and hopeless defeat at the hands of nature?--or is it, in the Hegelian sense, the mere development of a necessary conflict, leading to a profounder and intenser unity? ”

“ The parties of the old regime see the day of this inevitable conflict approaching, and strive to prepare for it by half-hearted plots and counterplots, jesuitical, monarchical and military, but without energy, without hope and without combination in which alone there is strength. ”

“ And, in return for your exhortation of me, I exhort you also to take part in the great combat, which is the combat of life, and greater than every other earthly conflict. ”

“ Men are consequently attacking the resisting material and moral environment at more points than ever before. In this conflict mind wields the balance of power, and mind is swinging over into alliance with man. ”

“ But the conflict is not one which admits of on-lookers,—it is a universal conflict in which we must all take our share. It may not, therefore, be amiss if we endeavour to ascertain, as well as we can, our true position. ”

“ MORAL QUESTIONS INVOLVED. Fellow citizens, this is a campaign embracing both political and moral questions. It is a political conflict, which the people will sooner or later acknowledge, to be one of patriotism. A moral conflict, which they will acknowledge to be indeed sublime. ”

“ Throughout the history of civilisation, wherever we can trace the feelings and ideas which have prevailed on this matter and the resultant conduct, the problem has existed, often to produce discord, conflict, and misery. ”

“ It is a conflict of great interests which is settled by bloodshed, and only in that is it different from others. ”

“ Had it appeared that, after a conflict of nearly thirty years, during which violence had held unlimited sway, everything which was dear to the people it concerned, and which still stood forth vivid in history, was endowed with a new reality ”

“ These things loom large in the beginning, but the incidents of the quarrels disappear when the decisions shine in their results, and the wisest course is to believe that every honest conflict of interests is inspired by generous emulation. ”

“ War, instincts, and ideals.—War is the outstanding and the typical example of conflict. In war, where hostility prevails over [Pg 577] every interest of sentiment or utility which would otherwise unite the contending parties or groups, the motives and the rôle of conflict in social life present themselves in their clearest outline. There is, moreover, a practical reason for fixing upon war as an illustration of conflict. ”

“ This transferred the very scene of conflict, the theatre of spiritual warfare, from an external to an internal world, and the social significance of such individual battle lay in its being typical of all men's lives. ”

“ Let us ever remember that our interest is in concord, not conflict; and that our real eminence rests in the victories of peace, not those of war. ”

“ To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West — know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. ”

“ What is wanted, in these various conflicts, is some principle, genuinely believed, which will have justice for its outcome. The tug of war of mutual self-assertion can only result in justice through an accidental equality of force. ”

“ In what manner this conflict of opinions and purposes becomes transformed into physical combat and culminates in bloody war, is to be easily understood when the relations of human intellect [Pg 700] and passion are duly considered. ”

“ With our experience in lesser conflicts in industrial life, which have none the less embraced groups as large as armies, have torn passions and rasped endurance to the uttermost, we can bear testimony that at the end of such strife as cleaves to the heart of things, men are disposed to lay the framework of their relations in larger molds than those which broke beneath them. ”

“ Those of us, who have asked that an influence above and beyond all, that we ourselves by our utmost effort can exercise, might come to our aid when the opposing266 principles should thus meet in conflict, will understand what all this means, and will give thanks. ”

“ In God's own might We gird us for the coming fight, And, strong in Him whose cause is ours In conflict with unholy powers, We grasp the weapons He has given,— The Light, and Truth, and Love of Heaven. ”

“ What we see of the motives of great conflicts is usually only the surface. Even in the case of the little domestic quarrels, the irritating frictions of everyday life, the vessel of knowledge sails only over the easily excited ripples. ”

“ If we are reminded here and there of national exploits, such are for the most part conflicts waged against foreign aggressors, expeditions of pillage, reprisals of savagery with savagery, or deeds of one individual against another in the same people, in the narration of which lament and dejection or ecstatic jubilation over one conqueror after another, are the moods throughout prevailing. ”

“ The hidden clash of a silent conflict like this is far harder to bear than an open quarrel. ”

“ It is only in periods of crisis, when men are making new and conscious efforts to control the conditions of their common life, that the forces with which they are competing get identified with persons, and competition is converted into conflict. It is in what has been described as the political process that society consciously deals with its crises. [182] War is the political process par excellence. It is in war that the great decisions are made. Political organizations exist for the purpose of dealing with conflict situations. ”

“ A considerable number clashed with others, and yet there were societies founded to see the carrying out of each of the conflicting statutes, and their agents and supporters often came into fierce collision, reaping on each side a full harvest of bloody noses and cracked crowns. ”

“ New conflicts whenever opportunity will offer, and bloody revolutions effected or attempted, instead of that happy, peaceable, and gradual improvement which philanthropists had anticipated, and which seems to be exclusively the portion of our happy country. ”

“ for I have learned, by some experience, that virtue and patriotism, vice and selfishness, are found in all parties, and that they differ less in their motives than in the policies they pursue. ”

“ Interest, the interest of life and of death, of our national existence, of the fate of those, the vastly numerous, whom it closely concerned, the interest of the extending War, in fine, the hurrying troops, the transfigured scene, formed a cover for every sort of intensity, made tension itself in fact contagious—so that almost any tension would do, would serve for one's share. ”

“ We are in the discussion of this question, sir, to consider that we are engaged in a war against a nation from which insults, depredations, oppressions, and cruelties, have been long complained of, and against which we are, therefore, to act with a resolution proportioned to the injuries which we have suffered, and to our desire of vengeance. We are to practice every method of distressing them, and to promote the success of our arms even at the expense of present gain, and the interest of private men. ”

“ The battles of life are fought, and there is no strife in this court of peace. The struggles, cares, anxieties, rivalries, jealousies, fears, all that disquiet, harass, fret, and annoy, all, all are buried here. ”

“ It was a battle of principles rather than of nations—the last great struggle between reason and force—the fight between the instinct of some men to rule other men and the contrary instinct, implanted more or less in all men, that they shall hold up their heads and rule themselves. ”

“ I have well governed the country in peace, and if a late war of little consequence has broken out, which might have occasioned my subjects to complain of me, with me it has not originated, but with yourselves, as truly I believe. Lay your hands on your hearts, and blame yourselves. ”

“ The struggle, which, when some great principle of politics or morals is the subject of the strife, ennobles in our eyes the unflinching combatants, only degrades when the violence and the rancour result from the soreness of wounded vanity, or the malice of blighted anticipation. ”

“ A fight for place began, a struggle for dominion, a fierce and incessant contest for supremacy, and for ages men locked arms in a terrible and merciless strife, in which the weak and incompetent steadily went to the wall, the strong, daring, and aggressive rose to power and control. ”

“ Let us recall the maxim that the object of all fighting is to produce a state of mind in the adversary, a state of mind conducive to a discontinuance of the struggle and to submission and acquiescence to the will of the victor. ”

“ It is a noble and magnanimous struggle—a battle against self, against "flesh and blood; against principalities and powers; against spiritual wickedness in high places." It is therefore, a formidable struggle. ”

“ Consequently, unlike sets of conclusions respecting human conduct emerge, according as we are concerned with a state of habitual or occasional war, or are concerned with a state of permanent and general peace. ”