Whoever has provoked men to rage against him has always gained a party in his favor, too.

Society has always to demand a little more from human beings than it will get in practice.

Wars based on principle are far more destructive… the attacker will not destroy that which he is after.

What is human warfare but just this; an effort to make the laws of God and nature take sides with one party.

Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room.

You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.

I remember when I was in high school I didn’t have a new dress for each special occasion. The girls would bring the fact to my attention, not always too delicately. The boys, however, never bothered with the subject. They were my friends, not because of the size of my wardrobe but because they liked me.

War is never a lasting solution for any problem.

Those who are believed to be most abject and humble are usually most ambitious and envious.

Some mischievous people always there. Last several thousand years, always there. In future, also.

Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. As a peacemaker the lawyer has superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough.

You beat him verbally. You beat him mentally, and then finally, you beat him physically. That’s the three ways to beat a man.

Everybody, to some extent, manipulates. Even children learn to cry when they want something. There are all kinds of subtle things we do to get others to follow our lead, not bother us, and so on.

The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men.

Arguments are to be avoided: they are always vulgar and often convincing.

Diplomacy: the art of restraining power.

When I was elected President nobody asked me to negotiate between Israel and Egypt. It was not even a question raised in my campaign. But I felt that one of the reasons that I was elected President was to try to bring peace to the Holy Land.

It is our duty still to endeavor to avoid war; but if it shall actually take place, no matter by whom brought on, we must defend ourselves. If our house be on fire, without inquiring whether it was fired from within or without, we must try to extinguish it.

Time was when they that feared the Lord spake often to one another; I am afraid that now they more often speak one against another.

I’ve never bought into any sort of hard and fast, this-box/that-box characterization. People are individuals. Yes, they may be expected to be a particular way. But that doesn’t mean they’re going to be that way.

Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.

Working out the social politics of who you can trust and why is, quite literally, what a very large part of our brain has evolved to do.

Boredom is… a vital problem for the moralist, since half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.

If there was less sympathy in the world, there would be less trouble in the world.

The best way to resolve any problem in the human world is for all sides to sit down and talk.

If you can’t beat them, arrange to have them beaten.

Certainly, if you look at human behavior around the world, you have to admit that we can be very aggressive.

Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.

To be clear: we have fights and problems like any other couple.

A disagreement or incident involving someone who’s not that important to you, like a guy who cut you off in traffic or a rude cashier, is something that should roll off your shoulders. Save the effort for resolving conflicts with the people you cherish.

The peasant must always be helped technically, economically, morally and culturally. The guerrilla fighter will be a sort of guiding angel who has fallen into the zone, helping the poor always and bothering the rich as little as possible in the first phases of the war.

Intervention only works when the people concerned seem to be keen for peace.

Generally speaking, if a human being never shows anger, then I think something’s wrong. He’s not right in the brain.

If we want to fight people in the world, we should fight them with pillows – pillows stuffed with food, medicine, music… That would be so much cheaper than bombs.

The most intense conflicts, if overcome, leave behind a sense of security and calm that is not easily disturbed. It is just these intense conflicts and their conflagration which are needed to produce valuable and lasting results.

Nothing is ever done in this world until men are prepared to kill one another if it is not done.

Neither the Christian attitude of love for all mankind nor humane hopes for an organized society must cause us to forget that the ‚human stratum‘ may not be homogeneous.

I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we’re really talking about peace.

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.

A coward is much more exposed to quarrels than a man of spirit.

Where there is reverence there is fear, but there is not reverence everywhere that there is fear, because fear presumably has a wider extension than reverence.

There can be no doubt that the average man blames much more than he praises. His instinct is to blame. If he is satisfied he says nothing; if he is not, he most illogically kicks up a row.

I don’t understand why or how we can bully each other.

Resist the need to be ‚right‘ all the time or to always have the last word.

All these primary impulses, not easily described in words, are the springs of man’s actions.

Only the guy who isn’t rowing has time to rock the boat.

I don’t think human beings learn anything without desperation. Desperation is a necessary ingredient to learning anything or creating anything. Period. If you ain’t desperate at some point, you ain’t interesting.

It is far more important to be able to hit the target than it is to haggle over who makes a weapon or who pulls a trigger.

All wars signify the failure of conflict resolution mechanisms, and they need post-war rebuilding of faith, trust and confidence.

What we call Man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.

Man has the power to act as his own destroyer – and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.

Enemies are so stimulating.

Don’t create more enemies than you take out by some immoral act.

Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers. In the perfect stranger we perceive man himself; the image of a God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of wisdom of a mustache.

When you have no basis for an argument, abuse the plaintiff.

If humans were totally unstructured creatures, they would be… a tool which can properly be shaped by outside forces.

I have lived in countries that were coming out of conflict: Ireland, South Africa, the Czech republic. People there are overflowing with energy.

An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.

You quickly find, when you are a hand-reader as I am, that nothing interests people so much as themselves.

You never need an argument against the use of violence, you need an argument for it.

Treating your adversary with respect is striking soft in battle.