Quotes about strife
page 2

“Barely a hundred and fifty years had passed since Galileo's experiment at Pisa had ushered in the new order of things; a mere instant as compared with the previous life of the race. Yet, this brief span had witnessed a complete shift in the outlook of the intellectual leaders of humanity: from blind adherence to authority and dogma towards a healthy habit of facing facts and an enlightened faith in the efficacy of reason. Few doubted that this buoyancy and self-reliance of the leaders would eventually reach the masses, thus causing a profound metamorphosis in the attitude of the common man towards his own life and the destinies of his race.
…Led by thinkers, and under the banners of liberty, happiness, and truth, humanity was to emerge into a Golden Age, free from oppression and strife. Alas! The French Revolution… resembled more a convention of inquisitors and hangmen than it did an assembly of enlightened emancipators. …After twenty years of adventure, the humanitarian aspirations bequeathed by the Encyclopedists, tattered and trampled first by a bloody republic, then by a still bloodier empire, were finally declared dead by the Holy Alliance.”

Tobias Dantzig (1884–1956) American mathematician

Henri Poincaré, Critic of Crisis: Reflections on His Universe of Discourse (1954), Ch. 2. The Age of Innocence

Life, Happiness, Truth, Age

“The day in his hotness,
The strife with the palm;
The night in her silence,
The stars in their calm.”

Matthew Arnold book Empedocles on Etna

Act II
Empedocles on Etna (1852)

Star, Silence, Night

“The only way which this ruling sees out of what it calls “the communal strife” is that Hindu history should be substantially diluted and tailored to the needs of Islamic imperialism, and that Muslim history should be given a liberal coat of whitewash or even made to pass muster as national history. This has been the main plank in the platform for “national integration”. Hitherto this Experiment with Untruth was confined mainly to Muslim and Communist “historians” who have come to control the Indian History Congress, the Indian Council of Historical Research, and even the University Grants Commission. Now it has been taken up by the National Integration Council. The Ministry of Education of the Government of India has directed the education departments in the States to extend this experiment to school-level text-books of history. And this perverse programme of suppressing truth and spreading falsehood is being sponsored by a state which inscribes Satyameva Jayate on its emblem.”

Sita Ram Goel book The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India

The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India (1994)

Truth, Books, Education, School

“There are two things in the world that can never get on together—religion and common sense. Religion deals with the next life, common sense with this; religion points to the sky, common sense to the earth; religion is all imagination, common sense all reason; religion deals with what nobody can understand, common sense with what everybody can understand; religion gives us no return for our investments but flash notes on the bank of expectation, common sense gives us good interest and full security for our capital. They are as opposite as two things can possibly be, and they are always at strife. Religion is always trying to fill the world with delusions, and common sense is always trying to drive them away. Religion says Live for the next world, and common sense says Live for this.”

George William Foote (1850–1915) British secularist and journal editor

"Christianity and Common Sense" http://www.ftarchives.net/foote/flowers/114commonsense.htm, p. 114 Flowers of Freethought (1893)

Life, World, Religion, Imagination

“I have no joy in strife,
Peace is my great desire;
Yet God forbid I lose my life
Through fear to face the fire.

A peaceful man must fight
For that which peace demands,—
Freedom and faith, honor and right,
Defend with heart and hands.”

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) American diplomat

The Peaceful Warrior, st. 1-2 (May 1918).

Life, God, Fear, Peace

“It is pointless to debate which religions promote peace or violence. Even Buddhist monks who are widely regarded as pacifists have taken up arms in strife-torn regions … Religious experiences are, by nature, emotional and subject to interpretations by clergy and believers throughout history.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Counterterrorism and Cybersecurity: Total Information Awareness (2nd Edition), 2015

Peace, Religion, History, Nature

“This is the soldier brave enough to tell
The glory-dazzled world that "war is hell":
Lover of peace, he looks beyond the strife,
And rides through hell to save his country's life.”

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) American diplomat

The Statue of Sherman by St. Gaudens (1904).

Life, War, World, Peace

“It was manifest that all persons who had learned that political science is an affair of conscience rather than of might or expediency, must regard their adversaries as men without principle, that the controversy between them would perpetually involve morality, and could not be governed by the plea of good intentions which softens down the asperities of religious strife. Nearly all the greatest men of the seventeenth century repudiated the innovation. In the eighteenth, the two ideas of Grotius, that there are certain political truths by which every state and every interest must stand or fall, and that society is knit together by a series of real and hypothetical contracts, became, in other hands, the lever that displaced the world. When, by what seemed the operation of an irresistible and constant law, royalty had prevailed over all enemies and all competitors, it became a religion. Its ancient rivals, the baron and the prelate, figured as supporters by its side.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian

The History of Freedom in Christianity (1877)

Men, Truth, World, Religion

“It is like a wide embrace gathering all those who have long searched for words of hope… Saddened by the continual strife amongst believers of many confessions and wearied of their intolerance towards each other, I discovered in the Bahá'í teaching the real spirit of Christ so often denied and misunderstood.”

Marie of Edinburgh, Queen of Romania (1875–1938) last Queen consort of Romania as the wife of King Ferdinand I

qtd. in Shoghi Effendi, God Passes By (1944)

Hope, Search, Christ

“There is no difficulty in vindicating the principle of a hereditary monarchy. The experience of every country and of all ages, the practical reasonings of common sense, arguments of the highest theory, arguments of most commonplace convenience, all unite to show the wisdom which places the supreme leadership of the State beyond the reach of private ambition and above the shocks and changes of party strife.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

The People's Rights [1909] (London: Jonathan Cape, 1970), p. 24
Early career years (1898–1929)

Wisdom, Age, Sense, Change

“India fell mainly because her people were at the critical hour divided and disorganised. Her influence waned when the forces of disintegration, political and social, were at work. If we left our neighbours alone, we revelled in internal strife which ceased for a time when great kings like Asoka and Akbar ruled over the destinies of India – mighty men, who sought to unite the teeming millions of this vast sub-continent by the bond of a common aspiration and a passionate longing for the eternal code of righteous conduct, charity and understanding. A strong and united India fearing no one and loving all, brought messages of peace and goodwill to distracted world. But as soon as the sceptre dropped from their hands, when the grip over the country was loosened through weak and short-sighted successors, when narrow selfishness and mutual jealousy and distrust overpowered our souls, when local feuds and religious strife raised their ugly heads giving rise to social exclusiveness and moral decadence, unity was lost; freedom, man’s priceless treasure, disappeared; the country broke into fragments and relapsed into a state of conflict and struggle.”

Syama Prasad Mookerjee (1901–1953) Indian politician

Speech delivered at Patna University Convocation on 27th November 1937.

Love, Men, People, World

“For thousands of years humankind's finest minds have been struggling with the theoretical problem of finding the forms that would give peoples the possibility, without the greatest of torment, without internecine strife, of living side by side in friendship and brotherhood. Practically speaking, the first step in this direction is only being taken now, today.”

Mikhail Kalinin (1875–1946) Soviet politician

Closing speech after the formation of the USSR by the Unification Congress. Quoted in "Survivor From An Unknown War: The Life of Isakjan Narzikul" - Page 3 - by Stephen Lee Crane - 1999

Friendship, People, Problem

“Lo, the book I hold here,
In the city cold here !

I hold it with a gentle hand and love it as I may;
Lo, the weary moments!
Lo, the icy comments!
And lo, false Fortune's knife of gold swift-lifted up to slay!

Has the strife no ending?
Has the song no meaning?

Linger I, idle as of old, while men are reaping or gleaning?”

Robert Williams Buchanan (1841–1901) Scottish poet, novelist and dramatist

"To David in Heaven", St. 9.
Undertones (1883)

Love, Men, Books, Falseness

“What is the secret of the opposition and slander that is being raised up against me and against all who, like me, are Bible students? It is malice, hatred, envy, strife, on the part of those who are still hugging the nonsense of the Dark Ages and neglecting true Bible study. They see that their influence is waning. But they have not yet awakened to the true situation. They think that I am responsible for their smaller congregations and small collections. But not so. The real difficulty for them is that the people are becoming more intelligent and can no longer be driven with the crack of a merely man-made whip of fear.”

Charles Taze Russell (1852–1916) Founder of the Bible Student Movement

The Watch Tower (October 15, 1914), p. 287.

People, Secret, Age, Fear

“Mongst all these stirs of discontented strife,
O, let me lead an academic life;
To know much, and to think for nothing, know
Nothing to have, yet think we have enow.”

Joseph Hall (1574–1656) British bishop

Discontent of Men with Their Condition.

Life, Thinking

“Forgotten the strife;
Now the need to kill
Has died like fire,
And the need to love
Has replaced desire”

Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906–2001) American aviator and author

The Unicorn in Captivity (1955)

Love

“To disband the armies and destroy the forts, to diffuse love and brotherhood, and peace and justice in the place of war and strife, could tend only to the buidling up of character, the elevation of the soul, and the strength and well-being of the state.”

Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union

Source: Resist Not Evil (1904), p. 39

Love, War, Peace, Justice

“In the strife between the North and the South there was no bitterness in Mr. Lincoln's composition; he seemed to think only that he had an unpleasant duty to perform, and endeavored to perform it as smoothly as possible.”

David Dixon Porter (1813–1891) United States Navy admiral

Source: 1880s, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (1885), p. 283

Thinking

“We are the voices of the wandering wind,
Which moan for rest and rest can never find;
Lo! as the wind is, so is mortal life,
A moan, a sigh, a sob, a storm, a strife.”

Edwin Arnold (1832–1904) British poet and journalist

The Deva's Song.

Life

“The cultivation and expansion of needs is the antithesis of wisdom. It is also the antithesis of freedom and peace. Every increase of needs tends to increase one’s dependence on outside forces over which one cannot have control, and therefore increases existential fear. Only by a reduction of needs can one promote a genuine reduction in those tensions which are the ultimate causes of strife and war.”

E. F. Schumacher (1911–1977) British economist

Source: Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered (1973), p. 31.

Wisdom, War, Fear, Peace

“You should knot that a certain Franciscan from France, whose name indeed was Franz, was here not many days since and had such conversation with me concerning the Scriptural basis for the doctrine of the adoration of the saints and their intercession for us. He was not able to convince me with the assistance of a single passage of Scripture that the saints do pray for us, as he had with a great deal of assurance boasted he should do. At last he went to Basel, where he recounted the affair in an entirely different way from the reality - in fact he lied about it. So it seemed good to me to let you know about these things that you might not be ignorant of that Cumaean lion, if perchance he should ever turn your way.
There followed within six days another strife with our brethren preachers of the [different orders in Zurich, especially with the Augustinians]. Finally the burgonmaster and the Council appointed for them three commissioners on whom this was enjoined - that Aquinas and the rest of the doctors of that class being put aside they should base their arguments alone upon those sacred writings which are contained in the Bible. This troubled those beasts so much that one brother, the father reader of the order of Preachers [i. e., the Dominicans] cut loose from us, and we wept - as one weeps when a cross-grained and rich stepmother has departed this life. Meanwhile there are those who threaten, but God will turn the evil upon His enemies.”

Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531) leader of the Protestant Reformation in Switzerland, and founder of the Swiss Reformed Churches

Letter July 30th to Rhenanus ibid, p.170-171

Life, God, Way, Reality

“London! hast thou accused me
Of breach of laws? the root of strife!
Within whose breast did boil to see,
So fervent hot, thy dissolute life.”

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1516–1547) English Earl

"A Satire Against the Citizens of London", line 1

Life, Law

“Revolution did not necessarily involve sanguinary strife. It was not a cult of bomb and pistol.”

Bhagat Singh (1907–1931) Indian revolutionary

Letter published in The Tribune (25 December 1929), with some reference to lines from Idylls of the King by Alfred Tennyson
Context: Revolution did not necessarily involve sanguinary strife. It was not a cult of bomb and pistol. They may sometimes be mere means for its achievement. No doubt they play a prominent part in some movements, but they do not — for that very reason — become one and the same thing. A rebellion is not a revolution. It may ultimately lead to that end.
The sense in which the word Revolution is used in that phrase, is the spirit, the longing for a change for the better. The people generally get accustomed to the established order of things and begin to tremble at the very idea of a change. It is this lethargical spirit that needs be replaced by the revolutionary spirit. Otherwise degeneration gains the upper hand and the whole humanity is led stray by the reactionary forces. Such a state of affairs leads to stagnation and paralysis in human progress. The spirit of Revolution should always permeate the soul of humanity, so that the reactionary forces may not accumulate to check its eternal onward march. Old order should change, always and ever, yielding place to new, so that one “good” order may not corrupt the world. It is in this sense that we raise the shout “Long Live Revolution.”

“T is the brook's motion,
Clear without strife,
Fleeing to ocean
After its life.”

John Sullivan Dwight (1813–1893) American minister

Stanza 5.
Rest

Life

“Then rose the strife of kings about the hill of night; but it was soft as two summer gales, shaking their light wings on a lake.”

James Macpherson (1736–1796) Scottish writer, poet, translator, and politician

"Cathlin of Clutha"
The Poems of Ossian

Light, Summer, Night

“Only the power of unbounded love practiced in regard to all human beings can defeat the forces of interhuman strife, and can prevent the pending extermination of man by man on this planet. Without love, no armament, no war, no diplomatic machinations, no coercive police force, no school education, no economic or political measures, not even hydrogen bombs can prevent the pending catastrophe.”

Pitirim Sorokin (1889–1968) American sociologist

, p. xii
The Ways and Power of Love (1954)

Love, War, Education, School

“The arrangements of society and culture are fighting petrified; they survive in the interruption or containment of practical and visionary strife. The more society and culture are organized to increase the distance between our context-preserving and our context-transforming activities, the more these arrangements take on the appearance of natural facts. They appear to us as givens, as our collective fate. Indeed, that is what, in a sense, they then become.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger book The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound

Source: The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound (2007), p. 69

Fate, Nature, Sense, Appearance

“Even the humblest men have a strange reason behind greed. Every man thinks money solves problems - and every man thinks not just of himself, but his next three generations - there is a probability he will live to see those generations - and he wants to care for them in times of strife.”

Siddharth Katragadda (1972) Indian writer

page 73
Dark Rooms (2002)

Men, Money, Problem, Thinking

“Unconscionable Love, bane and tormentor of mankind, parent of strife, fountain of tears, source of a thousand ills, rise, mighty Power, and fall upon the sons of our enemies with all the force you used upon Medea when you filled her with insensate fury.”

Apollonius of Rhodes book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica (3rd century BC), Book IV. Homeward Bound, Lines 445–449

Love, Parent, Tear

“He [Tolstoy] saw and deplored the beginning of a class struggle which has ended as we now know in Bolshevism. Class hatred and strife appeared to Tolstoy as frightfully immoral and unchristian and he pled fervently with the rich to change their manner of living.”

Robert Hunter (author) (1874–1942) American sociologist, author, golf course architect

Source: Why We Fail as Christians (1919), p. 71

Appearance, Change

“If some grave sire appears, amid the strife,
In morals strict, and innocence of life,
All stand attentive, while the sage controuls
Their wrath, and calms the tempest of their souls.”

Christopher Pitt (1699–1748) English poet

Book I, line 206
The Æneid of Virgil (1740)

Life, Soul, Appearance

“The social conditions of the British people in the early years of the twentieth century cannot be contemplated without deep anxiety. … We are at the cross-ways. If we stand on the old happy-go-lucky way, the richer classes ever growing in wealth and in number, and ever declining in responsibility, the very poor remaining plunged or plunging even deeper into helpless, hopeless misery, then I think there is nothing before us but savage strife between class and class, with an increasing disorganization, with an increasing destruction of human strength and human virtue—nothing, in fact, but that dual degeneration which comes from the simultaneous waste of extreme wealth and of extreme want.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

The People's Rights [1909] (London: Jonathan Cape, 1970), pp. 138-139
Early career years (1898–1929)

Happiness, People, Way, Thinking

“I told [the Commonwealth Commissioners] I lived in the virtue of that life and power that took away the occasion of all wars… I told them I was come into the covenant of peace which was before wars and strife were.”

George Fox (1624–1691) English Dissenter and founder of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers)

Statement of 1651, quoted in Quaker Faith and Practice http://www.quaker.org.uk/qfp/chap24/24.01.html#24.01, Britain Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends

Life, War, Peace

“The United States, in order to put a stop to bloodshed in Cuba, and in the interest of a neighboring people, proposed their good offices to bring the existing contest to a termination. The offer, not being accepted by Spain on a basis which we believed could be received by Cuba, was withdrawn. It is hoped that the good offices of the United States may yet prove advantageous for the settlement of this unhappy strife. Meanwhile a number of illegal expeditions against Cuba have been broken up. It has been the endeavor of the Administration to execute the neutrality laws in good faith, no matter how unpleasant the task, made so by the sufferings we have endured from lack of like good faith toward us by other nations.”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

1860s, First State of the Union Address (1869)

People, Faith, Law, Hope

“It quieted pain and sorrow,
Like love overcoming strife;
It seemed the harmonious echo
From our discordant life.”

Adelaide Anne Procter (1825–1864) English poet and songwriter

"A Lost Chord".
Legends and Lyrics: Second Series (1861)

Love, Life, Pain

“Oh, soon we'll be out amid the cold world's strife. Soon we'll be sliding down the razor blade of life. Oooh.”

Tom Lehrer (1928) American singer-songwriter and mathematician

"Bright College Days"
An Evening (Wasted) With Tom Lehrer (1959)

Life, World

“Strife in industry is increasingly becoming a struggle between groups or classes.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

"The Commercial Motive" ibid.

“New England's dead. New England's dead!
On every hill they lie;
On every field of strife, made red
By bloody victory.”

Isaac McLellan (1806–1899) American writer

New England's Dead, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Lie, Victory, Dead

“Empedocles tried to address the problem of change by saying that there is not one fundamental arche but four—earth, water, air, and fire—which generate all the material substances in nature by mixing together in various ways under the influence of forces he called Love and Strife.”

John Freely (1926–2017) American physicist

Source: Before Galileo, The Birth of Modern Science in Medieval Europe (2012), p. 287

Love, Way, Nature, Problem

“Lincoln's appeal to "the better angels of our nature" failed to avert a fratricidal war. But the compassionate wisdom of Lincoln's first and second inaugurals bequeathed to the Union, cemented with blood, a moral heritage which, when drawn upon in times of stress and strife, is sure to find specific ways and means to surmount difficulties that may appear to be insurmountable.”

Felix Frankfurter (1882–1965) American judge

Concurring, Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U.S. 1 (1958).
Judicial opinions

Wisdom, War, Angels, Way

“The character and conquest of the invincible champion are ever the same. A Lacedaemonian died while writing with his own blood on a rock — " Sparta has conquered!" But, O, there is an illustration higher and better than any derived from mere earthly annals. Jesus veiled His glory in the skies; shrouded divinity in mortality, and with godhead and humanity coalesced in His person, entered the lists with more than mortal strife against the powers of hell. He drank the bitter cup with sublimer resignation than the sages of earth ever knew; contended victoriously where finite champions must inevitably have been destroyed; fell, like the strong man, destroying His foes by His death; persevered on our behalf in all the fearful descent from the august throne of the Eternal to the stony floor of the cold and gloomy sepulchre; that Hope's sweet fountain might gush up for mankind in Golgotha, and Salvation plant her banner with immortal triumph at the portal of the conquered tomb.”

Elias Lyman Magoon (1810–1886) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 451.

Death, Fear, Hope, Hell

“Let us abandon the obsolete division of rights into artificial categories of first, second and third generation rights – with their intrinsic prejudices. Let us consider redefining human rights in functional terms. I am suggesting a functional paradigm of enabling rights (such as the rights to peace, food, health and homeland), inherent rights (such as equality and non-discrimination), procedural rights (such as access to information, freedom of expression and due process) and what I would call outcome rights, that is, the practical realization of human dignity in the form of the right to our identity, to achieve our potential and to be just who we are, free to enjoy our own culture and opinions. The absence of this outcome right to dignity and self-respect is reflected in much of the strife we see in the world today.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Alfred-Maurice de Zayas 2013 Report of the Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order 67th session of the General Assembly http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=12732&LangID=E. 2013

Health, World, Peace, Food

“It fell to Neville Chamberlain in one of the supreme crises of the world to be contradicted by events, to be disappointed in his hopes, and to be deceived and cheated by a wicked man. But what were these hopes in which he was disappointed? What were these wishes in which he was frustrated? What was that faith that was abused? They were surely among the most noble and benevolent instincts of the human heart-the love of peace, the toil for peace, the strife for peace, the pursuit of peace, even at great peril, and certainly to the utter disdain of popularity or clamour.”

Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Winston Churchill, Speech to House of Commons on 12th November 1940, 3 days after his death.
About

Love, World, Peace, Faith

“The time has come for the dismantling of fantasies. That is already happening to our universe. Now that we have this one chance of survival we must finally rid ourselves of fantasies and seize that chance!
For centuries our race has built on false assumptions. If you build a fantasy based on a false assumption and continue to build on such a fantasy, your whole existence becomes a lie which you implant in others who are too lazy or too busy to question its truth.
In this manner you threaten the very existence of reality, because, by refusing to obey its laws, those laws engulf and destroy you. The human race has for too long been manufacturing convenient fantasies and calling them laws. For ages this was so. Take war, for instance. Politicians assume that something is true, assume that strife is inevitable, and by building on such false assumptions, lo and behold, they create further wars which they have, ostensibly, sought to prevent.
We have, until now, accepted too many fantasies as being truths, too many truths as fantasies. And we have one last chance to discover the real nature of our existence. I am prepared to take it!”

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

Source: The Sundered Worlds (1965), Chapter 7 (pp. 229-230)

War, Truth, Lie, Age

“Who, dearest daughter! thus unkindly used,
And like a malefactor thee abused?
She sighing then replied; Juno thy wife,
Who still foments contention here and strife.”

John Ogilby (1600–1676) Scottish academic

Book XXI
Homer His Iliads Translated (1660)

Daughters

“Whereas: The unique features of this nation at its foundation was its establishment of a secular Constitution that separated government from religion — something never done before; and
Whereas: Our secular constitution has enabled people of all world views to coexist in harmony, undivided by sectarian strife; and
Whereas: President James Madison made clear the importance of maintaining this harmony when he said, "The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the endless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries"; and
Whereas: The diversity of our people requires mutual respect and equal protection for all our citizens, including minority groups, if we are to remain "One nation, indivisible"; and
Whereas: It is the unfettered diversity of ideas and world views that have made our nation the strongest and most productive in the world; and
Whereas: Eternal vigilance must be maintained to guard against those who seek to stifle ideas, establish a narrow orthodoxy, and divide our nation along arbitrary lines of race, ethnicity, and religious belief or non-belief.
Now Therefore, I, Jesse Ventura, Governor of Minnesota, do hereby proclaim that Thursday July 4, 2002 shall be observed as: Indivisible Day In the State of Minnesota.”

Jesse Ventura (1951) American politician and former professional wrestler

Indivisible Day Proclamation (2002)

People, World, Religion, Idea

“Spend all you have for loveliness,
Buy it and never count the cost;
For one white singing hour of peace
Count many a year of strife well lost,
And for a breath of ecstasy
Give all you have been, or could be.”

Sara Teasdale (1884–1933) American writer and poet

"Barter"
Love Songs (1917)

Peace, Singing

“An irresistible cycle seemed to operate, repeating patterns of the ancient world where civil strife and war brought disaster… I surmised that patterned and predictable changes were in turn rooted in the very nature of civilization—the ineluctable breaker of custom and eroder of moral codes, and itself a product and expression of rapid technological and social change.”

William H. McNeill (1917–2016) Canadian historian

The Pursuit of Truth: A Historian's Memoir (2005)

War, World, Nature, Change

“I was reminded as I was reviewing my life, that I have been in too many conflicts, too many wars, political battles, military battles, civil strifes in government. And always one lesson stands out and that is, those whom you fight most passionately often turn out to be your best friends.”

Ferdinand Marcos (1917–1989) former President of the Philippines from 1965 to 1986

Extemporaneous speech at the Sixth Centennial Celebration of Islam in the Philippines (10 June 1980)
1965

Life, War, Passion, Fight

“The world is a troubled and divided place. I will conclude with this thought. As we speak, the poorest of the poor countries in the world are getting poorer. There is more unemployment, poverty, homelessness and hunger. Resources are being transferred rapidly from the poor to the rich. Most conflicts stem from poverty and from arguments about resources and power. If one tenth of the money that this country is putting into the defence estimates had gone to the people of Somalia and the other countries that were facing terrible economic strife in the 1970s and 1980s, perhaps there would not be the awful conflicts in that region now. We should be dedicating ourselves to a peaceful world, rather than arming ourselves for war upon war upon war. We should deal with the basic problems of the planet. I hoped at least that there would be a defence review. The review could look at what is, I believe, the unanswerable case for a large reduction in Britain's military spending to make an example to the rest of the world.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1993/oct/18/statement-on-the-defence-estimates in the House of Commons (18 October 1993). 1990s

Money, Hunger, War, People

“I strove with none, for none was worth my strife;
Nature I loved; and next to Nature, Art.
I warmed both hands before the fire of life;
It sinks, and I am ready to depart.”

Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864) British writer

I Strove with None (1853). The work is identified in Bartlett's Quotations, 10th edition (1919) as Dying Speech of an old Philosopher.
Quoted in W. Somerset Maugham: The Razor's Edge, The Blakiston Company, Philadelphia, 1944, p. 161.

Love, Life, Art, Nature

“Among Jews, there is an absence of drunkenness, always a fruitful source of domestic strife and misconduct.”

Hermann Adler (1839–1911) Chief Rabbi of the British Empire from 1891 to 1911

Source: Quoted in Joseph H. Hertz, The Pentateuch and Haftorahs (One-volume edition), p. 933

“If royalty did not exist, the storm of strife would never subside, nor selfish ambition disappear. Mankind (is) under the burden of lawlessness and lust…”

Abu'l-Fazl ibn Mubarak (1551–1602) vizier

Ain-i-Akbari by Abul Fazl. trans. by H. Blochmann, quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.

Selfishness

““And when there is peace at last, and when men are no longer distracted by the ravages of war and crime, then the real work begins. Mankind has grasped at science and invention to improve his lot; when he truly understands that he can wield those tools to improve himself, he will lay the cornerstone of the earthly paradise,” Edward said. “What might not science achieve, in a world where a nation’s resources weren’t continually drained by strife?”

Kage Baker book Mendoza in Hollywood

Part 3 “The Island Out There” Chapter 3 (pp. 308-309)
Mendoza in Hollywood (2000)

Men, War, World, Peace

“The stars are dimly seen among the shadows of the bay,
And lights that win are seen in strife with lights that die away.”

Arthur O'Shaughnessy (1844–1881) British poet

Music and Moonlight (1874), Barcarolle

Star, Light

“The rights of all private property owners, even those whose actions decent people find abhorrent, must be respected if we are to maintain a free society… Federal bureaucrats and judges cannot read minds to see if actions are motivated by racism. Therefore, the only way the federal government could ensure an employer was not violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was to ensure that the racial composition of a business's workforce matched the racial composition of a bureaucrat or judge's defined body of potential employees… Racial quotas have not contributed to racial harmony or advanced the goal of a color-blind society. Instead, these quotas encouraged racial balkanization, and fostered racial strife… Relations between the races have improved despite, not because of, the 1964 Civil Rights Act.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

The Trouble With the '64 Civil Rights Act
LewRockwell.com
2004-06-03
http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul188.html
2000s, 2001-2005

People, Color, Way, Motivation

“A young Apollo, golden-haired,
Stands dreaming on the verge of strife,
Magnificently unprepared
For the long littleness of life.”

Frances Cornford (1886–1960) English poet

"Youth", line 1; from Poems (Hampstead: Priory Press, 1910) p. 15; on Rupert Brooke.

Life, Dreams

“When nobody in the world loves any other, naturally the strong will overpower the weak, the many will oppress the few, the wealthy will mock the poor, the honoured will disdain the humble, the cunning will deceive the simple. Therefore all the calamities, strifes, complaints, and hatred in the world have arisen out of want of mutual love. Therefore the benevolent disapproved of this want.”

Mozi (-470–-391 BC) Chinese political philosopher and religious reformer of the Warring States period

Book 4; Universal Love II
Mozi

Love, World, Nature, Strong

“All of our boasted wealth, wonderful inventions and incalculable mechanical power will prove to be an unstable foundation if we continue to dwell together in strife—individual against individual, class against class, nation against nation.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

"The Commercial Motive" ibid.

Wealth

“What is peace? Is it war? No. Is it strife? No. Is it lovely, and gentle, and beautiful, and pleasant, and serene, and joyful? Oh, yes! Therefore, my friends, I wish for peace, upon you and upon yours.”

Charles Dickens book Bleak House

Source: Bleak House (1852-1853), Ch. 19

Love, War, Peace, Beauty

“The Prophet is thus a primal force. His action affects the character of the general harmony, while he him self does not become a part of that harmony, but remains always a man apart, a narrow-minded extremist, zealous for his own ideal, and intolerant of every other. And since he cannot have all that he would, he is in a perpetual state of anger and grief; he remains all his life "a man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth." [Jeremiah 15:10] Not only this: the other members of society, those many-sided dwarfs, creatures of the general harmony, cry out after him, "The Prophet is a fool, the spiritual man is mad" [Hosea 9:7]; and they look with lofty contempt on his narrowness and extremeness.”

Ahad Ha'am (1856–1927) Hebrew essayist and thinker

Source: Selected Essays (1904), "Priest and Prophet" (1893), pp. 130-131

Life, Fools, Parting, Cry

“It is, then, the strife of all honorable men and women of the twentieth century to see that in the future competition of the races the survival of the fittest shall mean the triumph of the good, the beautiful, and the true; that we may be able to preserve for future civilization all that is really fine and noble and strong, and not continue to put a premium on greed and imprudence and cruelty.”

W.E.B. Du Bois book The Souls of Black Folk

Source: The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Ch. IX: Of the Sons of Master and Man

Women, Men, Beauty, Strong

“Mind from its object differs most in this:
Evil from good; misery from happiness;
The baser from the nobler; the impure
And frail, from what is clear and must endure.
If you divide suffering and dross, you may
Diminish till it is consumed away;
If you divide pleasure and love and thought,
Each part exceeds the whole; and we know not
How much, while any yet remains unshared,
Of pleasure may be gained, of sorrow spared:
This truth is that deep well, whence sages draw
The unenvied light of hope; the eternal law
By which those live, to whom this world of life
Is as a garden ravaged, and whose strife
Tills for the promise of a later birth
The wilderness of this Elysian earth.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Epipsychidion

Source: Epipsychidion (1821), l. 174

Love, Life, Happiness, Pleasure

“My thoughts hold mortal strife;
I do detest my life,
And with lamenting cries
Peace to my soul to bring
Oft call that prince which here doth monarchise:
— But he, grim-grinning King,
Who caitiffs scorns, and doth the blest surprise,
Late having deck'd with beauty's rose his tomb,
Disdains to crop a weed, and will not come.”

William Drummond of Hawthornden (1585–1649) British writer

Inexorable http://www.bartleby.com/101/230.html

Life, Peace, Beauty, Soul

“When once you have plunged into the strife for power, it is the fear of those who are seeking for power over you that so easily persuades to all the great crimes.”

Auberon Herbert (1838–1906) British politician

Westminster Gazette (1893)

Fear

“Call no faith false which e'er hath brought
Relief to any laden life,
Cessation to the pain of thought,
Refreshment mid the dust of strife.”

Lewis Morris (poet) (1833–1907) Welsh poet in the English language

Tolerance, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Life, Pain, Faith, Falseness

“Dear Hawkesworth, Mother Goose came to a rehearsal before Christmas day, having arrived on Saturday for the knife... Many thanks for the brace of pheasants and hares—by the same train—indeed, I think it fortunate, for with all the strife and strike of pokers and stokers for the railroads - their commons every day growing worse - in shareholders and directors squabbling about the winding up the last Bill, to come to some end for those lines known or supposed to be in difficulty... I am sorry to say my health is much on the wain. I cannot bear the same fatigue, or have the same bearing against it, I formerly had - but time and tide stop not - but I must stop writing for today..”

J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851) British Romantic landscape painter, water-colourist, and printmaker

Quote from Turner's letter to Mr. Hawkesworth, 24 December, 1849; as quoted in The life of J.M.W. Turner, Volume II, George Walter Thornbury; Hurst and Blackett Publishers, London, 1862, pp. 90-91
1821 - 1851

Health, Thinking, Time, Christmas

“This is, in fact, the philosophical defence of progressive socialism, that human progress requires that one after another the lower material animal functions shall be reduced to routine, in order that a larger amount of individual effort may be devoted to the exercise of higher functions and the cultivation by strife of higher qualities.”

J.A. Hobson (1858–1940) English economist, social scientist and critic of imperialism

section 11, p. 421
The Evolution of Modern Capitalism: A Study of Machine Production (1906), Ch. XVII Civilisation and Industrial Development

Exercises, Effort, Animals

“Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide in the strife of Truth and Falsehood, for the good and evil side.”

Dingiri Banda Wijetunga (1916–2008) President of Sri Lanka

Quoted on Archives. Daily News, "Dingiri Banda Wijetunga - the journey to greatness" http://archives.dailynews.lk/2008/09/22/fea01.asp, September 22, 2008.

Truth, Evil

“Rest springs from strife and dissonant chords beget
Divinest harmonies.”

Lewis Morris (poet) (1833–1907) Welsh poet in the English language

Love's Suicide, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Spring

“The present is distinguished from every precenn hvjh vding age by an universal ardour of enterprise in arts and manufactures. Nations convinced at length that war is always a losing game, have converted their swords and muskets into factory implements, and now contend with each other in the bloodless but still formidable strife of trade. They no longer send troops to fight on distant fields but fabrics to drive before them those of their old adversaries in arms, and to take possession of a foreign mart. To impair the resources of a rival at home, by underselling his wares abroad, is the new belligerent system, in pursuance of which every nerve and sinew of the people are put upon the strain.”

Andrew Ure (1778–1857) Scottish doctor and chemist

Source: The Philosophy of Manufactures, 1835, p. vii; Preface, lead paragraph

War, People, Age, Art

“The king's majesty desires nothing more than concord…; he knows there are those who would stir up strife, and that in many places in his field tares have sprongen to harm the wheat. The forwardness and carnal lust of some, the inveterate corruption and superstitious tenacity of opinion of others, excite disputation and quarrels most horrible to good Christian men; one side calls the other papists, and the other again calls them heretics, both naughty and not to be borne; and that the less so because they miserably abuse the Holy Word of God and the Scriptures which the same most noble prince of his gentleness and for the salvation and consolation of his people has permitted them to read in the vulgar tongue. They twist God's sacred gift, now into heresy and now into superstition. [The king] favours nor one side nor the other but, as becometh a Christian prince, profess the true Christian faith [therefore the king desires the] true doctrine and rule of the Gospel shall be published clear and established [and] the pious observation of ceremonies shall be distinguished from the impious, their use taught and their abuse abolished.”

Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex (1485–1540) English statesman and chief minister to King Henry VIII of England

Speech to the reassmbled Parliament, 12 April 1540. (Journal of the House of Lords: I, pp. 128-9.)

Men, God, People, Faith

“Strife, the companion of shared sovereignty.”
Sociisque comes discordia regnis.

Statius book Thebaid

Source: Thebaid, Book I, Line 130

“And the high mandate of his sire.
Led by the Lord who rules the sky,
The Gods and heavenly saints drew nigh,
And honoured him with worthy meed,
Rejoicing in each glorious deed.
His task achieved, his foe removed,
He triumphed, by the Gods approved.
By grace of Heaven he raised to life
The chieftains slain in mortal strife;
Then in the magic chariot through
The clouds to Nandigráma flew.
Met by his faithful brothers there,
He loosed his votive coil of hair:
Thence fair Ayodhyá's town he gained,
And o'er his father's kingdom reigned.
Disease or famine ne'er oppressed
His happy people, richly blest.”

Vālmīki Legendary Indian poet, author of the Ramayana

Source: King of Siam Rama I "The-Ramayana", p. 28.

Life, God, Happiness, People

“My engagements will not permit me to be present, and I believe if there I could not add anything material to the information existing on the subject. I think it wiser, moreover, not to keep open the sores of war, but to follow the example of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, and to commit to oblivion the feelings it engendered.”

Robert E. Lee (1807–1870) Confederate general in the Civil War

Letter regarding war monuments https://www.google.com/search?q=%22to+commit+to+oblivion+the+feelings+it+engendere%22&btnG=Search+Books&tbm=bks&tbo=1#tbm=bks&q=%22to+commit+to+oblivion+the+feelings+it+engendered%22 (1869), as quoted in Personal reminiscences, anecdotes, and letters of gen. Robert E. Lee https://books.google.com/books?id=VikOAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA234 (1874), by John William Jones, p. 234. Also quoted in "Renounce the battle flag: Don't whitewash history" http://www.newsleader.com/story/opinion/columnists/2015/07/01/renounce-battle-flag-whitewash-history/29574721/ (26 June 2015), by Petula Dvorak, The Washington Post, Washington, D.C. This quote is also given as: "I think it wisest not to keep open the sores of war, but to follow the example of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, and to commit to oblivion the feelings it engendered." https://books.google.com/books?id=x7OOraQWi5wC&pg=PA299&dq=%22i+think+it+wiser+moreover%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAGoVChMIxZSVnqTyxgIVw9SACh39bQbx#v=onepage&q=%22i%20think%20it%20wiser%20moreover%22&f=false 1860s

War, Feeling, Thinking

“There various news I heard of love and strife,
Of peace and war, health, sickness, death, and life,
Of loss and gain, of famine and of store,
Of storms at sea, and travels on the shore,
Of prodigies, and portents seen in air,
Of fires and plagues, and stars with blazing hair,
Of turns of fortune, changes in the state,
The fall of favourites, projects of the great,
Of aid mismanagements, taxations new:
All neither wholly false, nor wholly true.”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

Source: The Temple of Fame (1711), Lines 449-458.

Love, Life, Death, War

“There is no advance without strife.”

Philip Wylie book After Worlds Collide

After Worlds Collide (1934), co-written with Edwin Balmer

“Love taught him shame; and shame, with love at strife,
Soon taught the sweet civilities of life.”

John Dryden book Fables, Ancient and Modern

Source: Fables, Ancient and Modern (1700), Cymon and Iphigenia, Line 133.

Love, Life

“Caution and conservatism are expected of old age; but when the young men of a nation are possessed of such a spirit, when they are afraid of the noise and strife caused by the new applications of the truth, Heaven save the land! Its funeral bell has already rung.”

Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887) American clergyman and activist

Notes from Plymouth Pulpit (1859)

Men, Truth, Age

“Voices of the glorified urge us onward. They who have passed from the semblances of time to the realities of eternity call upon us to advance. The rest that awaits us invites us forward. We do not pine for our rest before God wills it. We long for no inglorious rest. We are thankful rather for the invaluable training of difficulty, the loving discipline of danger and strife. Yet in the midst of it all the prospect of rest invites us heavenward. Through all, and above all, God cries, " Go forward!"”

William Jones (1746–1794) Anglo-Welsh philologist and scholar of ancient India

" Come up higher!"
Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 564.

Love, God, Reality, Time

“After writing the account given of the Savior’s ministry to the remnant of the seed of Jacob, upon this continent, it was easy to be seen, as the prophet said it would be, that darkness covered the earth and gross darkness the minds of the people. On reflecting further it was as easy to be seen that amid the great strife and noise concerning religion, none had authority from God to administer the ordinances of the Gospel. For the question might be asked, have men authority to administer in the name of Christ, who deny revelations, when His testimony is no less than the spirit of prophecy, and His religion based, built, and sustained by immediate revelations, in all ages of the world when He has had a people on earth? If these facts were buried, and carefully concealed by men whose craft would have been in danger if once permitted to shine in the faces of men, they were no longer to us; and we only waited for the commandment to be given ‘Arise and be baptized.”

Oliver Cowdery (1806–1850) American Mormon leader

Men, God, People, Age

“The third article was union. […] By working shoulder to shoulder, together we can increase the bounty of all. We have discovered that every child who learns, every man who finds work, every sick body that is made whole—like a candle added to an altar—brightens the hope of all the faithful. So let us reject any among us who seek to reopen old wounds and to rekindle old hatreds. They stand in the way of a seeking nation. Let us now join reason to faith and action to experience, to transform our unity of interest into a unity of purpose. For the hour and the day and the time are here to achieve progress without strife, to achieve change without hatred—not without difference of opinion, but without the deep and abiding divisions which scar the union for generations.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, Inaugural address (1965)

Faith, Hope, Way, Learning

“Amid the stirring and manifold activities of the age in which we live, to be neutral in the strife is to rank with the enemies of the Saviour. There is no greater foe to the spread of His cause in the world than the placid indifferentism which is too honorable to betray, while it is too careless or too cowardly to join Him.”

William Morley Punshon (1824–1881) English Nonconformist minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 341.

Age, World

“If there is one thing more than another better established about the British Constitution it is this, that the Commons, and the Commons alone, have the complete control of supply and ways and means. And what our fathers established through centuries of struggles and of strife, even of bloodshed, we are not going to be traitors to. Who talks about altering and meddling with the Constitution? The Constitutional Party…As long as the Constitution gave rank and possession and power it was not to be interfered with. As long as it secured even their sports from intrusion, and made interference with them a crime; as long as the Constitution forced royalties and ground-rents and fees, premiums and fines, the black retinue of extraction; as long as it showered writs, and summonses, and injunctions, and distresses, and warrants to enforce them, then the Constitution was inviolate, it was sacred, it was something that was put in the same category as religion, that no man ought to touch, and something that the chivalry of the nation ought to range in defence of. But the moment the Constitution looks round, the moment the Constitution begins to discover that there are millions of people outside the park gates who need attention, then the Constitution is to be torn to pieces. Let them realize what they are doing. They are forcing revolution.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Newcastle (9 October 1909), quoted in The Times (11 October 1909), p. 6
Chancellor of the Exchequer

People, Religion, Way, Sport

“All the wars and strifes between tribes, races, nations, from the beginning until now, have been the result of man's effort to govern himself and the world, rather than to submit to the government of God.”

David Lipscomb (1831–1917) Leader, American Restoration Movement

Source: Civil Government : Its Origin, Mission, and Destiny (1889), p. 10

God, War, World, Effort

“Human nature is evil; its goodness derives from conscious activity. Now it is human nature to be born with a fondness for profit. Indulging this leads to contention and strife, and the sense of modesty and yielding with which one was born disappears. One is born with feelings of envy and hate, and, by indulging these, one is led into banditry and theft, so that the sense of loyalty and good faith with which he was born disappears. One is born with the desires of the ears and eyes and with a fondness for beautiful sights and sounds, and, by indulging these, one is led to licentiousness and chaos, so that the sense of ritual, rightness, refinement, and principle with which one was born is lost. Hence, following human nature and indulging human emotions will inevitably lead to contention and strife, causing one to rebel against one’s proper duty, reduce principle to chaos, and revert to violence. Therefore one must be transformed by the example of a teacher and guided by the way of ritual and rightness before one will attain modesty and yielding, accord with refinement and ritual, and return to order.”

Xun Zi (-313–-238 BC) Ancient Chinese philosopher

Sources of Chinese Tradition (1999), vol. 1, pp. 179-180
Human nature is evil

Hate, Faith, Beauty, Way

“The history of the American kings of capital and authority is the history of repeated crimes, injustice, oppression, outrage, and abuse, all aiming at the suppression of individual liberties and the exploitation of the people. A vast country, rich enough to supply all her children with all possible comforts, and insure well-being to all, is in the hands of a few, while the nameless millions are at the mercy of ruthless wealth gatherers, unscrupulous lawmakers, and corrupt politicians.
The reign of these kings is holding mankind in slavery, perpetuating poverty and disease, maintaining crime and corruption; it is fettering the spirit of liberty, throttling the voice of justice, and degrading and oppressing humanity. It is engaged in continual war and slaughter, devastating the country and destroying the best and finest qualities of man; it nurtures superstition and ignorance, sows prejudice and strife, and turns the human family into a camp of Ishmaelites.”

Emma Goldman (1868–1940) anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches

A New Declaration of Independence (1909)

War, Children, People, Disease

“The whole world has its eye to day on London. The whole world is represented in London, and they are all coming here to be with us in what, to the vast majority of our people, will be a period of rejoicing for many days, culminating in that age-long service in the Abbey a week to-day. In the Abbey on this day week our young King and his Queen, who were called suddenly and unexpectedly to the most tremendous position on earth, will kneel and dedicate themselves to the service of their people, a service which can only be ended by death. I appeal to that handful of men with whom rests peace or war to give the best present to the country that could be given at that moment, to do the one thing which would rejoice the hearts of all the people who love this country, that is, to rend and dissipate this dark cloud which has gathered over us, and show the people of the world that this democracy can still at least practise the arts of peace in a world of strife.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1937/may/05/supply in the House of Commons (5 May 1937). 1937

Love, Death, Men, War

“You see our new towns, our smiling countryside. I am proud of our achievements. There is an enormous amount more to do. Remember that we are a great crusading body, armed with a fervent spirit for the reign of righteousness on earth. Let us go forward into this fight in the spirit of William Blake: "I will not cease from mental strife/Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand/Till we have built Jerusalem/In England's green and pleasant land."”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the Labour Party Conference in Scarborough (1 October 1951), quoted in The Times (2 October 1951), p. 4
Prime Minister

Smile, Sleep, Fight

“[T]he ancient philosophers… all of them assert that the elements, and those things which are called by them principles, are contraries, though they establish them without reason, as if they were compelled to assert this by truth itself. They differ, however… that some of them assume prior, and others posterior principles; and some of them things more known according to reason, but others such as are more known according to sense: for some establish the hot and the cold, others the moist and the dry, others the odd and the even, and others strife and friendship, as the causes of generation. …in a certain respect they assert the same things, and speak differently from each other. They assert different things… but the same things, so far as they speak analogously. For they assume principles from the same co-ordination; since, of contraries, some contain, and others are contained.”

Aristotle book Physics

Book I, Ch. VI, pp. 57-59.
Physics

Friendship, Truth, Sense

“If only strife could die from the lives of gods and men”

Homér Iliad

XVIII. 107–110 (tr. Robert Fagles); spoken by Achilles.
Iliad (c. 750 BC)
Context: If only strife could die from the lives of gods and men
and anger that drives the sanest man to flare in outrage—
bitter gall, sweeter than dripping streams of honey,
that swarms in people's chests and blinds like smoke.

Men, God

“The clergy who had in so many ways served the cause of freedom during the prolonged strife against feudalism and slavery, were associated now with the interest of royalty.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian

The History of Freedom in Christianity (1877)
Context: The way was paved for absolute monarchy to triumph over the spirit and institutions of a better age, not by isolated acts of wickedness, but by a studied philosophy of crime, and so thorough a perversion of the moral sense that the like of it had not been since the Stoics reformed the morality of paganism.
The clergy who had in so many ways served the cause of freedom during the prolonged strife against feudalism and slavery, were associated now with the interest of royalty.

Way, Freedom

“Fortune… and chance, are said to be in the number of causes… [W]ith some it is dubious whether these things have subsistence or not. For, say they, nothing is produced from fortune, but there is a definite cause of all such things… For if fortune were any thing, it would truly appear to be absurd; and some one might doubt why no one of the ancient wise men, when assigning the causes of generation and corruption, has ever defined any thing concerning fortune. …[M]any things are produced, and have a subsistence, from fortune and chance… They did not, however, think that fortune was any thing belonging to friendship or strife, or fire, or intellect, or any thing else of things of this kind. They are chargeable, therefore, with absurdity, whether they did not conceive that it had a substance, or whether fancying that it had, they omitted it; especially since it was sometimes employed by them. Thus Empedocles says that the air…Thus it then chanc'd to run, tho' varying oft.He also says that the greater part of… animals were generated by fortune. But there are some who assign chance to the cause of this heaven, and of all mundane natures… [W]e must consider… whether chance or fortune are the same… or different from each other, and how they fall into definite causes.”

Aristotle book Physics

Book II, Ch. IV, pp. 113-115.
Physics

Men, Friendship, Nature, Thinking

“Still, a Union that can only be maintained by swords and bayonets, and in which strife and civil war are to take the place of brotherly love and kindness, has no charm for me.”

Robert E. Lee (1807–1870) Confederate general in the Civil War

Letter to his son http://radgeek.com/gt/2005/01/03/robert-e-Lee-owned-slaves-and-defended-slavery/, G. W. Custis Lee (23 January 1861). 1860s Context: I can anticipate no greater calamity for the country than a dissolution of the Union. It would be an accumulation of all the evils we complain of, and I am willing to sacrifice everything but honor for its preservation. I hope, therefore, that all constitutional means will be exhausted before there is a resort to force. Secession is nothing but revolution. The framers of our Constitution never exhausted so much labor, wisdom, and forbearance in its formation, and surrounded it with so many guards and securities, if it was intended to be broken by every member of the Confederacy at will. It is intended for 'perpetual Union,' so expressed in the preamble, and for the establishment of a government, not a compact, which can only be dissolved by revolution, or the consent of all the people in convention assembled. It is idle to talk of secession: anarchy would have been established, and not a government, by Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, and all the other patriots of the Revolution. … Still, a Union that can only be maintained by swords and bayonets, and in which strife and civil war are to take the place of brotherly love and kindness, has no charm for me. I shall mourn for my country and for the welfare and progress of mankind. If the Union is dissolved and the Government disrupted, I shall return to my native State and share the miseries of my people, and, save in defense will draw my sword on none.

Love, War

“Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learned to stray;
Along the cool sequestered vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.”

Thomas Gray (1716–1771) English poet, historian

St. 19 Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard http://www.thomasgray.org/cgi-bin/display.cgi?textelcc (written 1750, publ. 1751)

Madness

“From every life there may be a lesson to some one; but in the teeming millions of humanity such lessons can but seldom have any general or exhaustive force. The mere din of strife is too incessant for any individual sound to carry far.”

Bram Stoker book Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving

Preface
Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving (1907)
Context: Logically speaking, even the life of an actor has no preface. He begins, and that is all. And such beginning is usually obscure; but faintly remembered at the best. Art is a completion; not merely a history of endeavour. It is only when completeness has been obtained that the beginnings of endeavour gain importance, and that the steps by which it has been won assume any shape of permanent interest. After all, the struggle for supremacy is so universal that the matters of hope and difficulty of one person are hardly of general interest. When the individual has won out from the huddle of strife, the means and steps of his succeeding become of interest, either historically or in the educational aspect — but not before. From every life there may be a lesson to some one; but in the teeming millions of humanity such lessons can but seldom have any general or exhaustive force. The mere din of strife is too incessant for any individual sound to carry far. Fame, who rides in higher atmosphere, can alone make her purpose heard. Well did the framers of picturesque idea understand their work when in her hand they put a symbolic trumpet.

Life

“Being desirous of allaying the dissensions of party strife now existing within our realm, I do hereby dissolve and abolish the Democratic and Republican parties”

Emperor Norton (1811–1880) Self-proclaimed Emperor of the United States

"Imperial Decree" dated 12th Day of August 1869, published in The San Francisco Herald (13 August 1869)
Context: Being desirous of allaying the dissensions of party strife now existing within our realm, I do hereby dissolve and abolish the Democratic and Republican parties, and also do hereby decree the disfranchisement and imprisonment, for not more than 10, nor less than five, years, to all persons leading to any violation of this our imperial decree.

“The strife was stilled, order and unity were restored, as soon as Avogadro's great idea was seen in its true light, and the concept of the molecule was introduced into chemistry. A formula which had required pages of reasoning from a purely chemical standpoint to establish, and that insecurely, was fixed by a single numerical result.”

J. R. Partington (1886–1965) British chemist

Introduction
Higher Mathematics for Chemical Students (1911)
Context: As an instance of the remarkably far-reaching effect which a single mathematico-physical concept has had upon the development of chemical theory, one has but to recall the state of chemistry just before the revival of Avogadro's law by Cannizzaro, to be impressed by its confusion. Relying solely upon their "chemical instinct," the leaders of the various schools of chemical thought had developed each his own theoretical system.... a host of... conceptions strove for supremacy. The strife was stilled, order and unity were restored, as soon as Avogadro's great idea was seen in its true light, and the concept of the molecule was introduced into chemistry. A formula which had required pages of reasoning from a purely chemical standpoint to establish, and that insecurely, was fixed by a single numerical result.

Idea, Light

“Freely do I own to this purpose of reconciliation, and candidly do I confess that it is my dearest object to exalt the present movement above the strife of contending sects and parties, and at once to occupy that common ground where we may all meet, believers and unbelievers, for purposes in themselves lofty and unquestioned by any. Surely it is time that a beginning were made in this direction.”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Founding Address (1876)
Context: Freely do I own to this purpose of reconciliation, and candidly do I confess that it is my dearest object to exalt the present movement above the strife of contending sects and parties, and at once to occupy that common ground where we may all meet, believers and unbelievers, for purposes in themselves lofty and unquestioned by any. Surely it is time that a beginning were made in this direction. For more than three thousand years men have quarreled concerning the formulas of their faith. The earth has been drenched with blood shed in this cause, the face of day darkened with the blackness of the crimes perpetrated in its name. There have been no direr wars than religious wars, no bitterer hates than religious hates, no fiendish cruelty like religious cruelty; no baser baseness than religious baseness. It has destroyed the peace of families, turned the father against the son, the brother against the brother.

Time

“Hard I strove
To put away my immortality,
Till my collected spirits swell'd my heart
Almost to bursting; but the strife is past.”

Hartley Coleridge (1796–1849) British poet, biographer, essayist, and teacher

Prometheus
Poems (1851), Prometheus
Context: Hard I strove
To put away my immortality,
Till my collected spirits swell'd my heart
Almost to bursting; but the strife is past.
It is a fearful thing to be a god,
And, like a god, endure a mortal's pain;
To be a show for earth and wondering heaven
To gaze and shudder at! But I will live,
That Jove may know there is a deathless soul
Who ne'er will be his subject. Yes, 'tis past.
The stedfast Fates confess my absolute will,—
Their own co-equal.

Past, Heart

Quotes about strife page 2

Quotes about strife
page 2