41 Quotes About Confrontation

Having to stand up to a conflict can be the last thing you want to do at times. These quotes about confrontation highlight some of the end results that come from these types of exchanges.

“A lot of people have problems with public confrontation, but it doesn’t worry me at all. I can handle myself. I know my martial arts.”

“A theory is only as good as its assumptions. If the premises are false, the theory has no real scientific value. The only scientific criterion for judging the validity of a scientific theory is a confrontation with the data of experience.”

“All the great political music was made at the height of political confrontations.”

“As every past generation has had to disenthrall itself from an inheritance of truisms and stereotypes, so in our own time we must move on from the reassuring repetition of stale phrases to a new, difficult, but essential confrontation with reality.”

“As time goes on we become old, the future contracts, the past expands… But by future we don’t just mean the years ahead; we always mean as well the plenitude of possibilities which challenge our creativity.”

“Direct confrontation, direct conversation is real respect. And it’s amazing how many people get that.”

“Ecstatic absurdity: it’s the confrontation with meaninglessness.”

“Even during the years of the Cold War, the intense confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States, we always avoided any direct clash between our civilians and, most certainly, between our military.”

“Everybody certainly has the right to defend themselves. That’s not to say that they should defy common sense by avoiding or diffusing confrontation. And that’s very, very important.”

“Forcing a dog into an alpha roll, or shaking the dog, both constitute physical aggression. Physical aggression is not communication. If there is good communication, then such confrontations need not occur.”

“Historically when there is a rising power like China, it has usually led to confrontations between the rising power and the existing dominant powers.”

“How could someone with a renowned ability to inspire, communicate complex ideas, and connect with voters find himself in this position?”

“I do not criticize people who take a public stand on human rights issues. I express my respect for them. But some people are more influential without a public confrontation.”

“I look forward to these confrontations with the press to kind of balance up the nice and pleasant things that come to me as president.”

“I think confrontation is healthy, because it clears the air very quickly.”

“If you really want a true confrontation, you treat your opponent with respect.”

“I’m interested in conflict and confrontation.”

“In romance, we feel the need to zoom in and expound on our partner’s foibles in intimate detail; in friendship, we tend to do the opposite, avoiding confrontation through fear, lethargy or both.”

“Ironically, people who suppress the mini-confrontations for fear of conflict tend to have huge conflicts later, which can lead to separation, precisely because they let minor problems fester.”

“It behooves our citizens to be on their guard, to be firm in their principles, and full of confidence in themselves. We are able to preserve our self-government if we will but think so.”

“It is one of the paradoxes of parenting, and often a painful paradox, that even as our children need us for love and trust, they also need us for honest differing.”

“It’s important for me to fight for principles. But I am not willing to cope with the nastiness of politics anymore and the endless destructive confrontations that it leads to.”

“Let the free people of the world know that we could have bargained over and sold out our cause in return for a personal secure and stable life.”

“My generation has not seen one single day of peace, and my dream is for my children and the children of all Colombians to have the change to see it.”

“My study of Gandhi convinced me that true pacifism is not nonresistance to evil, but nonviolent resistance to evil. Between the two positions, there is a world of difference.”

“Next to the confrontation between two highly honed batteries of lawyers, jungle warfare is a stately minuet.”

“Nowadays, if you are afraid of confrontation, you are not going to do very well.”

“One thing that I learned that helped me deal with human behavior is confrontation, and I’m not that great with confrontation at all. But once I started to be O.K. with that, the better everybody’s life got.”

“Our prayers must spring from the indigenous soil of our own personal confrontation with the Spirit of God in our lives.”

“The confrontation was not created by the police. The confrontation was created by the people who charged the police. Gentlemen, get the thing straight once and for all.”

“The consequence could be that we would have an escalation that would take place that would not only involve many lives, but I think it could consume the Middle East in a confrontation and a conflict that we would regret.”

“The cords of passion and desire weave a binding net around you. Worldly confrontation makes you stiff and inflexible. The trap of duality is tenacious. Bound, rigid, and trapped, you cannot experience liberation.”

“The history of other cultures is non-existent until it erupts in confrontation with the United States.”

“The next decade cannot be a decade of confrontation and contention. It cannot be east vs. West. It cannot be men vs. women. It cannot be Islam vs. Christianity. That is what the enemies of dialogue want.”

“The West will continue to conquer peoples, even if it means a confrontation with another civilization, Islam, firmly entrenched where it was 1,400 years ago.”

“Truth carries with it confrontation.”

“Truth demands confrontation. It must be loving confrontation, but there must be confrontation nonetheless.”

“Trying to always be the nice guy, to appear good, can be limiting. Avoiding confrontation has closed up a number of possibilities for me.”

“We are not going to allow to a dictator who is sitting on us to determine the means of confrontation against him. We are not asking his approval to be free.”

“We have over a hundred political detainees, men against whom we are unable to prove anything in a court of law.”

“You have to give the press confrontations. When you give them confrontations, you get attention; when you get attention, you can educate.”

There is a place for conflict that can sometimes bring out sunnier days in the future and resolutions to difficult problems.