Compiled by Tammy Lenski
Don’t look where you fall, but where you slipped. – African proverb
Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won’t come in. – Alan Alda
Most misunderstandings in the world could be avoided if people would simply take the time to ask, “What else could this mean?” – Shannon Alder
Change means movement. Movement means friction. Only in the frictionless vacuum of a nonexistent abstract world can movement or change occur without that abrasive friction of conflict. – Saul Alinsky
To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, be nothing. – Aristotle
Anyone can become angry—that is easy, but to be angry with the right person at the right time, and for the right purpose and in the right way—that is not easy. – Aristotle
The more we run from conflict, / The more it masters us; / The more we try to avoid it, / The more it controls us; / The less we fear conflict, / The less it confuses us; / The less we deny our differences, / The less they divide us. – David Augsburger
The best revenge is to not be like that. – Marcus Aurelius
Every problem has a gift for you in its hands. – Richard Bach
Never ascribe to an opponent motives meaner than your own. – John M. Barrie
Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret. – Ambrose Bierce
Marriage means expectations and expectations mean conflict. – Paxton Blair
Transformation comes more from pursuing profound questions than seeking practical answers. – Peter Block
Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future. – Paul Boese
The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth. – Niels Bohr
Whenever you see darkness, there is extraordinary opportunity for the light to burn brighter. – Bono
There are two ways of meeting difficulties: You alter the difficulties or you alter yourself meeting them. – Phyllis Bottome
No one in history has ever been insulted into agreement. – Arthur Brooks
If war is the violent resolution of conflict, then peace is not the absence of conflict, but rather, the ability to resolve conflict without violence. – C.T. Lawrence Butler
Every noble work is at first impossible. – Thomas Carlyle
You can’t win an argument. You can’t because if you lose it, you lose it; and if you win it, you lose it. – Dale Carnegie
One of the most basic principles for making and keeping peace within and between nations…is that in political, military, moral, and spiritual confrontations, there should be an honest attempt at the reconciliation of differences before resorting to combat. – Jimmy Carter
Sometimes I am two people. Johnny is the nice one. Cash causes all the trouble. They fight. – Johnny Cash
Don’t let yesterday use up too much of today. – Cherokee proverb
A stiff apology is a second insult…The injured party does not want to be compensated because he has been wronged; he wants to be healed because he has been hurt. – G.K. Chesterton
It isn’t that they can’t see the solution. It’s that they can’t see the problem. – G.K. Chesterton
If we don’t change the direction we are going, we are likely to end up where we are heading. – Chinese Proverb
Tell me, I may listen. Teach me, I may remember. Involve me, I will do it. – Chinese Proverb
You are the sky. Everything else – it’s just the weather. – Pema Chödrön
Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen. – Winston Churchill
A man is about as big as the things that make him angry. – Winston Churchill
A pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty. – Winston Churchill
Many situations in life are similar to going on a hike: the view changes once you start walking. You don’t need all the answers right now. New paths will reveal themselves if you have the courage to get started. – James Clear
The trouble is that most people want to be right. The very best people, however, want to know if they’re right. – John Cleese
Every conflict we face in life is rich with positive and negative potential. It can be a source of inspiration, enlightenment, learning, transformation, and growth–or rage, fear, shame, entrapment, and resistance. The choice is not up to our opponents, but to us, and our willingness to face and work through them. – Kenneth Cloke and Joan Goldsmith
One might as well try to ride two horses moving in different directions, as to try to maintain in equal force two opposing or contradictory sets of desires. – Robert Collier
You can’t talk your way out of something you behaved your way into. You have to behave your way out of it. – Doug Conant (CEO of Campbell Soup, as quoted in Harvard Business Review)
Every word has three definitions and three interpretations. – Costa Rican proverb
If I were to summarize in one sentence the single most important principle I have learned in the field of interpersonal relations, it would be this: Seek first to understand, then to be understood. This principle is the key to effective interpersonal communication. – Stephen Covey
The quality of our lives depends not on whether or not we have conflicts, but on how we respond to them. – Tom Crum
Always the beautiful answer / who asks a more beautiful question. – e.e. cummings
There is little value in preparing a cookbook of recipes for conflict success. The effects of conflict interaction depend directly on what the participants do mentally with conflict behaviors—that is, how they process and interpret those behaviors. – William Cupach & Daniel Canary
I believe that the basic nature of human beings is gentle and compassionate. It is therefore in our own interest to encourage that nature, to make it live within us, to leave room for it to develop. If on the contrary we use violence, it is as if we voluntarily obstruct the positive side of human nature and prevent its evolution. – His Holiness the Dalai Lama
If you understood everything I said, you’d be me. – Miles Davis
To a disciple who was forever complaining about others the Master said, ‘If it is peace you want, seek to change yourself, not other people. It is easier to protect your feet with slippers than to carpet the whole of the earth.’ – Anthony de Mello
The longer we listen to one another–with real attention–the more commonality we will find in all our lives. That is, if we are careful to exchange with one another life stories and not simply opinions. – Barbara Deming
Conflict is the gadfly of thought. It stirs us to observation and memory. It instigates to invention. It shocks us out of sheeplike passivity, and sets us at noting and contriving. – John Dewey
Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth. – Benjamin Disraeli
The more incompetent one feels, the more eager he is to fight. – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Every person in this life has something to teach me—and as soon as I accept that, I open myself to truly listening. – Catherine Doucette
The only difference between stumbling blocks and stepping stones is the way in which we use them. – Adriana Doyle
When we change the way we look at things, the things we look at change. – Wayne Dyer
Peace is the result of retraining your mind to process life as it is, rather than as you think it should be. – Wayne Dyer
Whenever two good people argue over principles, they are both right. – Marie Ebner von Eschenbach
In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity. – Albert Einstein
Any fool can know. The point is to understand. – Albert Einstein
You cannot solve a problem from the same consciousness that created it. You must learn to see the world anew. – Albert Einstein
If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about the solutions. – Albert Einstein
A problem is your chance to do your best. – Duke Ellington
Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
People are disturbed not by things, but by the view they take of them. – Epictetus
We can often do more for other men by trying to correct our own faults than by trying to correct theirs. – Francois Fenelon
It ain’t what they call you; it’s what you answer to. – W.C. Fields
What people often mean by getting rid of conflict is getting rid of diversity, and it is of utmost importance that these should not be considered the same. We may wish to abolish conflict, but we cannot get rid of diversity…Fear of difference is fear of life itself. – Mary Parker Follett
It is possible to conceive conflict as not necessarily a wasteful outbreak of incompatibilities, but a normal process by which socially valuable differences register themselves for the enrichment of all concerned. – Mary Parker Follett
Don’t find fault. Find a remedy. – Henry Ford
Between stimulus and response is the freedom to choose. – Viktor Frankl
If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins. – Benjamin Franklin
Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment. – Benjamin Franklin
Don’t ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up. – Robert Frost
You can never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete. – Buckminister Fuller
Don’t fight forces; use them. – Buckminster Fuller
You can’t shake hands with a clenched fist. – Indira Gandhi
… what may appear as the truth to one person will often appear as untruth to another person. But that need not worry the seeker. Where there is honest effort, it will be realized that what appeared to be different truths are like the countless and apparently different leaves of the same tree. – Gandhi
Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it stands than to anything on which it is poured. – Gandhi
Every fight is on some level a fight between differing ‘angles of vision’ illuminating the same truth. – Gandhi
The days are too short even for love; how can there be enough time for quarreling? – Margaret Gatty
Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore. – André Gide
Listening is not waiting to talk. – Scott Ginsberg
The problem with holding a grudge is that your hands are then too full to hold onto anything else. – Seth Godin
The way you see people is the way you treat them, and the way you treat them is what they become. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
For there is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it. If only we’re brave enough to be it. – Amanda Gorman
You’re entitled to your own opinion if you keep your opinion to yourself. If you decide to say it out loud, then I think you have a responsibility to be open to changing your mind in the face of better logic or stronger data. I think if you’re willing to voice an opinion, you should also be willing to change that opinion. – Adam Grant
The highest compliment from someone who disagrees with you is not “You were right.” It’s “You made me think.” – Adam Grant
My long experience has taught me to resolve conflict by raising the issues before I or others burn their boats. – Alistair Grant
We mistakenly believe that if our partners love us, they will act and behave in certain ways—the ways we react and behave when we love someone. – John Gray
Conflict is the beginning of consciousness. – M. Esther Harding
You can blame people who knock things over in the dark or you can begin to light candles. You’re only at fault if you know about the problem and choose to do nothing. – Paul Hawken
I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen. – Ernest Hemingway
To truly listen is to risk being changed forever. – Sakej Henderson
An enemy is a person whose story we have not heard. – Gene Knudsen Hoffman
The great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving. – Oliver Wendell Holmes
We are enslaved by anything we do not consciously see. We are freed by conscious perception. – Vernon Howard
Our happiness or our unhappiness depends far more on the way we meet the events of life than on the nature of those events themselves. – Wilhelm von Humboldt
There is virtue in pursuing common ground because common ground is not middle ground. It is often new ground. It is not just static, lying below the surface waiting to be discovered. It is also dynamic, waiting to be created. – Shamil Idriss, CEO, Search for Common Ground
Whenever you’re in conflict with someone, there is one factor that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deepening it. That factor is attitude. – William James
Whenever two people meet there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself, each man as the other sees him, and each man as he really is. – William James
When you have to make a choice and don’t make it, that is in itself a choice. – William James
Which hurts the most, saying something and wishing you had not, or saying nothing and wishing you had? – Javan
Always pass a plate of forgiveness before each verbal feast. – Anabel Jensen
What you don’t see with your eyes, don’t witness with your mouth. – Jewish proverb
Nothing changes more consistently than the past; the past that influences our lives is not what objectively happened, but what we believe happened. – Gerald W. Johnson
Never ruin an apology with an excuse. – Kimberly Johnson
If you’re not listening, you’re not learning. – L.B. Johnson
An apology is the superglue of life. It can repair just about anything. – Lynn Johnston
Nothing produces such odd results as trying to get even. – Franklin P. Jones
Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t. – Erica Jong
You take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing, no one to blame. – Erica Jong
The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress. – Joseph Joubert
Never cut what you can untie. – Joseph Joubert
Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves. – Carl Jung
No one enjoys being wrong, but I do enjoy having been wrong, because it means I am now less wrong than I was before. – Daniel Kahneman, as quoted by Adam Grant
In business, you don’t get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate. – Chester Karrass
Conflict is a challenge to our pretense of completeness. – Robert Kegan
I do not want the peace that passeth understanding. I want the understanding which bringeth peace. – Helen Keller
Our task is not to fix blame for the past, but to fix the course for the future. – John F. Kennedy
If we cannot end our differences at least we can make the world safe for diversity. – John F. Kennedy
Having a good discussion is like having riches. – Kenyan proverb
Vengeance is a lazy form of grief. – Nicole Kidman as Silvia Broome in The Interpreter
Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal. – Martin Luther King
True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice. – Martin Luther King
It all boils down to this: That all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied to a single garment of destiny. – Martin Luther King
Words can destroy. What we call each other ultimately becomes what we think of each other, and it matters. – Jean Kirkpatrick
Anger gives the illusion of clarity. A certain strength arises when we have an opinion and we know where we stand. The difference between the clarity we believe we have when angry and the clarity that results from actually seeing clearly is that aggression has its own narrow logic, which does not take into account the deeper level of causes and conditions that surround each situation. – Dzigar Kongtrul
Every person you fight with has many other people in his life with whom he gets along quite well. You cannot look at a person who seems difficult to you without also looking at yourself. – Jeffrey Kottler
How do you listen? Do you listen with your projections, through your projection, through your ambitions, desire, fears, anxieties, through hearing only what you want to hear, only what will be satisfactory, what will gratify, what will give comfort, what will for the moment alleviate your suffering? If you listen through the screen of your desires, then you obviously listen to your own voice. – J. Krishnamurti
We and you ought not to pull on the ends of a rope. Would you have tied the knots of war? Because the more the two of us pull, the tighter the knot will be tied, and then it will be necessary to cut that knot. And what that would mean is not for me to explain to you. – Nikita Kruschev
When patterns are broken, new worlds emerge. – Tuli Kupferberg
Never attribute to malice or other deliberate decision what can be explained by human frailty, imperfection, or ignorance. – Rabbi Harold Kushner
A good listener is one who helps us overhear ourselves. – Yahia Lababidi
Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you’d have preferred to talk. – Doug Larson
It’s good to have all the props pulled from us occasionally. It gives us some sense of what is rock under our feet, and what is sand. – Madeleine L’Engle
The wise man doesn’t give the right answers, he poses the right questions. – Claude Lévi-Strauss
Behind the cloud the sun is still shining. – Abraham Lincoln
A crisis is a turning point. – Anne Lindthorst
Many a time I have wanted to stop talking and find out what I really believed. – Walter Lippmann
Where all think alike, no one thinks very much. – Walter Lippmann
If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each person’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility. – Longfellow
Instead of suppressing conflicts, specific channels could be created to make this conflict explicit, and specific methods could be set up by which the conflict is resolved. – Albert Low
What we see depends mainly on what we look for. – Sir John Lubbock
Conflict is inevitable, but combat is optional. – Max Lucado
Always remember your focus determines your reality. – George Lucas
Anger is an energy. – John Lyndon (aka Johnny Rotten)
Don’t be afraid of opposition. Remember, a kite rises against, not with, the wind. – Hamilton Mabie
You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions. – Naguib Mahfouz
A marriage without conflicts is almost as inconceivable as a nation without crises. – Andre Maurois
The Earth is too small a star and we too brief a visitor upon it for anything to matter more than the struggle for peace. – Colman McCarthy
Eighty percent of all questions are statements in disguise. – Phil McGraw
What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? – Thomas Merton
Where you stand depends on where you sit. – Rufus Miles (Miles’s Law)
Since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinion that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied. – John Stuart Mill
One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things. – Henry Miller
A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while he gets to know something. – Wilson Mizner
I never allow myself to have an opinion on anything that I don’t know the other side’s argument better than they do. – Charlie Munger
Always remember that to argue, and win, is to break down the reality of the person you are arguing against. It is painful to lose your reality, so be kind, even if you are right. – Haruki Murakami
There is no way to peace. Peace is the way. – AJ Muste
The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing in the right place, but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment. – Dorothy Nevill
Men build too many walls and not enough bridges. – Joseph Fort Newton
Deep listening, compassionate listening is not listening with the purpose of analyzing or even uncovering what has happened in the past. You listen first of all in order to give the other person relief, a chance to speak out, to feel that someone finally understands him or her. Deep listening is the kind of listening that helps us to keep compassion alive while the other speaks…During this time you have in mind only one idea, one desire: to listen in order to give the other person the chance to speak out and suffer less. This is your only purpose. Other things like analyzing, understanding the past, can be a by-produce of this work. But first of all listen with compassion. – Thích Nhất Hạnh
The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and be understood. The best way to understand people is to listen to them. – Ralph Nichols
If one were to attempt to identify a single problematic aspect of human reasoning that deserves attention above all others, the confirmation bias would have to be among the candidates for consideration. Many have written about this bias, and it appears to be sufficiently strong and pervasive that one is led to wonder whether the bias, by itself, might account for a significant fraction of the disputes, altercations, and misunderstandings that occur among individuals, groups, and nations. – Raymond S. Nickerson
We don’t see things as they are. We see things as we are. – Anaïs Nin
The courts of this country should not be the places where resolution of disputes begins. They should be the places where the disputes end after alternative methods of resolving disputes have been considered and tried. – Justice Sandra Day O’Connor
If we can forgive what’s been done to us…If we can forgive what we’ve done to others…If we can leave our stories behind. Our being victims and villains. Only then can we maybe rescue the world. – Chuck Palahniuk
It’s more important to be in right relationship than it is to be right. – Parker Palmer
The more we sweat in peace the less we bleed in war. – Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit
People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others. – Blaise Pascal
A good apology is like antibiotic, a bad apology is like rubbing salt in the wound. – Randy Pausch
To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong. – Joseph Chilton Pearce
You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view. – Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird
The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers. – M. Scott Peck
A man convinced against his will…is not convinced. – Laurence J. Peter
My problem is I say what I’m thinking before I think what I’m saying. – Laurence J. Peter
Not only are there as many conflicting truths as there are people to claim them; there are equally multitudinous and conflicting truths within the individual. – Virgilia Peterson
Be kind; everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. – Philo of Alexandria (also attributed to John Watson)
Not every truth is the better for showing its face undisguised; and often silence is the wisest thing for a man to heed. – Pindar
Three things that never come back: the spent arrow; the spoken word; the lost opportunity. – William George Plunkett
When things go wrong, don’t go with them. – Elvis Presley
Discussion is an exchange of knowledge; argument an exchange of emotion. – Robert Quillen
You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake. – Jeanette Rankin
I’ve always believed that a lot of the troubles in the world would disappear if we were talking to each other instead of about each other. – Ronald Reagan
You can’t influence somebody when you’re judging them. – Tony Robbins
Quarrels would not last long if the fault were only on one side. – Duke François de La Rochefoucauld
It is astonishing how elements which seem insoluble become soluble when someone listens. How confusions which seem irremediable turn into relatively clear flowing streams when one is heard. – Carl Rogers
If it’s mentionable, it’s manageable. – Fred Rogers
Don’t let yesterday use up too much of today. – Will Rogers
The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem. – Theodore Rubin, M.D., psychiatrist and author
Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves. All people live in their own dream, in their own mind; they are in a completely different world from the one we live in. When we take something personally, we make the assumption that they know what is in our world, and we try to impose our world on their world. – don Miguel Ruiz
Out beyond ideas of wrong doing and right doing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there. – Rumi
The best way to persuade people is with your ears—by listening to them. – Dean Rusk
In all affairs it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted. – Bertrand Russell
The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution. – Bertrand Russell
It is with the heart that one sees rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye. – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Human beings love to be right. When a person is willing to give up being right, a whole world of possibilities opens up. – Pete Salmansohn
It’s not the existence of beliefs that is the problem, but what happens to us when we hold them rigidly, without examining them, when we presume the absolutely centrality of our views and become disdainful of others. – Sharon Salzberg
Learning to ignore things is one of the great paths to inner peace. – Robert Sawyer
The test of a successful person is not an ability to eliminate all problems before they arise, but to meet and work out difficulties when they do arise. – David J. Schwartz
Why not go out on a limb? Isn’t that where the fruit is? – Frank Scully
The best plan is to reject straightway the first incentives to anger, to resist its very beginnings, and to take care not to be betrayed into it: for if once it begins to carry us away, it is hard to get back again into a healthy condition, because reason goes for nothing when once passion has been admitted to the mind, and has by our own free will been given a certain authority, it will for the future do as much as it chooses, not only as much as you will allow it. The enemy, I repeat, must be met and driven back at the outermost frontier-line: for when he has once entered the city and passed its gates, he will not allow his prisoners to set bounds to his victory. – Seneca
Before you speak, ask yourself: Is it kind, is it necessary, is it true, does it improve on the silence? – Shirdi Sai Baba
When things are not working for us, instead of fighting and struggling, we need to say, “What’s happening here? How am I not being true to who I am? What is pulling me away from my purpose?” – June Singer
The only people with whom you should try to get even are those who have helped you. – John E. Southard
You can’t turn a “no” to a “yes” without a “maybe” in between. – Kevin Spacey as Frank Underwood in House of Cards
It takes two to quarrel, but only one to end it. – Spanish Proverb
The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn. – Gloria Steinem
Confidence, like art, never comes from having all the answers; it comes from being open to all the questions. – Earl Gray Stevens
This is not your responsibility, but it is your problem. – Cheryl Strayed
Life is ten percent what happens to me and ninety percent how I react to it. – Charles Swindoll
The argument culture urges us to approach the world—and the people in it—in an adversarial frame of mind. It rests on the assumption that opposition is the best way to get anything done: The best way to discuss an idea is to set up a debate; the best way to cover news is to find spokespeople who express the most extreme, polarized views and present them as “both sides”; the best way to settle disputes is litigation that pits one party against the other; the best way to begin an essay is to attack someone; and the best way to show you’re really thinking is to criticize…Conflict and opposition are as necessary as cooperation and agreement, but the scale is off balance, with conflict and opposition over-weighted. – Deborah Tannen
If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow. – Carol Tavris
We belong to each other. – Mother Teresa
It is not how much we do, but how much love we put in the action that we do. – Mother Teresa
Peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of creative alternatives for responding to conflict—alternatives to passive or aggressive responses, alternatives to violence. – Dorothy Thompson
What is truth to one may be a disaster to another. I do not see life through your eyes, nor you through mine. – Hunter S. Thompson
It takes two to speak the truth—one to speak and one to hear. – Henry David Thoreau
Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness. – James Thurber
Well, if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone? – James Thurber
Anger is often what pain looks like when it shows itself in public. – Krista Tippett
Listening is more than being quiet while the other person speaks until you can say what you have to say. – Krista Tippett
I can disagree with your opinion, it turns out, but I can’t disagree with your experience. – Krista Tippett
There is a world of difference between reacting to an event in your life and responding to it. When you re-act, you are acting again, repeating a previous action. To respond implies a spontaneous and appropriate response to the situation. – Michael Toms and Justine Willis Toms
A good manager doesn’t try to eliminate conflict; he tries to keep it from wasting the energies of his people. If you’re the boss and your people fight you openly when they think that you are wrong – that’s healthy. – Robert Townsend
If you want peace, you don’t talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies. – Desmond Tutu
Knowledge becomes wisdom only after it has been put to good use. – Mark Twain
When you’re at the edge of a cliff, sometimes progress is a step backwards. – Unknown
I sat with my anger long enough, until she told me her real name was grief. – Unknown (though often incorrectly attributed to C.S. Lewis)
We could learn a lot from crayons: some are sharp, some are pretty, some are dull, some have weird names, and all are different colors…but they all exist very nicely in the same box. – Unknown
People who fight fire with fire usually end up with ashes. – Abigail VanBuren
Creativity comes from a conflict of ideas. – Donatella Versace
Appreciation is a wonderful thing: it makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well. – Voltaire
Doubt is not a pleasant position, but certainty is an absurd one. – Voltaire
People may claim, “We are aggressive by nature”—I say we shouldn’t delude ourselves about how aggressive we are. We can breed pit bull terriers to be aggressive; we can breed mice to be aggressive; and while I hope no one will ever do it, we could probably breed people to be aggressive. There is a genetic component, I’m convinced, in human aggressive behavior. But at the same time it is clear that we also have lot of natural mechanisms for cooperation, to keep conflict in check, to channel aggression, and to overcome conflict. These are just as natural to us as the aggressive tendencies. – Frans de Waal
The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any. – Alice Walker
Be kind. Everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. – Rev. John Watson (also attributed to Philo of Alexandria)
It isn’t a mistake to have strong views. The mistake is to have nothing else. – Anthony Weston
I’ve found that I can only change how I act if I stay aware of my beliefs and assumptions. Thoughts always reveal themselves in behavior. – Margaret Wheatley
Have you learned lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you? Have you not learned great lessons from those who braced themselves against you, and disputed the passage with you? – Walt Whitman
I would not waste my life in friction when it could be turned into momentum. – Frances Willard
Many promising reconciliations have broken down because, while both parties come prepared to forgive, neither party comes prepared to be forgiven. – Charles Williams
What I know for sure is that the only way to endure the quake is to adjust your stance. You can’t avoid the daily tremors. Don’t fight them. Just find a different way to stand. – Oprah Winfrey
Assumptions are the termites of relationships. – Henry Winkler
Isn’t the best way to save face to keep the lower part shut? – Steven Wright