Adversarial Relations Quotes

We don't have to kind of be in cycles of conflict if we can find other ways to resolve these issues. We can do things that challenge the conventional thinking that, you know, 'AIPAC doesn't like this,' or 'the Israeli government doesn't like this,' or 'the Gulf countries don't like it.' It's the possibility of improved relations with adversaries.

But when you meet with the enemy and genuinely try to understand his or her perspective, you lose the enemy as a political tool. And that's the eternal obstacle.

All forms of commerce are adversarial.

Abatement in the hostility of one's enemies must never be thought to signify they have been won over. It only means that one has ceased to constitute a threat.

Just because you are adversaries or opponents in politics doesn't mean you have to be enemies.

The press may hate me, and I know my battles with them are not over, but that doesn't matter.

Labor, like Israel, has many sorrows. Its women weep for their fallen and they lament for the future of the children of the race. It ill behooves one who has supped at labor's table and who has been sheltered in labor's house to curse with equal fervor and fine impartiality both labor and its adversaries when they become locked in deadly embrace.

The distrust and suspicion which men everywhere evidence toward their adversaries, at all states of historical development, may be regarded as the immediate precursor to the notion of ideology.

Hostility is the natural state of affairs between the White House and the Media

It ill behooves one who has supped at labor's table and who has been sheltered in labor's house to curse with equal fervor and fine impartiality both labor and its adversaries when they become locked in deadly embrace.

Reconciling with an adversary that can be as brutal as the Taliban sounds distasteful, even unimaginable. And diplomacy would be easy if we only had to talk to our friends. But that is not how one makes peace.

I respect the media. But periodically things come up. Like the guy in Toronto [CP24 Interview]. This is what I run into, also. Everybody that helps you is not necessarily your friend. And everybody that fights you is not necessarily your enemy. So you always have to be on guard.

A peace deal requires agreements, and you don't make agreements with your friends, you make agreements with your enemies.

The $52.6 billion U.S. intelligence arsenal is aimed mainly at unambiguous adversaries, including al-Qaida, North Korea and Iran. But top-secret budget documents reveal an equally intense focus on one purported ally: Pakistan.

If I'm disrespectful to my opponent, how can I respect myself?

The wise man always throws himself on the side of his assailants. It is more his interest than it is theirs to find his weak point.

The two sides of industry have traditionally always regarded each other in Britain with the greatest possible loathing, mistrust and contempt. They are both absolutely right.

It's not a very good idea to make an enemy of anyone who buys ink by the barrel.

Every non-political human grouping of whatever kind, legal, social, religious, economic or other becomes at last political if it creates an opposition deep enough to range men against one another as enemies.

The United States of America is the leading power in the world. Our friends and our adversaries respect us in large measure because they know that we are steady. We are fact-based. We are serious.

Sometimes we remain true to a cause simply because its opponents are unfailingly tasteless.

We must take the initiative; we must be permanently on the offensive. It is the battle of class struggle. We must keep the enemy always on the defensive.

Practically everybody is suing everybody else these days.

Strong countries and strong presidents talk to their adversaries. That's what Kennedy did with Khrushchev. That's what Reagan did with Gorbachev. That's what Nixon did with Mao. I mean think about it. Iran, Cuba, Venezuela - these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don't pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us. And yet we were willing to talk to the Soviet Union at the time when they were saying we're going to wipe you off the planet.