Conflict Motivation Quotes

Why did we go to war? Why did we pick people from South Carolina, California, and all the places in between to go to a foreign land and risk their lives and have some die? To make sure that Saddam Hussein could do no more damage to the region or us than he has already done.

Maybe I beef with people, but it was never random. Anybody you name, I could give you the reason why it happened or whatever led to the beef.

For some reason a nation feels as shy about admitting that it ever went forth to war for the sake of more wealth as a man would about admitting that he had accepted an invitation just for the sake of the food. This is one of humanity's most profound imbecilities, as perhaps the only justification for asking one's fellowmen to endure the horrors of war would be the knowledge that if they did not fight they would starve.

I don't know if likeable, pleasant characters have enough conflict for me to want to do them. I admire those people, but I've never been that kind of screen presence who can do nothing. I need to do something.

At the heart of every story is conflict - whether external or internal, make it a good one, and remember that this problem is going to shape your character, leaving her forever changed.

A man will fight harder for his interests than for his rights.

Iraq is a manufactured conflict for the sake of geopolitical dominance in the area.

Hezbollah is not fighting for Syria. Hezbollah is not fighting for Iran. Hezbollah is fighting for Lebanon.

What I could not support was a dumb war, a rash war, a war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.

We tried to limit human versus human conflict only to those cases where it could be powerfully motivated and made completely believable.

'The Turnaround' isn't even really a crime novel. But you need conflict to make a novel, any kind of novel, and I don't know any other way to do it than crime.

Only a complete moral idiot can believe for an instant that we are fighting against the wretched of the earth. We are fighting, as I said before, against the scum of the earth

If you pick up an eighteenth-century play, at the top it says 'The Argument,' and then you have a list of characters, and then you have the play. I was just always struck by that - that, of course, good drama is about conflict.

There seemed to be no willingness to fight on the part of the dissident forces [anti Communists in Indonesia] … The dissident leaders have been unable to provide their soldiers with any idea of why they were fighting.

When Men are irritated, and the Passions inflamed, they fly hastily and cheerfully to Arms; but after the first emotions are over, to expect, among such People, as compose the bulk of an Army, that they are influenced by any other principles than those of Interest, is to look for what never did, and I fear never will happen

After all the time we [people] spent saying look, war is a stupid way to solve stuff - oh, you're not trying to solve stuff. You're trying to make money.

I always try to create conflict and drama in my books; it's the engine of the novel.

Money is the sovereign queen of all delights - for her, the lawyer pleads, the soldier fights.