Fighting quotes
9.2K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside fighting — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"We have a planet that is at risk, where resources don't have a permanent life. We are going to have to make the decision: are we going to survive or are we waiting for our extinction? One day we will wake up and find people are fighting not for oil but water."
"I am not fighting machinery as such, but the madness of thinking that machinery saves labor. Men save labor until thousands of them are without work and die of hunger on the streets. I want to secure employment and livelihood not only to part of the human race, but for all. I will not have the enrichment of a few at the expense of the community. At present the machine is helping a small minority to live on the exploitation of the masses. The motive force of this minority is not humanity or love of their kind, but greed and avarice."
"A good cause can become bad if we fight for it with means that are indiscriminately murderous. A bad cause can become good if enough people fight for it in a spirit of comradeship and self-sacrifice. In the end it is how you fight, as much as why you fight, that makes your cause good or bad."
"I never wanted to fight against the Union, but could not turn my back on Virginia."
"The Falklands thing was a fight between two bald men over a comb."
"Well, you know how it feels if you begin hoping for something that you want desperately badly; you almost fight against the hope because it is too good to be true; you've been disappointed so often before."
"Americans understand that the game is rigged, and they've had enough of it. They're ready to fight back. They want a Washington that works for them, i think that people are getting more engaged, politically, and they're seeing through a lot of the rhetoric that politicians have been throwing out there for a long time. They want to see some real change, and I think that's what we need to work on."
"A good martial artist does not become tense, but ready. Not thinking, yet not dreaming. Ready for whatever may come. When the opponent expands, I contract; and when he contracts, I expand. And when there is an opportunity, "I" do not hit, "it" hits all by itself."
"The great fights with your strongest rivals are always the biggest motivation. When you win easily it's not the same taste."
"Those who live are those who fight."
"You can be deported back to Canada, absolutely, for a shockingly minor infraction. Little bar fight. Next thing you know you are back in Sascatchuan. Which I'm not from, thank God... But it did concern me."
"I am troubled, immeasurably by your eyes. I am struck by the feather of your soft reply. The sound of glass speaks quick, disdain and conceals what your eyes fight to explain."
"No one has been barred on account of his race from fighting or dying for America, there are no white or colored signs on the foxholes or graveyards of battle."
"Come, weave us a scheme so I can pay them back! Stand beside me, Athena, fire me with daring, fierce as the day we ripped Troy's glittering crown of towers down. Stand by me - furious now as then, my bright-eyed one - and I would fight three hundred men, great goddess, with you to brace me, comrade-in-arms in battle!"
"The global HIV/AIDS epidemic is an unprecedented crisis that requires an unprecedented response. In particular it requires solidarity - between the healthy and the sick, between rich and poor, and above all, between richer and poorer nations. We have 30 million orphans already. How many more do we have to get, to wake up?"
"You can Jail a Revolutionary but you can't jail the Revolution. You can run a freedom fighter around the country, but you can't run freedom fighting around the country. You can murder a liberator, but you can't murder liberation."
"There are many, and there will be many, who will gladly purchase eternal life for a small price, if they see that others are fighting for God in earnest, rather than pretending to do so."
"There’s no way I’m going to put myself through Sandhurst and then sit on my arse back home while my boys are out fighting for their country."
"... the connection between imperial politics and culture is astonishingly direct. American attitudes to American "greatness", to hierarchies of race, to the perils of "other" revolutions (the American revolution being considered unique and somehow unrepeatable anywhere else in the world) have remained constant, have dictated, have obscured, the realities of empire, while apologists for overseas American interests have insisted on American innocence, doing good, fighting for freedom."
"I know that I shall meet my fate somewhere among the clouds above; those that I fight I do not hate, those that I guard I do not love."
