Quotes about enemies

Blaine hated the Confederate States because they were a rival, not because they were tyrants. Had they been exemplars of purest democracy, rivals they would have remained, and he would have hated them no less.

In practice we always base our preparations against an enemy on the assumption that his plans are good; indeed, it is right to rest our hopes not on a belief in his blunders, but on the soundness of our provisions. Nor ought we to believe that there is much difference between man and man, but to think that the superiority lies with him who is reared in the severest school.

[C]oncessions to adversaries only end in self reproach, and the more strictly they are avoided the greater will be the chance of security.

Fearful people develop their religions as protective devices, ways to manipulate hostile environments, formulas for identifying and defeating their enemies. The more fearful people are, the more enemies they have, the more adversarial language they use.

It cheered me a little. Enmities among one’s enemies are always comforting.

You shall judge of a man by his foes as well as by his friends.

For every ten jokes, thou hast got a hundred enemies.

Fortunately for you, we British judge man’s civility not by his compassion for his friends, but by his compassion for his enemies.

He who conquers his enemy with meekness, wins fame.

By the time you're thirty, your worst enemy is yourself.

A civilization at war chooses only the most obvious enemy, and often also the one perceived, at first, to be the most easily defeatable. But that enemy is not the true enemy, nor is it the gravest threat to that civilisation. Thus a civilization at war often chooses the wrong enemy.

It is useless to try to adjudicate a long-standing animosity by asking who started it or who is the most wrong. The only sufficient answer is to give up the animosity and try forgiveness, to try to love our enemies and to talk to them and (if we pray) to pray for them. If we can't do any of that, then we must begin again by trying to imagine our enemies' children who, like our children, are in mortal danger because of enmity that they did not cause.