42 Masterful Quotes to Inspire Healthier Relationships

42 Masterful Quotes to Inspire Healthier Relationships

Conflict is part of our working life and is often used as a way to work out our differences and reach a conclusion. It’s usually the approach you take that tends to exacerbate the issues and cause undue stress. How you deal with conflict reveals your character.

  1. The wise man doesn’t give the right answers, he poses the right questions — Claude Lvi-Strauss
  2. A crisis is a turning point — Anne Lindthorst
  3. Conflict is inevitable, but combat is optional — Max Lucade
  4. Don’t be afraid of opposition. Remember, a kite rises against, not with, the wind — Hamilton Mabie
  5. There is no way to peace. Peace is the way — AJ Muste
  6. 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
  7. 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
  8. The more we sweat in peace the less we bleed in war — Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit
  9. To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong — Joseph Chilton Pearce
  10. A man convinced against his will”¦is not convinced — Laurence J. Peter
  11. My problem is I say what I’m thinking before I think what I’m saying — Laurence J. Peter
  12. Discussion is an exchange of knowledge; argument an exchange of emotion  –  Robert Quillen
  13. You can’t influence somebody when you’re judging them — Tony Robbins
  14. Quarrels would not last long if the fault were only on one side — Duke François de La Rochefoucauld
  15. 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
  16. If it’s mentionable, it’s manageable— Mr. Rogers
  17. Don’t let yesterday use up too much of today — Will Rogers
  18. The best way to persuade people is with your ears,  by listening to them  — Dean Rusk
  19. The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution — Bertrand Russell
  20. It is with the heart that one sees rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye — Antoine de Saint-Exupry
  21. 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
  22. 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
  23. Why not go out on a limb? Isn’t that where the fruit is? — Frank Scully
  24. Before you speak, ask yourself: Is it kind, is it necessary, is it true, does it improve the silence? — Shirdi Sai Baba
  25. 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
  26. The only people with whom you should try to get even are those who have helped you — John E. Southard
  27. It takes two to quarrel, but only one to end it — Spanish Proverb
  28. The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn— Source unknown
  29. Confidence, like art, never comes from having all the answers; it comes from being open to all the questions — Earl Gray Stevens
  30. Life is ten percent what happens to me and ninety percent how I react to it — Charles Swindoll
  31. If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow — Carol Tavris
  32. 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
  33. Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness — James Thurber
  34. 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
  35. Knowledge becomes wisdom only after it has been put to good use — Mark Twain
  36. People who fight fire with fire usually end up with ashes — Abigail VanBuren
  37. The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any — Alice Walker
  38. It isn’t a mistake to have strong views. The mistake is to have nothing else — Anthony Weston
  39. 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
  40. I would not waste my life in friction when it could be turned into momentum — Frances Willard
  41. When you’re at the edge of a cliff, sometimes progress is a step backward — Source unknown

35 Best Conflict Resolution Quotes

35 Best Conflict Resolution Quotes

Conflict happens. However, avoidance of conflict, with no effort to resolve it, postpones a proper response and exacerbates the problem because conflicts that are allowed to fester unaddressed will always increase and have negative effects on relationships within the body.

These quotes seem to suggest that it is how you handle the situation, your attitude going into the conflict, and the conflict  resolution that matters.

  1. “If you understood everything I said, you’d be me.” — Miles Davis
  2. “Don’t look where you fall, but where you slipped.” — African proverb
  3. “Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.” — Paul Boese
  4. “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
  5. “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
  6. “Don’t let yesterday use up too much of today.” — Cherokee proverb
  7. “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.” — Winston Churchill
  8. “A pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty.” — Winston Churchill
  9. “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
  10. “The quality of our lives depends not on whether or not we have conflicts, but on how we respond to them.” — Tom Crum
  11. “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
  12. “The quieter you become, the more you can hear.” – Ram Dass
  13. “The more incompetent one feels, the more eager he is to fight.” — Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  14. “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
  15. “The only difference between stumbling blocks and stepping stones is the way in which we use them.” — Adriana Doyle
  16. “When we change the way we look at things, the things we look at change.” — Wayne Dyer
  17. “Whenever two good people argue over principles, they are both right.” — Marie Ebner von Eschenbach
  18. “Today . . . spend more time with people who bring out the best in you, not the stress in you.”—- Unknown Author
  19. “Any fool can know. The point is to understand.” — Unknown
  20. “Love is our most unifying and empowering common spiritual denominator. The more we ignore its potential to bring greater balance and deeper meaning to human existence, the more likely we are to continue to define history as one long inglorious record of man’s inhumanity to man.”  — Unknown
  21. “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
  22. “Our greatest power as nations and individuals is not the ability to employ assault weapons, suicide bombers, and drones to destroy each other. The greater more creative powers with which we may arm ourselves are grace and compassion sufficient enough to love and save each other.” — Seth Godin
  23. “The problem with holding a grudge is that your hands are then too full to hold onto anything else.” — Seth Godin
  24. “To truly listen is to risk being changed forever.” — Sakej Henderson
  25. “The great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes
  26. “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
  27. “Never look down on anybody unless you’re helping them up.” – Jesse Jackson
  28. “Always pass a plate of forgiveness before each verbal feast — Anabel Jensen
  29. “Never ruin an apology with an excuse.” — Kimberly Johnson
  30. “If you’re not listening, you’re not learning.” — L.B. Johnson
  31. “Conflict cannot survive without your participation.”— Wayne Dyer
  32. Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” — Carl Jung
  33. “When you are grateful, fear disappears and abundance appears.”— Anthony Robbins
  34. “Happiness depends on what you can give, not on what you can get.”— Swami Chinmayananda Saraswati
  35. “Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.” — Martin Luther King

Jesus did not advocate non-violence merely as a technique for outwitting the enemy, but as a just means of opposing the enemy in such a way as to hold open the possibility of the enemy’s becoming just as well. Both sides must win. We are summoned to pray for our enemies’ transformation, and to respond to ill-treatment with a love that not only is godly but also, I am convinced, can only be found in God.

 

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