“One of the things I discovered that everyone on this planet understands is disagreement, and everyone wants to know how to deal with disagreements. From that point, I started to journey on the pathways of Dialectical Thinking.” — Frederick Holscher
1. The Value of Holding Opposites & Thinking Deeply
- “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “Nothing is more practical than a good theory.” — Kurt Lewin
- “Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.” — Henry Ford
- “Nothing in life is as important as you think it is while you are thinking about it.” — Daniel Kahneman
- “The voice of reason may be much fainter than the loud and clear voice of an erroneous intuition, and it can only be heard if you slow down.” — Daniel Kahneman
2. Blind Spots, Assumptions & Misperceptions
- “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” — Mark Twain
- “It isn’t that they can’t see the solution. It’s that they can’t see the problem.” — G.K. Chesterton
- “The most difficult thing is to recognise that sometimes we too are blinded by our own incentives. Because we don’t see how our conflicts of interest work on us.” — Dan Ariely
- “Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.” — Douglas Adams
3. Conflict as a Normal & Creative Force
- “Conflict is the gadfly of thought. It stirs us to observation and memory. It instigates to invention. It shocks us out of sheeplike passivity.” — John Dewey
- “Peace is not the absence of conflict, but the ability to cope with it.” — Mahatma Gandhi
- “Conflict is inevitable, but combat is optional.” — Max Lucado
- “The quality of our lives depends not on whether or not we have conflicts, but on how we respond to them.” — Thomas Crum
- “Every conflict we face in life is rich with positive and negative potential…The choice is not up to our opponents, but to us.” — Kenneth Cloke
4. Collaboration, Diversity & Leadership
- “Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.” — Walter Lippmann
- “We don’t get harmony when everybody sings the same note. Only notes that are different can harmonize.” — Steve Goodier
- “A willingness to trust and openly listen to alternative ideas and views is essential for collaboration to be successful.” — Dale Eilerman
- “Don’t be afraid of opposition. Remember, a kite rises against, not with, the wind.” — Hamilton Wright Mabie
- “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.” — Winston Churchill
5. Execution, Timing & Discipline
- “If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?” — John Wooden
- “Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.” — U.S. Navy SEALs maxim
- “You can’t talk your way out of something you behaved your way into. You have to behave your way out of it.” — Doug Conant
6. Conflict of Interest – Self-Awareness
- “If I, taking care of everyone’s interests, also take care of my own, you can’t talk about a conflict of interest.” — Silvio Berlusconi
- “Today everything’s a conflict of interest.” — Sid Vicious
- “The most difficult thing is to recognise that sometimes we too are blinded by our own incentives. Because we don’t see how our conflicts of interest work on us.” — Dan Ariely
7. Family & Marriage – Conflict as Everyday Life
- “Marriage means expectations and expectations mean conflict.” — Paxton Blair
- “My wife Mary and I have been married for forty-seven years and not once have we had an argument serious enough to consider divorce; murder, yes, but divorce, never.” — Jack Benny
- “They say marriages are made in Heaven. But so is thunder and lightning.” — Clint Eastwood
8. Paradox and Persistence
- “When introverts are in conflict with each other, it may require a map in order to follow all the silences, nonverbal cues, and passive-aggressive behaviors!” — Adam S. McHugh
- “I am extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end.” — Margaret Thatcher
- “Laughing at our mistakes can lengthen our own life. Laughing at someone else’s can shorten it.” — Cullen Hightower
- “By the time a man realizes that his father was right, he has a son who thinks he’s wrong.” — Charles Wadsworth
- “Often those that criticise others reveal what he himself lacks.” — Shannon L. Alder
- “One might as well try to ride two horses moving in different directions, as to try to maintain in equal force two opposing or contradictory sets of desires.” — Unknown
- “You do not achieve anything without trouble, ever.” — Margaret Thatcher
- “Healing is the end of conflict with yourself.” — Unknown
- “Arguments drag out because one is too stubborn to forgive and the other is too proud to apologise.” — Unknown
- “Do not kid yourself — a conflict is never about the surface issue. It is about the ones unsaid, untreated and unhealed wounds.” — Unknown
- “There is little value in preparing a cookbook of recipes for conflict success. The effects of conflict interaction depend directly on what the participants do mentally with conflict behaviour — that is, how they process and interpret their behaviour.” — William Cupach & Daniel Canary
9. Dialectics & the Art of Seeing Both Sides
- “You may not be interested in the dialectic but the dialectic is interested in you; you can’t give up politics, it won’t give you up.”— Christopher Hitchens
- “Wisdom lies neither in fixity nor in change, but in the dialectic between the two. A constant coming and going: wisdom lies in the momentary.”— Octavio Paz
- “The great dialectic in our time is not, as anciently supposed, between capital and labor; it is between economic enterprise and the state.”— John Kenneth Galbraith
- “Dialectic thought is an attempt to break through the coercion of logic by its own means.”— Theodor W. Adorno
- “I preferred the weapons of dialectic to all the other teachings of philosophy, and armed with these, I chose the conflicts of disputation rather than the trophies of war.”— Peter Abelard
- “Narrative identity takes part in the story’s movement, in the dialectic between order and disorder.”— Paul Ricoeur
- “The link between peace and stability on the one hand, and social and economic growth on the other, is dialectic. Peace, poverty, and backwardness cannot mix in one region.”— Hussein of Jordan
- “Faith is not uprooted by dialectic proof; it must already be deeply shaken by other causes to be unable to withstand the shock of argument.”— Émile Durkheim
- “Testimony demands to be interpreted because of the dialectic of meaning and event that traverses it.”— Paul Ricoeur
- “Objects in a park suggest static repose rather than any ongoing dialectic. Parks are finished landscapes for finished art.”— Robert Smithson
- “In my experience, it’s common that deep truths exist at both extremes of a dialectic, and the wisest stance on an issue will incorporate both opposites within itself.”— Joe Lonsdale
- “Being a great founder or early team member is a difficult dialectic—you have to be a bit overconfident, and a big ego isn’t always a bad thing. To change the world requires pushing really, really hard and believing you and your team know something others don’t.”— Joe Lonsdale
- “To be in the woods is a special thing. And also just the concept of wilderness as a necessary opposite in a kind of global dialectic. I want there to be wilderness where there are no humans in a world like this. So nature is super important.”— David Longstreth