Escalation Quotes

#1. Our numbers have increased in Vietnam because the aggression of others has increased in Vietnam. There is not, and there will not be, a mindless escalation.

Lyndon B. Johnson

#2. We've protected thousands of people in Libya; we have not seen a single U.S. casualty; there's no risks of additional escalation. This operation is limited in time and in scope.

Barack Obama

#3. Blackwater is a company whose business depends on war and conflict to thrive. It operates in a demand-based industry where corporate profits are intimately linked to an escalation of violence. That

Jeremy Scahill

#4. The most common motives for homicide are moralistic: retaliation after an insult, escalation of a domestic quarrel, punishing an unfaithful or deserting romantic partner, and other acts of jealousy, revenge, and self-defense.

Steven Pinker

#5. I was at La Fenice opera house back in 1991 with friends, and we started talking about a conductor whom none of us liked. Somehow there was an escalation, and we started talking about how to kill him, where to kill him. This struck me as a good idea for a book.

Donna Leon

#6. This stigma associated with drug use
the belief that bad kids use, good kids don't, and those with full-blown addiction are weak, dissolute, and pathetic
has contributed to the escalation of use and has hampered treatment more than any single other factor.

David Sheff

#7. It's almost inevitable there's going to be an escalation on both sides.

Bill Luther

#8. Both sanctions and bombing give the illusion of precision, calibration, and the capacity to ratchet up coercion in a gradual escalation. And both have the capacity to cause tremendous suffering among innocent third parties while having far less strategic effect than their advocates claim.

Mike Lofgren

#9. Reversing the escalation of health care costs is going to need more than legislation, yet it can be done without imposing rationing, as critics of reform fear.

Mitch Kapor

#10. We don't really want a huge house, but we want the house to be slightly bigger than our neighbors, and a car that is bigger than our neighbor's, and they're going on vacation that's slightly more expensive, and this escalation happens that things got out of hand.

Dan Ariely

#11. The fact is that when you make the other suffer, he will try to find relief by making you suffer more. The result is an escalation of suffering on both sides.

Thich Nhat Hanh

#12. Kissing is not just kissing. It is a major escalation or de-escalation point in a powerful process of mate choice.

Helen Fisher

#13. Most Americans believe that escalation will not bring the war in Iraq to a responsible end, and that's why I've proposed not just a troop cap, but a phased redeployment that will start bringing our troops home.

Barack Obama

#14. These are the strategic dialectics of anti-imperialist struggle: through the defensive reactions of the system, the escalation of counterrevolution, the transformation of the political martial law into military martial law, the enemy betrays himself, becomes visible.

Ulrike Meinhof

#15. Humans have a talent for escalation.
-Death

Markus Zusak

#16. When downed American pilots were first taken prisoner in North Vietnam in 1964, U.S. policy became pretty much to ignore them - part and parcel of President Lyndon B. Johnson's determination to keep the costs of his increasingly futile military escalation in Southeast Asia from the public.

Rick Perlstein

#17. Regarding Syria, we already call for dialogue between Syria and all parties concerned, in order to avoid any kind of escalation in the region which may expose the whole area to chaos.

Ali Abdullah Saleh

#18. The American escalation of the war in Laos provoked a response by the Communist forces, which now control more of Laos than ever before.

Noam Chomsky

#19. In point of fact all Americans are automatically turned down by China these days because of the escalation of Johnson's war in Vietnam, which several times has intruded into China.

Anna Louise Strong

#20. What's going on in the Senate is kind of a politics of escalation. We're getting sort of like the Mideast: pay back everybody when you're in charge.

Lindsey Graham

#21. Even though it is always difficult to abandon a project, it is much easier in the early stages of a venture, before there is an enormous escalation of committed time and energy.

Tina Seelig

#22. I noticed at once that Depp had a dangerously energized intelligence ... He was a suave little brute, but he had a wicked sense of humor and a rare instinct for escalation.

Hunter S. Thompson

#23. The press doesn't stop publishing, by the way, in a fascist escalation; it simply watches what it says. That too can be an incremental process, and the pace at which the free press polices itself depends on how journalists are targeted.

Naomi Wolf

#24. The escalation of attitude's impressive, Ace.

Kristen Ashley

#25. As individuals we tend to climb to our levels of incompetence. We behave as though up is better and more is better, and yet all around us we see the tragic victims of this mindless escalation.

Laurence J. Peter

#26. Between an uncontrolled escalation and passivity, there is a demanding road of responsibility that we must follow.

Dominique De Villepin

#27. Declare the United States the winner and begin de-escalation.

George Aiken

#28. The consequence could be that we would have an escalation that would take place that would not only involve many lives, but I think it could consume the Middle East in a confrontation and a conflict that we would regret.

Leon Panetta

#29. When it came to the Vietnam War, Mr. McNamara was an early advocate of escalation but came to realize the flaws in the American approach earlier than many of his colleagues. Yet in public, he continued to defend the war.

Samantha Power

#30. The real demon is success-the anxieties engendered by this quest are relentless, degrading, corroding. What is worse, there is no end to this escalation of desire.

Marya Mannes

#31. I've always said I'm less interested in twists as I am about escalation.

Drew Goddard

#32. Is there no end to this escalation of desire?

Marya Mannes

#33. We have FCC, abandoned alimony payments, assault and battery, Homeland Security escalation, and that's before we invite the IRS to take a walk on your wild side.

Ken Goldstein

#34. Peace cannot be achieved except after the cessation of military escalation and the economic and financial siege.

Yasser Arafat

#35. Between my leaping upstairs and my escalation on the stairs there is an intimate connection, think on your feet!

Sam Houssami

#36. The escalation to attack undefended civilian targets is just a classic illustration of terrorism.

Noam Chomsky

#37. Confidence cannot escalate to arrogance, it only happens if the blood of pride is running through your veins.

Michael Bassey Johnson

#38. When we are anxiously attached, our inability to trust the intentions and behaviors of others will often lead us to escalate situations and then reject attempts to reassure us. It is a painful and dramatic spiral.

Mary Crocker Cook