1963, UN speech
William Jennings Bryan (1860–1925) United States Secretary of State
Cross of Gold Speech (1896)
Context: This is not a contest between persons. The humblest citizen in all the land, when clad in the armor of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the hosts of error. I come to speak to you in defence of a cause as holy as the cause of liberty—the cause of humanity.
Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French intellectual and literary figure
Source: L’Expérience Intérieure (1943), p. 12
Bob Costas (1952) American sportscaster
On the September 24, 2000 Olympic w:racewalk broadcast, quoted in "No Respect for Olympic Racewalking" https://www.verywellfit.com/no-respect-for-olympic-racewalking-3435871
John Cowper Powys (1872–1963) British writer, lecturer and philosopher
Source: The Complex Vision (1920), Chapter I
Context: This swallowing up of life in nothingness, this obliteration of life by nothingness is what the emotion of malice ultimately desires. The eternal conflict between love and malice is the eternal contest between life and death. And this contest is what the complex vision reveals, as it moves from darkness to darkness.
Morihei Ueshiba (1883–1969) founder of aikido
The Art of Peace (1992)
Variant: The Art of Peace is invincible because it contends with nothing.
Context: There are no contests in the Art of Peace. A true warrior is invincible because he or she contests with nothing. Defeat means to defeat the mind of contention that we harbor within.
“I believe that the biblical teaching is clear. It always contests political power.”
Jacques Ellul (1912–1994) French sociologist, technology critic, and Christian anarchist
Source: The Subversion of Christianity (1984), p. 116
Context: I believe that the biblical teaching is clear. It always contests political power. It incites to "counterpower," to "positive" criticism, to an irreducible dialogue (like that between king and prophet in Israel), to antistatism, to a decentralizing of the relation, to an extreme relativizing of everything political, to an anti-ideology, to a questioning of all that claims either power or dominion (in other words, of all things political), and finally, if we may use a modern term, to a kind of "anarchism" (so long as we do not relate the term to the anarchist teaching of the nineteenth century).
Indro Montanelli (1909–2001) Italian journalist
cited in Enrico Bonerandi, Montanelli: pronto a morire http://ricerca.repubblica.it/repubblica/archivio/repubblica/2000/12/13/montanelli-pronto-morire.html, in la Repubblica, 13 December 2000, p. 36. <br class="br">2000s - 2010s
Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China
1930s, On Protracted Warfare (1938)
