Quotes about combat
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“It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle … There was much in it that I did not understand, in some ways I did not even like it, but I recognized it immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for.”

George Orwell book Homage to Catalonia

Homage to Catalonia (1938)

Way, Understanding, Time

“But the fight for our planet, physical and spiritual, a fight of cosmic proportions, is not a vague matter of the future; it has already started. The forces of Evil have begun their decisive offensive, you can feel their pressure, and yet your screens and publications are full of prescribed smiles and raised glasses. What is the joy about?”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Harvard University address (1978)

Smile, Feeling, Decision, Evil

“Progress? There's no such thing as progress. There's only change. You dig a hole in the ground, you build up a city, and you fight a war, and you call it progress?”

Charles Manson (1934–2017) American criminal and musician

Interview track from Charles Manson Sings (2006)

War, Change

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

As quoted in Beyond Civilization : Humanity's Next Great Adventure (1999), by Daniel Quinn, p. 137
From 1980s onwards

Reality, Change

“The Fascist State directs and controls the entrepreneurs, whether it be in our fisheries or in our heavy industry in the Val d'Aosta. There the State actually owns the mines and carries on transport, for the railways are state property. So are many of the factories… We term it state intervention… If anything fails to work properly, the State intervenes. The capitalists will go on doing what they are told, down to the very end. They have no option and cannot put up any fight. Capital is not God; it is only a means to an end.”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

As quoted in Talks with Mussolini, Emil Ludwig, Boston, MA, Little, Brown and Company (1933), pp. 153-154, Interview took place between March 23 and April 4, 1932
1930s

God

“The night can sweat with terror as before
We pieced our thoughts into philosophy,
And planned to bring the world under a rule,
Who are but weasels fighting in a hole.”

W.B. Yeats book The Tower

I, st. 4 The Tower (1928), Nineteen Hundred And Nineteen http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1547/

World, Night

“There is no way I am going to put myself through Sandhurst and then sit on my arse back home while my boys are out fighting for their country.”

Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex (1984) a member of the British royal family

Regarding his desire to be deployed in the Iraq War. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4248234.stm (2005).

Way, Home, Boy, Country

“If I had engaged in politics, I should have perished long ago and done no good to either you or to myself. …for the truth is that no man who goes to war with you or any other multitude, honestly struggling against the commission of unrighteouosness and wrong in the State, will save his life; he who will really fight for right, if he would live even for a little while, must have a private station and not a public one.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

31e
Plato, Apology

Life, War, Truth

“This is the war on terrorism; it's worth fighting for.”

Bruce Willis (1955) American actor, producer, and musician

Bruce Willis during a visit to the 101st Airborne Division in northern Iraq, September 25, 2003. http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Sep2003/n09262003_200309266.html

War

“Against a better will the will fights ill,…”

Dante Alighieri book Purgatorio

Canto XX, line 1 (tr. C. E. Norton).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Purgatorio

“I'm not gonna help nobody get something my negroes don't have. If I'm gonna die, I'll die now right here fighting you, if I'm gonna die. You my enemy. My enemies are white people, not Viet Congs or Chinese or Japanese. You my opposer when I want freedom. You my opposer when I want justice. You my opposer when I want equality. You won't even stand up for me in America for my religious beliefs, and you want me to go somewhere and fight, but you won't even stand up for me here at home.”

Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) African American boxer, philanthropist and activist

Regarding the Vietnam War and conscription (1967) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeFMyrWlZ68

People, Justice, Home, Freedom

“He, therefore, who desires peace, should prepare for war. He who aspires to victory, should spare no pains to form his soldiers. And he who hopes for success, should fight on principle, not chance. (Book 3, Foreword)”
Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum; qui uictoriam cupit, milites inbuat diligenter; qui secundos optat euentus, dimicet arte, non casu.

Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus book De re militari

De Re Militari (also Epitoma Rei Militaris), Book III, "Dispositions for Action"
Variant: Si vis pacem para bellum. ("If you want peace, prepare for war.")

Pain, War, Books, Peace

“There are no innocent civilians. It is their government and you are fighting a people, you are not trying to fight an armed force anymore. So it doesn't bother me so much to be killing the so-called innocent bystanders.”

Curtis LeMay (1906–1990) American general and politician

Sherry, Michael (September 10, 1989). The Rise of American Air Power: The Creation of Armageddon, p. 287 (from "LeMay's interview with Sherry," interview "after the war," p. 408 n. 108). Yale University Press. ISBN-13: 978-0300044140.

People

“I wanted man to become a master! So he wouldn't have to live from hand to mouth! I didn't want to see another soul grow numb slaving over someone else's machines! I wanted there to be nothing, nothing, nothing left of that damned social mess! I abhorred degradation and suffering! I was fighting against poverty! I wanted a new generation of mankind! … I wanted to transform all of humanity into a world-wide aristocracy. Unrestricted, free, and supreme people. Something even greater than people.”

Karel Čapek R.U.R.

R.U.R. (1920)

People, World, Soul, Suffering

“The artist must elect to fight for freedom or slavery. I have made my choice. I had no alternative. The history of the capitalist era is characterized by the degradation of my people: despoiled of their lands, their true culture destroyed… denied equal protection of the law, and deprived their rightful place in the respect of their fellows.”

Paul Robeson (1898–1976) American singer and actor

As quoted in Paul Robeson, The Whole World in His Hands (1981) by Susan Robeson, p. 60

People, Law, History, Freedom

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

Robert A. Heinlein Time Enough for Love

Time Enough for Love (1973)

Problem, Change, Cooking

“Another white man's trick! Let me go! Let me die fighting!”

Crazy Horse (1840–1877) Oglala Sioux chief

During the final confrontation in which he was fatally wounded, as quoted in Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains (1919) by Charles Alexander Eastman

“Never go to bed angry, stay up and fight.”

William Congreve (1670–1729) British writer

Phyllis Diller, as quoted in Getting Through to the Man You Love : The No-Nonsense, No-Nagging Guide for Women (1999) by Michele Weiner-Davis, p. 151
Misattributed

“I give the fight up: let there be an end,
A privacy, an obscure nook for me.
I want to be forgotten even by God.”

Robert Browning Paracelsus

Part 5.
Paracelsus (1835)

God

“He's somewhat lewd; but a well-meaning mind;
Weeps much; fights little; but is wond'rous kind.”

John Dryden All for Love

Prologue
All for Love (1678)

“I found a joy in myself, coming from the awareness that I want to fight.”

Witold Pilecki (1901–1948) World War II concentration camp leader and resistor

Joy

“In the most trying hours, through dismal nights and endless interrogations and maltreatment, during days of killing solitude in cells and close confinement, we were always sustained by the hope that all these agonies were not in vain, that there was a strong and mighty country, however far away, in which all the dreams for which we were fighting had been fulfilled. For us it was the homeland of the workers, in which labour was honoured, in which love, comradeship, and sincerity prevailed. With what joy I had felt the strength of that country as, emerging from prison in 1934, I listened in the dead of each night to Radio Moscow and heard the clock of the Kremlin tower striking the hours, and the stirring strains of the 'International.”

Josip Broz Tito (1892–1980) Yugoslav revolutionary and statesman

Jasper Ridley, Tito: A Biography (Constable and Company Ltd., 1994), p. 128.
Other

Love, Dreams, Hope, Solitude

“I operate from a place of delusion-that’s what the Fame is all about… I want people to walk around delusional about how great they can be - and then to fight so hard for it every day that the lie becomes the truth.”

Lady Gaga (1986) American singer, songwriter, and actress

. "The Rise of Lady Gaga." by Brian Hiatt, in Rolling Stone (11 June 2009): 57-61.

People, Truth, Lie

“I am struck again by the fact that as soon as a working man gets an official post in the Trade Union or goes into Labour politics, he becomes middle-class whether he will or no. ie. by fighting against the bourgeoisie he becomes a bourgeois. The fact is that you cannot help living in the manner appropriate and developing the ideology appropriate to your income.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

The Road to Wigan Pier Diary 6-10 February (1936)

Help

“No, we fight because we are free men who don't sleep under oppression. We want to restore freedom to our nation, just as you lay waste to our nation. So shall we lay waste to yours.”

Osama bin Laden (1957–2011) founder of al-Qaeda

2000s, 2004, 2004 Video Broadcast on Al-Jazeera October 29

Men, Sleep, Freedom

“Every day we started fighting. Every night we fell in love. No one else could make me sadder. But no one else could lift me high above.”

Alexander Rybak (1986) Norwegian singer, actor, violinist, composer, pianist

"Fairytale" (2009).

Love, Night

“An immense amount, enough to fill many books, has already been written on the subject [of the Barcelona fighting], and I do not suppose I should exaggerate if I said that nine-tenths of it is untruthful.”

George Orwell book Homage to Catalonia

Homage to Catalonia (1938)

Books

“We are told we are fighting terrorists. The real terrorist was me. And the real terrorism is this occupation.”

Michael Prysner (1983) American anti-war political activist

"Our Real Enemies"

“My men don't surrender. I don't want to hear of any soldier under my command being captured unless he has been hit. Even if you are hit, you can still fight back.”

George S. Patton (1885–1945) United States Army general

Speech to the Third Army (1944)

Men

“[Conservatism is] a fight for keeping these qualities that made us move unceasingly.”

Janusz Korwin-Mikke (1942) polish politician

“If you are not capable of cruelty, then you are absolutely a victim of anyone who is. For those who are exceedingly agreeable, there is a part of them crying out for the incorporation of the monster within them, which is what gives them strength of character and self-respect, because it is impossible to respect yourself until you grow teeth. And if you grow teeth, you realize that you're somewhat dangerous, or seriously dangerous. Then you might be more willing to demand that you treat yourself with respect and that other people do the same thing. That doesn't mean that being cruel is better than not being cruel. What it means is that being able to be cruel, and then not being cruel, is better than not being able to be cruel, because in the first case you're nothing but weak and naive, and in the second case you're dangerous but you have it under control. If you're competent at fighting, it actually decreases the probability that you're going to have to fight, because when someone pushes you you'll be able to respond with confidence, and with any luck a reasonable show of confidence, which is a show of dominance, will be enough to make the bully back off.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLc_MC7NQek&t=0s "2017 Personality 04/05: Heroic and Shamanic Initiations"

People, Confidence, Parting, Cry

“At the end of the second day as I was lying all alone, I saw clearly a being, with a part of the head cut off, in a military uniform (or the remains of a military uniform) approaching me and suddenly flinging himself upon my chest, with that half a head to suck my force. I took a good look, then realised that I was about to die. He was drawing all my life out … I was completely nailed to the bed, without movement, in a deep trance. I could no longer stir and he was pulling. I thought: now it is the end. Then I called on my occult power, I gave a big fight and I succeeded in turning him back so that he could not stay there any longer. And I woke up … I know how much knowledge and force were necessary for me to resist. It was irresistible.”

The Mother (1878–1973) spiritual collaborator of Sri Aurobindo

When she was attacked by a serious fever epidemic which had engulfed Japan in 1917 and this occult experience was widely publicized after the epidemic had abated, quoted in "Japan (1916-20)", also in “Yogi-doctors” and Occult Healing Arts:Towards a Post-colonial Anthropology of Holistic Therapeutics at Sri Aurobindo Ashram http://www.isa-sociology.org/publ/E-symposium/E-symposium-vol-1-1-2011/EBul-Mar-11-Paranjape.pdf., p. 8

Life, Lying, Knowledge, Parting

“You should never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.”

Henrik Ibsen An Enemy of the People

Dr. Stockmann, Act V
Robert Farquharson translation
An Enemy of the People (1882)

Truth, Freedom

“We have become too civilized to grasp the obvious. For the truth is very simple. To survive you often have to fight, and to fight you have to dirty yourself. War is evil, and it is often the lesser evil. Those who take the sword perish by the sword, and those who don't take the sword perish by smelly diseases.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

§ 1
Looking Back on the Spanish War (1943)

War, Truth, Disease, Evil

“If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight, even though the ruler forbid it; if fighting will not result in victory, then you must not fight even at the ruler's bidding.”

Sun Tzu (-543–-495 BC) ancient Chinese military general, strategist and philosopher from the Zhou Dynasty

Source: The Art of War, Chapter X · Terrain

Victory

“A sensitive man is not happy as President. It is fight, fight, fight all the time. I looked forward to the close of my term as a happy release from care. But I am not sure I wasn't more unhappy out of office than in. A term in the presidency accustoms a man to great duties. He gets used to handling tremendous enterprises, to organizing forces that may affect at once and directly the welfare of the world. After the long exercise of power, the ordinary affairs of life seem petty and commonplace.”

Grover Cleveland (1837–1908) 22nd and 24th president of the United States

As quoted in American Magazine (September 1908)
Context: A sensitive man is not happy as President. It is fight, fight, fight all the time. I looked forward to the close of my term as a happy release from care. But I am not sure I wasn't more unhappy out of office than in. A term in the presidency accustoms a man to great duties. He gets used to handling tremendous enterprises, to organizing forces that may affect at once and directly the welfare of the world. After the long exercise of power, the ordinary affairs of life seem petty and commonplace. An ex-President practicing law or going into business is like a locomotive hauling a delivery wagon. He has lost his sense of proportion. The concerns of other people and even his own affairs seem too small to be worth bothering about.

Life, Happiness, World, Exercises

“The modern proletarian class doesn't carry out its struggle according to a plan set out in some book or theory; the modern workers' struggle is a part of history, a part of social progress, and in the middle of history, in the middle of progress, in the middle of the fight, we learn how we must fight…”

Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) Polish Marxist theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary

"The Politics of Mass Strikes and Unions"; Collected Works 2 
Context: The modern proletarian class doesn't carry out its struggle according to a plan set out in some book or theory; the modern workers' struggle is a part of history, a part of social progress, and in the middle of history, in the middle of progress, in the middle of the fight, we learn how we must fight... That's exactly what is laudable about it, that's exactly why this colossal piece of culture, within the modern workers' movement, is epoch-defining: that the great masses of the working people first forge from their own consciousness, from their own belief, and even from their own understanding the weapons of their own liberation.

Books, History, Learning, Parting

“Men, this stuff that some sources sling around about America wanting out of this war, not wanting to fight, is a crock of bullshit. Americans love to fight, traditionally.”

George S. Patton (1885–1945) United States Army general

Speech to the Third Army (1944)
Context: Men, this stuff that some sources sling around about America wanting out of this war, not wanting to fight, is a crock of bullshit. Americans love to fight, traditionally. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle. You are here today for three reasons. First, because you are here to defend your homes and your loved ones. Second, you are here for your own self respect, because you would not want to be anywhere else. Third, you are here because you are real men and all real men like to fight.

Love, Men, War

“Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness.
Soldiers! In the name of democracy, let us all unite!”

Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977) British comic actor and filmmaker

The Great Dictator (1940), The Barber's speech
Context: I'm sorry, but I don't want to be an emperor. That's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone, if possible, Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other's happiness — not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another.
In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.
The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood, for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world — millions of despairing men, women and little children — victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me, I say — do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed — the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people and so long as men die, liberty will never perish.
Soldiers! Don't give yourselves to brutes — men who despise you — enslave you — who regiment your lives — tell you what to do — what to think or what to feel! Who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men — machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don't hate! Only the unloved hate — the unloved and the unnatural!
Soldiers! Don't fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! In the 17th Chapter of St. Luke it is written: "the Kingdom of God is within man" — not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people have the power — the power to create machines. The power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure.
Then, in the name of democracy, let us use that power! Let us all unite! Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth the future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie! They do not fulfill their promise; they never will. Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people! Now, let us fight to fulfill that promise! Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness.
Soldiers! In the name of democracy, let us all unite!
[Cheers]
Hannah, can you hear me? Wherever you are, look up, Hannah. The clouds are lifting. The sun is breaking through. We are coming out of the darkness into the light. We are coming into a new world, a kindlier world, where men will rise above their hate, their greed and brutality. Look up, Hannah. The soul of man has been given wings, and at last he is beginning to fly. He is flying into the rainbow — into the light of hope, into the future, the glorious future that belongs to you, to me and to all of us. Look up, Hannah. Look up.

Men, Hate, Happiness, World

“We must fight the patriarchal misunderstanding of God.”

Hans Küng (1928) Swiss Catholic priest, theologian and author

Newsweek interview, July 8, 1991
Context: If you cannot see that divinity includes male and female characteristics and at the same time transcends them, you have bad consequences. Rome and Cardinal O'Connor base the exclusion of women priests on the idea that God is the Father and Jesus is His Son, there were only male disciples, etc. They are defending a patriarchal Church with a patriarchal God. We must fight the patriarchal misunderstanding of God.

God

“One who died but did not fight in the way of Allah nor did he express any desire (or determination) for Jihad died the death of a hypocrite.”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Sunni Hadith
Context: It has been narrated on the authority of Abu Huraira that the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) said: One who died but did not fight in the way of Allah nor did he express any desire (or determination) for Jihad died the death of a hypocrite.

Death, Way

“Train hard, fight easy.”

Alexander Suvorov (1730–1800) Russian military commander

other version: Hard training - easy combat; easy training - hard combat. Philip Longworth: The Art of Victory, New York, 1965, cited in af.mil http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1986/nov-dec/menning.html.

Training

“If one harbours anywhere in one's mind a nationalistic loyalty or hatred, certain facts, although in a sense known to be true, are inadmissible. Here are just a few examples. I list below five types of nationalist, and against each I append a fact which it is impossible for that type of nationalist to accept, even in his secret thoughts:
: BRITISH TORY. Britain will come out of this war with reduced power and prestige.
: COMMUNIST. If she had not been aided by Britain and America, Russia would have been defeated by Germany.
: IRISH NATIONALIST. Eire can only remain independent because of British protection.
: TROTSKYIST. The Stalin regime is accepted by the Russian masses.
: PACIFIST. Those who "abjure" violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf.
All of these facts are grossly obvious if one's emotions do not happen to be involved: but to the kind of person named in each case they are also intolerable, and so they have to be denied, and false theories constructed upon their denial. I come back to the astonishing failure of military prediction in the present war. It is, I think, true to say that the intelligentsia have been more wrong about the progress of the war than the common people, and that they were more swayed by partisan feelings. The average intellectual of the Left believed, for instance, that the war was lost in 1940, that the Germans were bound to overrun Egypt in 1942, that the Japanese would never be driven out of the lands they had conquered, and that the Anglo-American bombing offensive was making no impression on Germany. He could believe these things because his hatred for the British ruling class forbade him to admit that British plans could succeed. There is no limit to the follies that can be swallowed if one is under the influence of feelings of this kind. I have heard it confidently stated, for instance, that the American troops had been brought to Europe not to fight the Germans but to crush an English revolution. One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

Notes on Nationalism (1945)

War, People, Secret, Fools

“You Americans are so gullible. No, you won’t accept communism outright, but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of socialism until you’ll finally wake up and find you already have communism. We won’t have to fight you. We’ll so weaken your economy until you’ll fall like overripe fruit into our hands.”

Nikita Khrushchev (1894–1971) First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Disputed Source: Udall, U.S. Rep. Morris K., Khrushchev Could Have Said It, 2016-04-06, originally published in The New Republic, 1962 http://www.library.arizona.edu/exhibits/udall/khrushch_htm.html,

Communication

“Fight, and you shall win. For God grants victory to perseverance.”

Simón Bolívar (1783–1830) Venezuelan military and political leader, South American libertador

As quoted in Simón Bolívar (1969) by Gerhard Masur
Context: Do not compare your material forces with those of the enemy. Spirit cannot be compared with matter. You are human beings, they are beasts. You are free, they are slaves. Fight, and you shall win. For God grants victory to perseverance.

God, Victory, Perseverance

“As we grow up we learn that even the person that wasn't supposed to ever let
you down probably will. You will have your heart broken probably more than once
and it gets harder every time. You'll break hearts too, so remember how it felt
when yours was broken. You'll fight with your best friend. You'll blame a new
love for things an old one did. You'll cry because time is passing too fast, and
you'll eventually lose someone you love, so take many pictures, laugh too much
and love like you've never been hurt because every sixty seconds you spend upset is one minute of happiness you'll never get back.”

Andrew Biersack (1990) American singer-songwriter

Love, Happiness, Making love, Learning

“In fact, honour, duty and love of one’s own kith and kin and country might often compel us to disregard non-violence and to use force. I could never conceive that an armed resistance to an aggression is unjust. I would consider it a religious and moral duty to resist and, if possible, to overpower such an enemy by use of force. Rama killed Ravana in a tumultuous fight and relieved Sita.. Krishna killed Kansa to end his wickedness; and Arjuna had to fight and slay quite a number of his friends and relations including the revered Bhishma because the latter was on the side of the aggressor. It is my firm belief that in dubbing Rama, Krishna and Arjuna as guilty of violence, the Mahatma betrayed a total ignorance of the springs of human action. In more recent history, it was the heroic fight put up by Chhatrapati Shivaji that first checked and eventually destroyed the Muslim tyranny in India. It was absolutely essentially for Shivaji to overpower and kill an aggressive Afzal Khan, failing which he would have lost his own life. In condemning history’s towering warriors like Shivaji, Rana Pratap and Guru Gobind Singh as misguided patriots, Gandhiji has merely exposed his self-conceit.”

Nathuram Godse (1910–1949) Assassin of Mahatma Gandhi

Nathuram Godse: Why I Assassinated Gandhi (1993)

Love, Life, Making love, History

“Inside of me there are two dogs. One is mean and evil and the other is good and they fight each other all the time. When asked which one wins I answer, the one I feed the most.”

Sitting Bull (1831–1890) Hunkpapa Lakota medicine man and holy man

GoodReads https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/5712889.Sitting_Bull Attributed quotes

Dogs, Evil, Time

“I think, whether we’re talking about gender inequality or racism or queer rights or indigenous rights or animal rights, we’re talking about the fight against injustice. We’re talking about the fight against the belief that one nation, one people, one race, one gender, one species, has the right to dominate, use and control another with impunity. I think we’ve become very disconnected from the natural world. Many of us are guilty of an egocentric world view, and we believe that we’re the centre of the universe. We go into the natural world and we plunder it for its resources. We feel entitled to artificially inseminate a cow and steal her baby, even though her cries of anguish are unmistakeable. Then we take her milk that’s intended for her calf and we put it in our coffee and our cereal. We fear the idea of personal change, because we think we need to sacrifice something; to give something up. But human beings at our best are so creative and inventive, and we can create, develop and implement systems of change that are beneficial to all sentient beings and the environment.”

Joaquin Phoenix (1974) American actor, music video director, producer, musician, and social activist

"Joaquin Phoenix's Oscars speech in full: 'We feel entitled to artificially inseminate a cow and steal her baby'" https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/feb/10/joaquin-phoenixs-oscars-speech-in-full, The Guardian (February 10, 2020).

People, World, Fear, Feeling

“There’s a distinct difference between confidence and boasting arrogance; when a problem hits a patch of difficult, the arrogant disappear but the confident remains in the fight.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

2015

Confidence, Problem, Self-confidence

“When it is a question of fighting against imperialism we can state with conviction that we are all Stalinists. We can take pride that we have taken part in the fight for the advance of our great cause against our enemies. From that point of view I am proud that we are Stalinists.”

Nikita Khrushchev (1894–1971) First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Remark made at Kremlin New Year's Eve reception, December 31, 1956. Quoted in Khrushchev by Edward Crankshaw. ISBN 9781448205059

Question, Parting

“The ultimate courage is fighting a battle one knows they will lose; but they confront the adversary, to prevent them from winning.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1978

Courage

“One cannot fight an enemy if one does not even have the courage to identify him.”

David Lane (white nationalist) (1938–2007) American white supremacist, convicted felon

Crossing the Rubicon
Focus Fourteen

Courage

“Being alive is about messing up gloriously, and I will fight for that ability to gloriously mess up because I don't believe that humans are statues or sculptures.”

Alok Vaid-Menon (1991) American performance artist, and LGBTQ rights activist

“The shotgun is the most immoral and reprehensible weapon to ever be deployed. We fight this war with the hopes of vanquishing these weapons from the continent.”

Wilhelm II, German Emperor (1859–1941) German Emperor and King of Prussia

1910s

War, Hope

“Your organization is not a praying institution. It's a fighting institution. It's an educational institution along industrial lines. Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living!”

Mary Harris Jones (1837–1930) Irish-born American labor and community organizer

Source: Autobiography of Mother Jones

Education, Hell, Dead

“He who fights too long against dragons becomes a dragon himself; and if you gaze too long into the abyss, the abyss will gaze into you.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Beyond Good and Evil

Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146
Variant: He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.

“Never fight fair with a stranger, boy. You'll never get out of the jungle that way.”

Arthur Miller book Death of a Salesman

Ben
Death of a Salesman (1949)
Source: Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman

Way, Boy

“You look at me, you look at me closely, each time closer and then we play cyclops, we look at each other closer each time and our eyes grow, they grow closer, they overlap and the cyclops look at each other, breathing confusion, their mouths find each other and fight warmly, biting with their lips, resting their tongues lightly on their teeth, playing in their caverns where the heavy air comes and goes with the scent of an old perfume and silence. Then my hands want to hide in your hair, slowly stroke the depth of your hair while we kiss with mouths full of flowers or fish, of living movements, of dark fragrance. And if we bite each other, the pain is sweet, and if we drown in a short and terrible surge of breath, that instant death is beauty. And there is a single saliva and a single flavour of ripe fruit, and I can feel you shiver against me like a moon on the water.”

Julio Cortázar (1914–1984) Argentinian writer

Death, Pain, Beauty, Feeling

“For those who fight for it life has a flavor the sheltered will never know”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

Life

“It takes more courage to examine the dark corners of your own soul than it does for a soldier to fight on a battlefield”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

Soul, Courage

“You have to fight for your life. That's the chief condition on which you hold it.”

Saul Bellow book Herzog

Source: Herzog

Life

“whatever you fight, you strengthyen. What you resist, persists. "A New Earth":War is a mind set”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Variant: Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists.
Source: A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

War

“I do profess to be no less than I seem; to serve him truly that will put me in trust: to love him that is honest; to converse with him that is wise, and says little; to fear judgment; to fight when I cannot choose; and to eat no fish.”

William Shakespeare King Lear

Source: King Lear

Love, Fear, Fish

“A certain amount of volatility and drama can me healthy and keep things fun and interesting if you're willing at any moment during a fight to say, 'This means nothing. I love you, let's forget about it.”

Anthony Kiedis book Scar Tissue

Source: Scar Tissue

Love, Forgetting

“The liberator who destroys my property is fighting to save my spirit. The teacher who clears all possessions from my path will set me free.”

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

Source: Fight Club

Teachers

“Any fool can fight a winning battle, but it needs character to fight a losing one, and that should inspire us; which reminds me that I dreamed the other night that I was being hanged, but was the life and soul of the party.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

Life, Dreams, Fools, Soul

“I come from the South and I know what war is, for I have seen its terrible wreckage and ruin. It is easy for me as President to declare war. I do not have to fight, and neither do the gentlemen on the Hill who now clamor for it. It is some poor farmer's boy, or the son of some poor widow - who will have to do the fighting and dying.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

War, Boy

“We all have bad things inside us, and we all choose either to give in to those bad things or to fight them.”

Kristin Cast book Untamed

Source: Untamed

“Everybody was patting Nico on the back, complimenting him on his fighting. Even the Ares kids thought he was pretty cool. Hey, show up with an army of undead warriors to save the day, and suddenly you're everybody's best friend.”

Rick Riordan book The Last Olympian

Source: The Last Olympian

“Success in fighting means not coming at your opponent the way he wants to fight you.”

John Locke (1632–1704) English philosopher and physician

Source: Vegas Moon

Way, Success

“I seek strength, not to be greater than other, but to fight my greatest enemy, the doubts within myself”

P. C. Cast (1960) American writer

“Life is very short, and there's no time for fussing and fighting my friends”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Life, Time

“I gave him my hard stare. “You're a control freak and I fight all authority. And you want us to mate?”
A wicked spark lit his eyes. “Many, many times.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Bleeds

Time

“Aggressive fighting for the right is the noblest sport the world affords.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

World, Sport

“If any honor existed in war, it was in fighting to protect others from harm”

Christopher Paolini book Eldest

Source: Eldest

War

“Most things will be okay eventually, but not everything will be. Sometimes you'll put up a good fight and lose. Sometimes you'll hold on really hard and realize there is no choice but to let go. Acceptance is a small, quiet room.”

Cheryl Strayed book Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

Source: Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

“Life is too short to fight every idiot along your way.”

Christopher Paolini (1983) American author

Life, Way

“For the coming of that day shall I fight, I and my sons and my chosen friends. For the freedom of Man. For his rights. For his life. For his honor.”

Ayn Rand book Anthem

Source: Anthem

Life, Freedom

“Myself is thus and so, and will continue thus and so. And why fight it? My balance comes from instability.”

Saul Bellow (1915–2005) Canadian-born American writer

“They may fight with us, but they don't fight for us.”

Christopher Paolini book Eldest

Source: Eldest

“Never think of pain or danger or enemies a moment longer than is necessary to fight them.”

Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged

Source: Atlas Shrugged

Pain, Thinking

“When beetles fight these battles in a bottle with their paddles
and the bottle's on a poodle and the poodle's eating noodles…
… they call this a muddle puddle tweetle poodle beetle noodle
bottle paddle battle.”

Dr. Seuss book Fox in Socks

Source: Fox in Socks

“The fundamental problem of political philosophy is still precisely the one that Spinoza saw so clearly (and that Wilhelm Reich rediscovered): Why do men fight for their servitude as stubbornly as though it were their salvation?”

Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995) French philosopher

Source: Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia

Men, Problem

“The fight is won or lost far away from the witnesses, behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road; long before I dance under those lights.”

Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) African American boxer, philanthropist and activist

Light, Dance, Back To Work

“Fighting for peace, is like f***ing for chastity”

Stephen King book Hearts in Atlantis

Source: Hearts in Atlantis

Peace

“Remember this well. There are two kind of fights. As long as we place ourselves in battle, we must always know the difference: fights to defend life… and fights to defend pride…”

Tite Kubo (1977) Japanese manga artist

Source: Bleach, Volume 01

Life

“She rides as a man, goes unveiled as a man, fights as a man. Let her prove herself worthy as a man, worthy of her weapons and of our friendship.”

Tamora Pierce (1954) American writer of fantasy novels for children

Friendship

“What we would like to do is change the world--make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended them to do. And, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, the poor, of the destitute--the rights of the worthy and the unworthy poor, in other words--we can, to a certain extent, change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world. We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever widening circle will reach around the world. We repeat, there is nothing we can do but love, and, dear God, please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy as our friend.”

Dorothy Day (1897–1980) Social activist

Love, God, People, World

“No matter how much the cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Cats

“One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.”

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis

Beauty, Success, Beauty

“It's like a spell. It's so strong I can't fight it. Is love always like this?”

Gillian Rubinstein Tales of the Otori

Source: Brilliance of the Moon

Love, Strong

“Lighting new cigarettes,
pouring more
drinks.

It has been a beautiful
fight.

Still
is.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense

Beauty, Drink, Light

“Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Life, Secret, Food, Success

“I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

An Irish Airman Forsees His Death http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1441/ The Wild Swans at Coole (1919) Context: I know that I shall meet my fate Somewhere among the clouds above; Those that I fight I do not hate, Those that I guard I do not love; My county is Kiltartan Cross, My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor, No likely end could bring them loss Or leave them happier than before. Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, Nor public men, nor cheering crowds, A lonely impulse of delight Drove to this tumult in the clouds; I balanced all, brought all to mind, The years to come seemed waste of breath, A waste of breath the years behind In balance with this life, this death.

Love, Hate, Fate

“To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

A Poet's Advice (1958)
Context: Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel …
the moment you feel, you're nobody-but-yourself.
To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

World, Night