“The complacent, the self-indulgent, the soft societies are about to be swept away with the debris of history. Only the strong, only the industrious, only the determined, only the courageous, only the visionary who determine the real nature of our struggle can possibly survive.”

— John F. Kennedy

1961, Address before the American Society of Newspaper Editors

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John F. Kennedy 469

35th president of the United States of America 1917–1963

Haidakhan Babaji teacher in northern India

Maha Kranti
Source: The Teachings of Babaji, 23 November 1983.

“Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.”

Andrew S. Grove (1936–2016) Hungarian-born American businessman, engineer, and author

Attributed to Andrew S. Grove in: William J. Baumol et al (2007) Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism, and the Economics of Growth. p. 228
New millennium

“(…) Only courageous people can survive such critical times. (…).”

Haidakhan Babaji teacher in northern India

Courage and alertness
Source: The Teachings of Babaji, 23 September 1983.

“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacriﬁce, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives.”

Howard Zinn (1922–2010) author and historian

A Power Governments Cannot Suppress, p. 270.
Context: To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacriﬁce, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places — and there are so many — where people have behaved magniﬁcently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an inﬁnite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in deﬁance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

“War does not determine who is right – only who is left.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

This has often been published as a quotation of Russell, when an author is given (e.g. in Quote Unquote – A HandBook of Quotation, 2005, p. 291), but without any sourced citations, and seems to have circulated as an anonymous proverb as early as 1932.
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