“Our enemy is by tradition our savior, in preventing us from superficiality.”
As quoted in "Master Race," Partisan Review 50th Anniversary Edition (1985), edited by William Phillips
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Joyce Carol Oates 89
American author 1938Related quotes

“That the situation is hopeless should not prevent us from doing our best.”
letter to Bill Vogt, 21 January 1946, quoted in Curt Meine, Aldo Leopold: His Life and Work, p. 478.
1940s

“The everyday world demands our attention, and prevents us from sinking into ourselves.”
As a romantic, I have always resented this: I like to sink into myself. The problems and anxieties of living make it difficult. Well, now I had an anxiety that referred to something inside of me, and it reminded me that my inner world was just as real and important as the world around me.
Source: The Mind Parasites (1967), p. 39

Letter to the French Directory, November 1792

2016, United Nations Address (September 2016)

In private this was sometimes cynically admitted. The attitude of the Indian millionaires was similar. Gandhi called upon them to repent, and naturally they preferred him to the Socialists and Communists who, given the chance, would actually have taken their money away. How reliable such calculations are in the long run is doubtful; as Gandhi himself says, "in the end deceivers deceive only themselves"; but at any rate the gentleness with which he was nearly always handled was due partly to the feeling that he was useful.
Reflections on Gandhi (1949)

President Galtieri’s address to the nation https://teachwar.wordpress.com/resources/war-justifications-archive/falklandsmalvinas-war-1982/#arg1, 2 April 1982