“There are times of great change, times when old landmarks are being upset, when submerged forces are rising, and just as we deal promptly or linger over the solution of these problems, our progress will be rapid or slow, sound or broken…”
23 June 1909
India's Rebirth
Context: There are times of great change, times when old landmarks are being upset, when submerged forces are rising, and just as we deal promptly or linger over the solution of these problems, our progress will be rapid or slow, sound or broken... The problem is put to us one by one, to each nation one by one... He has shown us the possibility of strength within us, and then He has shown us where the danger, the weakness lies. He is pointing out to us how is it that we may become strong. On us it lies … to answer the question which God has put to us, and according as we answer on it depends how this movement will progress, what route it will take, and whether it will lead to a swift and sudden salvation, or whether, after so many centuries of tribulation and sufferings there is still a long period of tribulation and suffering before us. God has put the question to us and with us entirely it lies to answer.
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Sri Aurobindo 224
Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, gur… 1872–1950Related quotes
Arthur's commentary
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)
Context: It is strange, when something rises before us as a possibility which we have hitherto believed to be very dreadful, we fancy it is a great crisis; that when we pass it we shall be different beings; some mighty change will have swept over our nature, and we shall lose entirely all our old selves, and become others. … Yet, when the thing, whether good or evil, is done, we find we were mistaken; we are seemingly much the same — neither much better nor worse; and then we cannot make it out; on either side there is a weakening of faith; we fancy we have been taken in; the mountain has heen in lahour, and we are perplexed to find the good less powerful than we expected, and the evil less evil.
“Great achievements require gigantic efforts, without which our progress sounds to be slow.”
Message to the Nation of Pakistan, 14 August 1950 [citation needed]
“Getting old we can deal with. Being old is the problem”
Source: Have a Little Faith: a True Story
As quoted by Donald Rumsfeld in "Sharon's Victory" (link is to a preview, but the quote is in the first few visible lines) https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB981508176687515426, Wall Street Journal (7 February 2001)
Character, of Witness Lee - By Living Stream Ministry, ISBN 978-0-87083-322-9
As quoted in "Some Szilardisms on War, Fame, Peace", LIFE magazine, Vol. 51, no. 9 (1 September 1961), p. 79
"How to Get the Best of Your Children"
Please Don't Eat the Daisies (1957)
1990s, A Period of Consequences (September 1999)
