Stronger than pain quotes (page 148) | Quotes of famous people

“When someone just writes 'f**k, f**k, f**k', we just fix it, laugh and move on. But the difficult social issues are the borderline cases — people who do some good work, but who are also a pain in the neck.”

Jimmy Wales (1966) Wikipedia co-founder and American Internet entrepreneur

Source: As quoted in "Who knows?", The Guardian (26 October 2004)

“I am an optimist... I choose to be. There is a lot of darkness in our world, there is a lot of pain and you can choose to see that or you can choose to see the joy. If you try to respond positively to the world, you will spend your time better.”

Tom Hiddleston (1981) English actor, producer and musical performer

“Suffering exists only because it was good for our genes. Conditionally-activated negative emotions were fitness-enhancing in the ancestral environment. In the current era, apologists for mental pain are serving as the innocent mouthpieces of the nasty bits of code which spawned them.”

David Pearce (philosopher) (1959) British transhumanist

" The Good Drug Guide: The Responsible Parent's Guide to Healthy Mood-Boosters for All the Family https://www.hedweb.com/gooddrug.htm", BLTC Research, 2012

“Tender-handed stroke a nettle,
And it stings you for your pains;
Grasp it like a man of mettle,
And it soft as silk remains.’Tis the same with common natures:
Use ’em kindly, they rebel;
But be rough as nutmeg-graters,
And the rogues obey you well.”

Aaron Hill (writer) (1685–1750) British writer

Verses Written on a Window in Scotland.

“Suffering and Pain are two of many excruciating roadblocks in your internal Maze.
The only way out of the Maze of Misery is to Forgive.
It won't be easy at all…
but the path you chose at the time…led you to here.
Forgiving is the Key to set you Free!”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

“I know your pain, your rage, your sense of despair and hopelessness. Justice has, indeed, been denied for far too long. Rioting, looting, and burning is not the way. Organize. Demonstrate. Sit-in. Stand-up. Vote. Be constructive, not destructive.”

John Lewis (civil rights leader) (1940) American politician and civil rights leader

Source: Twitter https://twitter.com/repjohnlewis/status/1266878938049101826, (30 May 2020)

“Now, one of the things that makes this region so interesting is its diversity. That diversity creates a unique intersection of humanity -- people from so many ethnic groups and backgrounds and religious and political beliefs. I gives Malaysia, as one primary example, the chance to prove -- as America constantly tries to prove -- that nations are stronger and more successful when they work to uphold the civil rights and political rights and human rights of all their citizens.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative Town Hall (April 2014)

“If the war is lost, the nation will also perish. This fate is inevitable. There is no necessity to take into consideration the basis for which the people will need to continue a most primitive existence. On the contrary, it will be better to destroy these things ourselves because this nation will have proved to be the weaker one and the future will belong solely to the stronger eastern nation [Russia]. Besides, those who will remain after the battle are only the inferior ones, for the good ones have been killed.”

William L. Shirer book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960)

“I am afraid that if you look intently at what is moving towards Great Britain, you will see that the only choice open is the old grim choice our forbears had to face, namely, whether we shall submit or whether we shall prepare. Whether we shall submit to the will of a stronger nation or whether we shall prepare to defend our rights, our liberties and indeed our lives.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

BBC broadcast (16 November 1934) on German rearmament, quoted in Martin Gilbert, Prophet of Truth: Winston S. Churchill, 1922–1939 (London: Minerva, 1990), p. 566
The 1930s

“In a frenzy, kicking his legs and moving his arms in a swimmer's breaststroke, he managed to fight toward the rod. The closer he got to it, the stronger the web of force became. He did not give up. If he did, he would be back where he had been and without enough strength to begin fighting again. It was not his nature to give up until all his strength had been expended.”

Philip José Farmer (1918–2009) American science fiction writer

Source: The Riverworld series, To Your Scattered Bodies Go (1971), Chapter 1 (p. 4)

“That was a poor choice of words. As I've said throughout this campaign, the people at the heart of this issue are children, parents, families, DREAMers. They have names, and hopes and dreams that deserve to be respected. I've talked about undocumented immigrants hundreds of times and fought for years for comprehensive immigration reform. And I will continue to do so. We are a country built by immigrants and our diversity makes us stronger as a nation – it's something to be proud of, celebrate, and defend.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

2015-11-24
Hillary Apologizes For Saying ‘Illegal Immigrant': ‘That Was a Poor Choice of Words’
Alex Griswold
mediaite.com
http://www.mediaite.com/online/hillary-apologizes-for-saying-illegal-immigrant-that-was-a-poor-choice-of-words/
Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016)

“After careful research along these lines, I came to the annoying conclusion that Keynes had been 100 percent right in the 1930s. Previously, I had thought the opposite. But facts were facts and there was no denying my conclusion. It didn’t affect the argument in my book, which was only about the rise and fall of ideas. The fact that Keynesian ideas were correct as well as popular simply made my thesis stronger.”

Bruce Bartlett (1951) American historian

Bruce Bartlett, "Revenge of the Reality-Based Community" (2012).
2010s

“Yes, it [making Expelled] has made my belief in that [Intelligent Design] much stronger. It has pointed out something which haunted me ever since I learned about Darwinism, which is, Where did it all start? How did life start? Darwinism has nothing to say about that--nothing useful, anyway--but I think Intelligent Design has a great deal to say about it.”

Ben Stein (1944) actor, writer, commentator, lawyer, teacher, humorist

Interviews: Ben Stein is Expelled! Christianity Today Movies, Christianity Today Movies: Interview with Ben Stein, 15 April 2008, 2008-04-18 http://www.christianitytoday.com/movies/interviews/benstein.html,

“I’d suggest that peace with justice begins with the example we set here at home, for we know from our own histories that intolerance breeds injustice. Whether it’s based on race, or religion, gender or sexual orientation, we are stronger when all our people — no matter who they are or what they look like — are granted opportunity, and when our wives and our daughters have the same opportunities as our husbands and our sons.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2013, Brandenburg Gate Speech (June 2013)

“Combining al Qaeda's significant fighting capabilities with a stronger focus on the administrative capabilities that might permit it to hold ground, the Islamic State copied the latter from Hezbollah's model. Basically, Islamic State is a combined al Qaeda and Lebanese Hezbollah on steroids, destabilizing the region, dissolving borders/changing the political geography in the mid-east, and hardening political positions that make mid-east peace-building more remote by the day.”

James Mattis (1950) 26th and current United States Secretary of Defense; United States Marine Corps general

General Mattis [Ret.] speaking about the Islamic State of the Levant in an interview with Business Insider http://www.businessinsider.com/mattis-testimony-isis-2014-9

“I firmly believe that after the deal the prime minister negotiated in Europe, Britain will be better off and more secure if we remain a member of the EU. The settlement secures special status for Britain giving us a stronger voice and platform for freedom, democracy and human rights. It also means our sovereignty and the British Pound are protected and will ensure that as part of the EU we carry more weight and influence on future important decisions.”

Jeremy Hunt (1966) British politician

What is Brexit? Conservative Surrey MPs divided over in/out EU question https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/what-brexit-conservative-surrey-mps-10969473 Get Surrey (1 Mar 2016)
2016

“The distinction between sanity and insanity is narrower than the razor's edge, sharper than a hound's tooth, more agile than a mule deer. It is more elusive than the merest phantom. Perhaps it does not even exist; perhaps it is a phantom.”

Philip K. Dick book VALIS

Source: VALIS (1981)

“…an awkward loon- whom I do sometimes care about- who has more wit than money- more good sense than wit- more urbanity than sense- and more pride than some princes”

Ignatius Sancho (1729–1780) British composer, writer and grocer

(from vol 2, letter 42: 9 Oct 1779, to Mr M___ ) [describing a friend]

“The most important thing in this world is liberty. More important than food or clothes — more important than gold or houses or lands — more important than art or science — more important than all religions, is the liberty of man.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

The trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy (1887)
Context: I want you to understand what has been done in the world to force men to think alike. It seems to me that if there is some infinite being who wants us to think alike he would have made us alike. Why did he not do so? Why did he make your brain so that you could not by any possibility be a Methodist? Why did he make yours so that you could not be a Catholic? And why did he make the brain of another so that he is an unbeliever — why the brain of another so that he became a Mohammedan — if he wanted us all to believe alike?
After all, maybe Nature is good enough and grand enough and broad enough to give us the diversity born of liberty. Maybe, after all, it would not be best for us all to be just the same. What a stupid world, if everybody said yes to everything that everybody else might say.
The most important thing in this world is liberty. More important than food or clothes — more important than gold or houses or lands — more important than art or science — more important than all religions, is the liberty of man.

“What do animal rights advocates want? For most avowed rightists, that's easy: The complete liberation of animals from human exploitation as quickly as possible. Yet while we work diligently to achieve such a status for animals over the long term, we also have a duty to respect the "rights" of those individuals who are currently suffering to a life less miserable. To dismiss opportunities to ameliorate their pain and distress is to treat those animals as mere abstractions rather than as sentient beings inherently worthy of consideration now—a position, ironically, often held by the very exploitive institutions we seek to overturn.”

Kirsten Rosenberg American singer

United Poultry Concerns Third Annual Forum: "Do Animal Welfare Campaigns & Reforms Hurt or Help Animal Rights & Abolition?" (8-9 December 2001, Machipongo, Virginia) http://www.upc-online.org/forum2001speakers.html.

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