Quotes about struggle (2324 quotes, page 18)

“This urge, wrestle, resurrection of dry sticks,
Cut stems struggling to put down feet,
What saint strained so much,
Rose on such lopped limbs to a new life?”

Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) American poet

"Cuttings (later)," ll. 1-4
The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948)

Life

“We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters — then we are for it!”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

"Report on the Activities of the Council of People’s Commissars" (24 January 1918); Collected Works, Vol. 26, pp. 459-61.
1910s

People , Exercises , History , Problem

“I am an optimist about America. But how can I maintain that optimism after Vietnam, after the murder of so many who fought for civil rights, after the Red scare and after the abusive tactics planned by government today? I can because we have regretted our mistakes in the past, relearning every time that no ruler can be trusted with arbitrary power. And I believe we will again.… But after all, this has always been a country of unbounded optimism, a country that struggles with itself and conquers corrupting habit.… In the end I believe that faith in reason will prevail. But it will not happen automatically. Freedom under law is hard work. If rulers cannot be trusted with arbitrary power, it is up to citizens to raise their voices at injustice.”

Anthony Lewis (1927–2013) American journalist

[Anthony, Lewis, w:Anthony Lewis, Abroad at Home; Hail And Farewell, 2001-12-15, Boston, New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/15/opinion/abroad-at-home-hail-and-farewell.html] [Lewis's final column].

Faith , Law , Optimism , Freedom

“When passing on a spiritual tradition, therefore, we must be wary of the scholastic approach, sometimes misnamed ‘scientific’ or wissenschaftlisches, which, when employed in matters pertaining to the Spirit, is no more than one’s self-diffidence boosted by the authority of secondary sources. What matters is not my knowledge of what they say about mindfulness, but the fruit, which my own humble struggle to practice it, produces in me for my benefit and for the benefit of others.”

Aloysius Pieris (1934) Sri Lankan Jesuit priest

Source: "Spirituality as Mindfulness: Biblical and Buddhist Approaches", p. 38

Knowledge

“We make a grave mistake when we assume this spirit of connectedness is automatic or inevitable. It is not a birthright. A united country is an enduring struggle. It takes collective work and individual sacrifice. It is not enough to call on others or wait for a leader to emerge who will exalt our national values. I believe this is the question we face, as citizens of this nation: what will we do to affirm this most critical American virtue?”

Cory Booker (1969) 35th Class 2 senator for New Jersey in U.S. Congress

In [Booker, Cory, United: Thoughts on Finding Common Ground and Advancing the Common Good, https://books.google.com/books?id=iFekDQAAQBAJ, 2017, Random House Publishing Group, 978-1-101-96518-4], as quoted in [Yanklowitz, Rabbi Shmuly, Standing Together In the Era of National Division: Review of United by Cory Booker, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-shmuly-yanklowitz/standing-together-in-the-_b_9359900.html, 21 August 2018, The Huffington Post, March 3, 2016]
2016

Question , Waiting , Country

“[The unavoidable] racial war, the war of Slavdom against Germandom…[in which the] Anglo-Saxons with whom we are related by common ancestry, religion and civilisatory striving, allow themselves to be used as tools of the Slavs…if this question…cannot be solved by diplomacy, then it will have to be decided by armed force. The solution can be postponed but the question will arise again in 1 or 2 years. The racial struggle cannot be avoided - perhaps it will not take place now, but it will probably take place in one or two years.”

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

Conversation with Arthur de Claparède, the Swiss ambassador (10 December 1912), quoted in John Rohl, 'Germany', in Keith Wilson (ed.), Decisions for War 1914 (London: University College London Press, 1995), p. 41
1910s

War , Religion , Question

“Preaching the gospel is not easy in a church defined by the denominational interests of status-seeking clergy and laypersons. Doing Christian theology is difficult in a seminary or university determined by the academic interests of privileged professors and students. Speaking the truth can be politically dangerous in a society defined according to the socio-economic interests of the rich. Preaching the gospel, doing Christian theology, and speaking the truth are interrelated, and neither can be correctly understood apart from the liberation struggles of the poor and marginalized.”

James H. Cone (1938–2018) American theologian

Source: Speaking the Truth: Ecumenism, Liberation, and Black Theology (1986), p. v

Truth , Universe

“There’s no reason why I should have lived or why I lived and they didn’t. And it’s something I struggle with every day.”

Adam Goldstein (1973–2009) American DJ

DJ AM’s friend rushed to his SoHo apt., but he was already dead http://blog.taragana.com/e/2009/08/29/goldstein-suffered-daily-struggle-to-cope-29107/ Taragana. Retrieved August 30, 2009.

“Man worships self: his God is Man; the struggling of the mortal mind
To form its model as 'twould be, the perfect of itself to find.”

Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890) British explorer, geographer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, cartographer, ethnologist, spy, lin…

The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)

God , Perfection

“If you live out of a negative identity, … others will always be cast in the mold of the enemy against whom you must struggle.”

Sam Keen (1931) author, professor, and philosopher

Source: The Passionate Life (1983), p. 79

“Teach me to feel that Thou art always nigh;
Teach me the struggles of the soul to bear;
To check the rising doubt, the rebel sigh;
Teach me the patience of unanswered prayer.”

George Croly (1780–1860) Irish poet, novelist, historian, and divine

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 444.

Art , Feeling , Soul , Patience

“In the struggle of mankind with the elements, its aim is dominion over nature. Dominion is a relationship of the organizer to the organized. Step by step, mankind acquires control over and conquers nature; this means that step by step it organizes the universe; it organizes the universe for Itself and in its own interests. Such is the meaning and content of the age-long labour of mankind.
Nature resists elementally and blindly with the terrible strength of its dark, chaotic, but innumerable and Infinite army of elements. In order to conquer it, mankind must organize itself into a mighty army. Unconsciously, it has been doing this for centuries by forming working collective, ranging from the small primitive communes of the primordial epoch to the contemporary cooperation of hundreds of millions of people.
If mankind had to organize the universe only with the forces and means given to it by nature, it would not have any advantage over the other living creatures which also fight for survival against the rest of nature. In its labour mankind uses tools, which it takes from the same external nature. This forms the basis of its victories; it is this which long ago provided and continues to provide mankind with a growing superiority over the strongest and most terrible giants of elemental life and which distinguishes it from the rest of nature's kingdom.”

Alexander Bogdanov (1873–1928) Physician, philosopher, writer

Source: Essays in tektology, 1980, p. 1-2.

Life , People , Age , Communication

“He who needs something to rebel against is less of a social anarchist than he who seeks to create something against which there is no need to rebel. There may be no end to the ugly, sordid, and horrifying things against which an honest man cannot help but revolt, but there are also things that are beautiful, joyful, and pure. If it were wrong to attend to the latter while the former still thrive, then a hopeless perpetual struggle would become the only meaning of life.”

Giovanni Baldelli (1914–1986) Anarchist theorist

Source: Social Anarchism (1971), p. 7

Life , Beauty , Help

“But even when the Muslim position was not that strong, say, during Mahmud’s son Ibrahim’s campaign in Hindustan when “a fierce struggle ensued, but Ibrahim at length gained victory, and slew many of them. Those who escaped fled into the jungles. Nearly 100,000 of their women and children were taken prisoners…””

Ibrahim of Ghazna (1032–1099) sultan of the Ghaznavid Empire

Lal, K. S. (1994). Muslim slave system in medieval India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 3 quoting Maulana Ahmad, Tarikh-i-Alfi, E.D., V, 163; Farishtah, I, 49.

Women , Children , Strong , Victory

“A man does not become a freedom fighter in the hope of winning awards, but when I was notified that I had won the 1993 Nobel peace prize jointly with Mr. F. W. de Klerk, I was deeply moved. The Nobel Peace Prize had a special meaning for me because of its involvement with South Africa… The award was a tribute to all South Africans, and especially to those who fought in the struggle; I would accept it on their behalf.”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

1990s, Long Walk to Freedom (1995)

Peace , Hope , Freedom

“Often the other side of the coin of intolerance is insecurity. Insecure people tend to be intolerant, and their intolerance unleashes forces that threaten the security of others. And where there is no security there can be no lasting peace. In its "Human Development Report" for last year the UNDP noted that human security "is not a concern with weapons -- it is a concern with human life and dignity." The struggle for democracy and human rights in Burma is a struggle for life and dignity. It is a struggle that encompasses our political, social and economic aspirations. The people of my country want the two freedoms that spell security: freedom from want and freedom from fear. It is want that has driven so many of our young girls across our borders to a life of sexual slavery where they are subject to constant humiliation and ill-treatment. It is fear of persecution for their political beliefs that has made so many of our people feel that even in their own homes they cannot live in dignity and security.”

Aung San Suu Kyi (1945) State Counsellor of Myanmar and Leader of the National League for Democracy

Opening Keynote Address at NGO Forum on Women, Beijing China (1995)

Life , People , Fear , Peace

“We, in a spirit of humanity of which I entirely approve, have passed legislation—to which I may say I have without boasting myself contributed very largely—to raise the standard of living amongst our working people, to secure to them higher wages, to save them from the competition of men of a lower social scale. We have surrounded them with regulations which are intended to provide for their safety. We have secured them, or the majority of them, against the pecuniary loss which would follow upon accidents incurred in the course of their employment. There is not one of those things which I have not supported…But they have all entailed expense, they have all raised the cost of production; and what can be more illogical than to raise the cost of production in this country in order to promote the welfare of the working classes, and then to allow the products of other countries—which are not surrounded by any similar legislation, which are free from all similar cost and expenditure—to allow them freely to bring each country in competition with our goods, which are hampered in the struggle?”

Joseph Chamberlain (1836–1914) British businessman, politician, and statesman

Speech in Greenock (7 October 1903), quoted in The Times (8 October 1903), p. 8.
1900s

Men , People , Support , Loss

“Never mind failures; they are quite natural, they are the beauty of life, these failures. What would life be without them? It would not be worth having if it were not for struggles. Where would be the poetry of life? Never mind the struggles, the mistakes. I never heard a cow tell a lie, but it is only a cow—never a man. So never mind these failures, these little backslidings; hold the ideal a thousand times, and if you fail a thousand times, make the attempt once more.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

Life , Lie , Beauty , Failure

“I am obliged to confess that I do not regard the abolition of slavery as a means of warding off the struggle of the two races in the Southern states. The Negroes may long remain slaves without complaining; but if they are once raised to the level of freemen, they will soon revolt at being deprived of almost all their civil rights; and as they cannot become the equals of the whites, they will speedily show themselves as enemies.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Source: Democracy in America, Volume I (1835), Chapter XV-IXX, Chapter XVIII.

“The supreme importance of tactics and the necessity of maintaining its class struggle character, is something the party has been well conscious of from the beginning. … We find that in all questions of tactics the thought was continually kept in the foreground that the party must be kept clean from all mixture with all other parties, every one of which, no matter how much they differed from each other or how furiously they fought among themselves, stood upon the ground of bourgeois society as a common basis. This separation of the Social Democracy from all other parties, this essential difference, which silly opponents take as a reason or pretext for declaring us political outlaws, is our pride and our strength.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

Democracy , Question

“The Gandhian influence dominated freedom struggles on the African continent right up to the 1960s because of the power it generated and the unity it forged among the apparently powerless. Nonviolence was the official stance of all major African coalitions, and the South African A. N. C. remained implacably opposed to violence for most of its existence.”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

2000s, The Sacred Warrior (2000)

Freedom

“For our party and for our party tactics there is but one valid basis: the basis of the class struggle, out of which the Social Democratic party has sprung up, and out of which alone it can draw the necessary strength to bid defiance to every storm and to all its enemies.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

Drawing

“We can imagine the Palestinian identity as a person born in a village prior to the introduction of modern administration; a person whose village was divided between other villages, and whose date of birth is unknown. A person that started struggling to prove she exists in the 1960s and suffers today from a weakened structure and an uncertain future.”

Yasser Harrak Canadian liberal writer, columnist and human rights activist

Yasser Harrak. 2018. Palestinian Identity The Construction Of Modern National Consciousness (Book Review). Research Gate. Accessed January 23, 2018. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322274860_Yasser_Harrak_-Palestinian_Identity_The_Construction_Of_Modern_National_Consciousness_Book_Review

Imagination , Birth , Suffering , Future

“Nonviolence in the civil rights struggle has meant not relying on arms and weapons of struggle. It has meant noncooperation with customs and laws which are institutional aspects of a regime of discrimination and enslavement. It has meant direct participation of masses in protest, rather than reliance on indirect methods which frequently do not involve masses in action at all.
Nonviolence has also meant that my people in the agonizing struggles of recent years have taken suffering upon themselves instead of inflicting it on others. It has meant, as I said, that we are no longer afraid and cowed. But in some substantial degree it has meant that we do not want to instill fear in others or into the society of which we are a part. The movement does not seek to liberate Negroes at the expense of the humiliation and enslavement of whites. It seeks no victory over anyone. It seeks to liberate American society and to share in the self-liberation of all the people.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, The Quest for Peace and Justice (1964)

People , Fear , Law , Suffering

“Wallace's emotions on discovering such marvels must surely be echoed by all of us who follow him. This is what he wrote:
"I thought of the long ages of the past during which the successive generations of these things of beauty had run their course. Year by year being born and living and dying amid these dark gloomy woods with no intelligent eye to gaze upon their loveliness, to all appearances such a wanton waste of beauty. It seems sad that on the one hand such exquisite creatures should live out their lives and exhibit their charms only in these wild inhospitable regions. This consideration must surely tell us that all living things were not made for man, many of them have no relation to him, their happiness and enjoyment's, their loves and hates, their struggles for existence, their vigorous life and early death, would seem to be immediately related to their own well-being and perpetuation alone."”

David Attenborough (1926) British broadcaster and naturalist

Closing lines, quoting from The Malay Archipelago (1869) by Alfred Russel Wallace.
Attenborough in Paradise (1996)

Love , Life , Death , Hate

“The ranks of the City are now divided. The advanced section, headed by Mr McKenna and Mr Keynes, face the orthodox and reactionary ranks which are led by Mr Montagu Norman and the heads of the Treasury. To the uninitiated it…seems a little unfortunate that the ex-Labour chancellor should appear…to be an ardent supporter of Mr Montagu Norman. It will be little less than a disaster if in this struggle Labour support is accorded to the reactionary elements in the City.”

Oswald Mosley (1896–1980) British politician; founder of the British Union of Fascists

Socialist Review (September 1927), quoted in Robert Skidelsky, Oswald Mosley (Papermacs, 1981), p. 152.

Support , Appearance

“I would emphasize again that social and economic solutions, as such, will not avail to satisfy the aspirations of the people unless they conform with the traditions of our race, deeply grooved in their sentiments through a century and a half of struggle for ideals of life that are rooted in religion and fed from purely spiritual springs.”

Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) 31st President of the United States of America

Herbert Hoover, 1874-1964 (1971)

Life , People , Religion , Spring

“The making of decisions, as everyone knows from personal experience, is a burdensome task. Offsetting the exhilaration that may result from correct and successful decision and the relief that follows the termination of a struggle to determine issues is the depression that comes from failure, or error of decision, and the frustration which ensues from uncertainty.”

Chester Barnard book The Functions of the Executive

Source: The Functions of the Executive (1938), p. 189

Error , Failure , Decision , Success

“I have come to the realisation and conviction that the struggle in South Africa is not between White, Black and Brown, but between Christian civilized standards and the powers of chaos.”

P. W. Botha (1916–2006) South African prime minister

As prime minister, Warrenton, 24 July 1982, as cited in PW Botha in his own words, Pieter-Dirk Uys, 1987, p. 23

“The existence of this new Republic was inaugurated by striking the fetters from the slaves in Porto Rico. This beneficent measure was followed by the release of several thousand persons illegally held as slaves in Cuba. Next, the Captain-General of that colony was deprived of the power to set aside the orders of his superiors at Madrid, which had pertained to the office since 1825. The sequestered estates of American citizens, which had been the cause of long and fruitless correspondence, were ordered to be restored to their owners. All these liberal steps were taken in the face of a violent opposition directed by the reactionary slave-holders of Havana, who are vainly striving to stay the march of ideas which has terminated slavery in Christendom, Cuba only excepted. Unhappily, however, this baneful influence has thus far succeeded in defeating the efforts of all liberal-minded men in Spain to abolish slavery in Cuba, and in preventing the promised reform in that island. The struggle for political supremacy continues there.”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

1870s, Fifth State of the Union Address (1873)

Men , Idea , Effort , Personality

“Plants of great vigor will almost always struggle into blossom, despite impediments. But there should be encouragement, and a free genial atmosphere for those of more timid sort, fair play for each in its own kind.”

Margaret Fuller book Woman in the Nineteenth Century

Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845)

“No amount of moral admonishment or "indirect pressure" will guarantee that our demands are met, in the absence of our own organizational presence on the ground. Only by struggling ourselves can we convince our allies of our attachment to the revolution, to the land, and to our national rights. And only by struggling ourselves will we have the chance to impose our demands, in the face of all reactionary opposition."”

Monte Melkonian (1957–1993) National Hero of Armenia

Source: The Right to Struggle (1993), P. 63.

Chance

“Although Fox's private character was deformed by indulgence in vicious pleasures, it was in the eyes of his contemporaries largely redeemed by the sweetness of his disposition, the buoyancy of his spirits, and the unselfishness of his conduct. As a politician he had liberal sentiments, and hated oppression and religious intolerance. He constantly opposed the influence of the crown, and, although he committed many mistakes, and had in George III an opponent of considerable knowledge of kingcraft and immense resources, the struggle between him and the king, as far as the two men were concerned, was after all a drawn game…the coalition of 1783 shows that he failed to appreciate the importance of political principles and was ignorant of political science…Although his speeches are full of common sense, he made serious mistakes on some critical occasions, such as were the struggle of 1783–4, and the dispute about the regency in 1788. The line that he took with reference to the war with France, his idea that the Treason and Sedition bills were destructive of the constitution, and his opinion in 1801 that the House of Commons would soon cease to be of any weight, are instances of his want of political insight. The violence of his language constantly stood in his way; in the earlier period of his career it gave him a character for levity; later on it made his coalition with North appear especially reprehensible, and in his latter years afforded fair cause for the bitterness of his opponents. The circumstances of his private life helped to weaken his position in public estimation. He twice brought his followers to the brink of ruin and utterly broke up the whig party. He constantly shocked the feelings of his countrymen, and ‘failed signally during a long public life in winning the confidence of the nation’ (LECKY, Hist. iii. 465 sq). With the exception of the Libel Bill of 1792, the credit of which must be shared with others, he left comparatively little mark on the history of national progress. Great as his talents were in debate, he was deficient in statesmanship and in some of the qualities most essential to a good party leader.”

Charles James Fox (1749–1806) British Whig statesman

William Hunt, 'Fox, Charles James (1749–1806)', Dictionary of National Biography (1889).
About

Life , Men , Hate , War

“No Arab Spring protester, however much he or she might identify with the plight of the Palestinians or decry the cruel policies of Israeli occupation (as I do), would think today to attribute all the ills of Arab polities to empty abstractions like "imperialism" and "Zionism". They understand in their bones that those phrases were tools of a language designed to prop up nasty regimes and distract people like them from the struggle for a better life.”

Kanan Makiya (1949) American orientalist

"The Arab Spring started in Iraq", The New York Times (April 6, 2013)

Life , People , Spring , Understanding

“Very few people, including authors willing to commit to paper, ever really read primary sources—certainly not in necessary depth and comtemplation, and often not at all. […] When writers close themselves off to the documents of scholarship, and then rely only on seeing or asking, they become conduits and sieves rather than thinkers. When, on the other hand, you study the great works of predecessors engaged in the same struggle, you enter a dialogue with human history and the rich variety of our own intellectual traditions. You insert yourself, and your own organizing powers, into this history—and you become an acive agent, not merely a “reporter.””

Stephen Jay Gould book Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

Introduction, p. 6
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

People , History , Study , Reading

“We have already greatly reduced the amount of work that the whole society must do for its actual productivity, but only a little of this has translated itself into leisure for workers because much nonproductive activity is required to accompany productive activity. The main causes of this are bureaucracy and isometric struggles against competition. Free software will greatly reduce these drains in the area of software production. We must do this, in order for technical gains in productivity to translate into less work for us.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

1980s, GNU Manifesto (1985)

“That there is a common cause, an that it is either what we call material progress or something closely connected with material progress, becomes more than an inference when it is noted that the phenomena we class together and speak of as industrial depression are but intensifications of phenomena which always accompany material progress, and which show themselves more clearly and strongly as material progress goes on. Where the conditions to which material progress everywhere tends are the most fully realized—that is to say, where population is densest, wealth greatest, and the machinery of production and exchange most highly developed — we find the deepest poverty, the sharpest struggle for existence, and the most of enforced idleness.”

Henry George book Progress and Poverty

Introductory : The Problem
Progress and Poverty (1879)

Wealth

“National weakness — real or perceived — can tempt aggression and thus cause war. That's why the United States cannot neglect its military strength. We must and we will remain strong. But with equal determination, the United States and all countries must find ways to control and reduce the horrifying danger that is posed by the world's enormous stockpiles of nuclear arms.
This has been a concern of every American president since the moment we first saw what these weapons could do. Our leaders will require our understanding and our support as they grapple with this difficult but crucial challenge. There is no disagreement on the goals or the basic approach to controlling this enormous destructive force. The answer lies not just in the attitudes or actions of world leaders, but in the concern and demands of all of us as we continue our struggle to preserve the peace.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Presidency (1977–1981), Farewell Address (1981)

War , World , Peace , Way

“Abject misery alone does not produce revolutions; more often than not, it produces an aimless demoralization, or worse, a private, personalized struggle to survive.”

Murray Bookchin (1921–2006) American libertarian socialist author, orator, and philosopher

Listen, Marxist!

Personality

“Nature is richer than I represent it... Nature is so beautiful that when I am not tortured by poverty I am tortured by her splendor. How fortunate we are to be able to see and admire the glories of the sky and earth; if only I could be content just to admire them. But there is always the torment of struggling to reproduce them, the impossibility of creating anything within the narrow limits of painting.”

Eugène Boudin (1824–1898) French painter

Quote from Boudin's Journal, March 1854; as cited in Eugène Boudin, G. Jean-Aubrey & Robert Schmit, Greenwich, New York graphic society, 1968, p. 24
1850s - 1870s

Beauty , Nature , Painting

“My mother saw me being attacked. She cried when I left engineering for this cause. She understood my fight, encouraged me. I remember all those who were with me in this struggle, including two colleagues who were killed. Whenever I free children from slavery and take them back to their mothers, the tears of happiness in their eyes are like blessings of God. When I see the faces of liberated children, I find their smile of freedom divine and it gives me divine strength. I never feel I'm liberating them, rather it feels like they're giving me freedom.”

Kailash Satyarthi (1954) Indian children's rights activist

Times of India interview (2014)

God , Children , Smile , Feeling

“On a purely intellectual level, how does allowing China to constantly rig trade in its favor advance the core conservative goal of making markets more efficient? Markets do not run better when manufacturing shifts to China largely because of the actions of its government. Nor do they become more efficient when Chinese companies are given special privileges in global markets, while American companies must struggle to compete with unfairly traded goods.”

Robert Lighthizer (1947) US Trade Representative

LIGHTHIZER: Donald Trump is no liberal on trade http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/may/9/donald-trump-is-no-liberal-on-trade/ (May 9, 2011)

“The conception of freedom in our country was one so precious, so hallowed, it has been obtained as the result of such age-long struggles, that I felt convinced that in no other country, whatever advantages in other respects they may have over us—in no other country was freedom treasured and regarded as it was in this country, and in its attainment there was no country in the world that had anything which in all circumstances it could teach us.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the thirtieth anniversary of the Junior Imperial League in Kingsway Hall (19 June 1926), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), p. 19.
1926

Age , World , Freedom , Country

“The self-regulating adaptive disposition of organised life may, in part, be traced to the extreme fecundity of Nature, who, as before stated, has, in all the varieties of her offspring, a prolific power much beyond (in many cases a thousand-fold) what is necessary to fill up the vacancies caused by senile decay. As the field of existence is limited and pre-occupied, it is only the hardier, more robust, better suited to circumstance individuals, who are able to struggle forward to maturity, these inhabiting only the situations to which they have superior adaptation and greater powers of occupancy than any other kind; the weaker, less circumstance-suited, being prematurely destroyed.”

Patrick Matthew (1790–1874) British scientist

On naval timber and arboriculture (1831), Appendix F, part II

Life , Nature , Parting

“Poets often have a conscious awareness that they are struggling with the daimonic, and that the issue is their working something through from the depths which push the self to a new plane.”

Rollo May book Love and Will

Source: Love and Will (1969), p. 127

“International policy does not aim at exploiting local, specific conditions to widen zones of influence and create difficulties for another country. The goal of international policy is to insure universal fulfillment of the "Declaration of the Rights of Man" and to prevent a sharpening of international tensions and a strengthening of militarist and nationalist tendencies.
Such a set of principles would in no way be a betrayal of the revolutionary and national liberation struggle, the struggle against reaction and counterrevolution. On the contrary, with the elimination of all doubtful cases, it would be easier to take decisive action in those extreme cases of reaction, racism, and militarism that allow no course other than armed struggle.”

Andrei Sakharov (1921–1989) Soviet nuclear physicist and human rights activist

Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom (1968), Dangers, International Tensions And New Principles

Way , Decision , Universe , Betrayal

“The struggle is always between the individual and his sacred right to express himself and the power structure that seeks conformity, suppression, and obedience.”

William O. Douglas (1898–1980) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Go East, Young Man: The Autobiography of William O. Douglas (1974), p. 449
Other speeches and writings

“Pity for poverty, enthusiasm for equality and freedom, recognition of social injustice and a desire to remove it, is not socialism. Condemnation of wealth and respect for poverty, such as we find in Christianity and other religions, is not socialism. The communism of early times, as it was before the existence of private property, and as it has at all times and among all peoples been the elusive dream of some enthusiasts, is not socialism. The forcible equalization advocated by the followers of Baboeuf, the so-called equalitarians, is not socialism. In all these appearances there is lacking the real foundation of capitalist society with its class antagonisms. Modern socialism is the child of capitalist society and its class antagonisms. Without these it could not be. Socialism and ethics are two separate things. This fact must be kept in mind. Whoever conceives of socialism in the sense of a sentimental philanthropic striving after human equality, with no idea of the existence of capitalist society, is no socialist in the sense of the class struggle, without which modern socialism is unthinkable. Whoever has come to a full consciousness of the nature of capitalist society and the foundation of modern socialism, knows also that a socialist movement that leaves the basis of the class struggle may be anything else, but it is not socialism.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

People , Religion , Dreams , Communication

“Where does your responsibility begin here? Wiping away the nebula from your sight, you struggle to find where you really are. You're trying to find the direction of the flow, struggling to hold on to the axis of time. But you can't locate the borderline separating dream and reality. Or even the boundary between what's real and what's possible. All you're sure of is that you're in a delicate position. Delicate-and dangerous. You're pulled along, a part of it, unable to pin down the principles of prophecy, or of logic. Like when a river overflows, washing over a town, all road signs have sunk beneath the waves. And all you can see are the anonymous roofs of the sunken houses.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore (2002), Chapter 29, A Boy Named Crow

Dreams , Reality , Time , Parting

“The socialist revolution was a pure and simple question of ‘force.’… Between the [bourgeoisie and the proletariat] no accord is possible. One must disappear. The weaker will be ‘eliminated.’ The class struggle is therefore a question of ‘force.”

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 The Ideology of Fascism: The Rationale of Totalitarianism, A. James Gregor, New York and London, The Free Press (1969) p. 106
Undated

Question

“The struggles I'm facing, the chances I'm taking.
Sometimes they knock me down, but, no, I'm not breaking.
I may not know it, but these are the moments
I am going to remember most, just got to keep going.”

Miley Cyrus (1992) American actor and singer-songwriter

The Climb, her character's guitar piece for Hannah Montana: The Movie and dedicated to her father Billy Ray Cyrus
Song lyrics

Chance

“I find it remarkable that Saudi Arabia, which borders Iraq and is controlled by a multi-billion dollar family, is demanding that U. S. combat troops have ‘boots on the ground’ against ISIS. Where are the Saudi troops? With the third largest military budget in the world and an army far larger than ISIS, the Saudi government must accept its full responsibility for stability in their own region of the world. Ultimately, this is a profound struggle for the soul of Islam, and the anti-ISIS Muslim nations must lead that fight. While the United States and other western nations should be supportive, the Muslim nations must lead.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

[Piccoli, Sean, Sen. Bernie Sanders Rips Saudis for Demanding US Troops Fight ISIS, http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Bernie-Sanders-ISIS-US-troops/2015/03/06/id/628788/, 6 March 2015, NewsMax, 17 March 2015]
[Diamond, Jeremy, Sen. Bernie Sanders: 'I'll be damned' if Americans lead ISIS fight, http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/30/politics/bernie-sanders-middle-east-quagmire/, 6 March 2015, CNN News, 17 March 2015]
[Sanders, Bernie, Sanders Calls Saudi Demand for U.S. Ground Troops ‘Offensive’, http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/sanders-calls-saudi-demand-for-us-ground-troops-offensive, March 6, 2015, US Senate, March 17, 2015]
2010s, 2015

World , Family , Soul , Support

“Nearby, where the main road forked, stood an iron cross on a stone base. As the English couple watched, a mason was cutting in half a dozen fresh names. On the far side of the street, in the deep shadow of a doorway, a youngish woman in black was also watching. She was so pale they assumed at first she had some sort of wasting disease. She remained perfectly still, with one hand holding an edge of her headscarf so that it obscured her mouth. The mason seemed embarrassed and kept his back to her while he worked. After a quarter of an hour an old man in blue workman's clothes came shuffling along in carpet slippers and took her hand without a word and led her away. When the propriétaire came out he nodded at the other side of the street, at the empty space and murmured, 'Trois. Mari et deux frères,' as he set down their salads.This sombre incident remained with them as they struggled up the hill in the heat, heavy with lunch, towards the Bergerie de Tédenat. They stopped half way up in the shade of a stand of pines before a long stretch of open ground. Bernard was to remember this moment for the rest of his life. As they drank from their water bottles he was struck by the recently concluded war not as a historical, geopolitical fact but as a multiplicity, a near-infinity of private sorrows, as a boundless grief minutely subdivided without diminishment among individuals who covered the continent like dust, like spores whose separate identities would remain unknown, and whose totality showed more sadness than anyone could ever begin to comprehend; a weight borne in silence by hundreds of thousands, millions, like the woman in black for a husband and two brothers, each grief a particular, intricate, keening love story that might have been otherwise. It seemed as though he had never thought about the war before, not about its cost. He had been so busy with the details of his work, of doing it well, and his widest view had been of war aims, of winning, of statistical deaths, statistical destruction, and of post-war reconstruction. For the first time he sensed the scale of the catastrophe in terms of feeling; all those unique and solitary deaths, all that consequent sorrow, unique and solitary too, which had no place in conferences, headlines, history, and which had quietly retired to houses, kitchens, unshared beds, and anguished memories. This came upon Bernard by a pine tree in the Languedoc in 1946 not as an observation he could share with June but as a deep apprehension, a recognition of a truth that dismayed him into silence and, later, a question: what possible good could come of a Europe covered in this dust, these spores, when forgetting would be inhuman and dangerous, and remembering a constant torture?”

Ian McEwan book Black Dogs

Page 164-165.
Black Dogs (1992)

Love , Life , Death , War

“We must face the fact that, though the free intelligence and the spirit of community are at once the goal and an essential means, they may be not only ineffectual but actually harmful, unless they are combined with a full measure of that hot indignation against tyranny, that devoted service in the struggle for the new order, which is characteristic of the best minds of the political Left. On the other hand, the political Left, if it is to capture the imagination and allegiance of the people of this country and sweep them forward to victory, must, I believe, learn a more liberal spirit. I mean, of course, liberal not in the political but in the cultural sense, namely, loyalty to the free critical intelligence and respect for the human individual.”

Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) British novelist and philosopher

Source: Philosophy and Living (1939), Chapter XIII: The Practical Upshot

People , Imagination , Intelligence , Communication

“We were wrong to believe that the British are our friends. You are obsessed solely with yout own selfish interests and treat us as a people beyond the pale. But your attitude is a matter of profound disinterest. Your democratic system has already erupted into chaos. We shall soon overtake you and in a decade you will be struggling in our wake. Perhaps then you will remember how you treated us.”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran

As quoted in Asadollah Alam (1991), The Shah and I: The Confidential Diary of Iran's Royal Court, 1968-77, page 236
Attributed

People , Selfishness

“The interests of the working class and of its struggle against capitalism demand complete solidarity and the closest unity of the workers of all nations; they demand resistance to the nationalist policy of the bourgeoisie of every nationalist.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

"Right of Nations to Self-Determination", (1904), The Lenin Anthology
1910s

“First of all, Theodore Roosevelt and Charles W. Fairbanks, candidates for President and Vice-President, respectively, deny the class struggle and this almost infallibly fixes their status as friends of capital and enemies of labor. They insist that they can serve both; but the fact is obvious that only one can be served and that one at the expense of the other. Mr. Roosevelt’s whole political career proves it.”

Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) American labor and political leader

The Socialist Party and the Working Class (1904)

“There is an indolence in grief
Which will not even seek relief.
What is the toil, or care, or pain,
The human heart cannot sustain?
Enough if struggling can create
A change or colour in our fate;
But where's the spirit that can cope
With listless suffering, when hope,
The last of misery's allies,
Sickens of its sweet self, and dies.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Canto III
The Troubadour (1825)

Pain , Fate , Hope , Suffering

“This is the point from which I can never return, and if I back down now then forever I burn. This is the point from which I can never retreat cause if I turn back now there can never be peace. This is the point from which I will die or succeed, living the struggle, I know I'm alive when I bleed. From now on it can never be the same as before, cause the place that I'm from doesn't exist any more”

Immortal Technique (1978) American rapper and activist

The Point of No Return
Albums, Revolutionary Vol. 2 (2003)

Peace

“Class struggle does not take place within the constituted forms of capitalist social relations: rather the constitution of those forms is itself class struggle.”

John Holloway book Change the World Without Taking Power

Change the World Without Taking Power (2002)

“I am now profoundly convinced of what I had only hinted at before, namely, that the struggle between the advocates of a free society and the advocates of the socialist system is not a moral but an intellectual conflict. Thus socialists have been led by a very peculiar development to revive certain primitive instincts and feelings which in the course of hundreds of years had been practically suppressed by commercial or mercantile morals, which by the middle of the last century had come to govern the world economy.”

Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) Austrian and British economist and Nobel Prize for Economics laureate

" The Moral Imperative of the Market https://mises.org/library/moral-imperative-market", in The Unfinished Agenda: Essays on the Political Economy of Government Policy in Honour of Arthur Seldon (1986)
1980s and later

World , Feeling

“Uh, cause everyday she's struggling
she be hustling
day and night
I don't think you know how it feels
when you're an orphan yeah”

Slim Burna (1988) Nigerian singer and record producer

"The Orphan" (track 5)
I'm On Fire (2013)

Feeling , Thinking , Night

“[S]cientists are not robotic inducing machines that infer structures of explanation only from regularities observed in natural phenomena (assuming, as I doubt, that such a style of reasoning could ever achieve success in principle). Scientists are human beings, immersed in culture, and struggling with all the curious tools of inference that mind permits […]. Culture can potentiate as well as constrain—as Darwin's translation of Adam Smith's laissez-faire economic models into biology as the theory of natural selection. In any case, objective minds do not exist outside culture, so we must make the best of our ineluctable embedding.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle

Source: Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle (1987), pp. 6–7

Nature , Success

“This divergence and perversion of the essential question is most striking in what goes today by the name of philosophy. There would seem to be only one question for philosophy to resolve: What must I do? Despite being combined with an enormous amount of unnecessary confusion, answers to the question have at any rate been given within the philosophical tradition on the Christian nations. For example, in Kant´s Critique of Practical Reason, or in Spinoza, Schopenhauer and specially Rousseau.

But in more recent times, since Hegel´s assertion that all that exists is reasonable, the question of what one must do has been pushed to the background and philosophy has directed its whole attention to the investigation of things as they are, and to fitting them into a prearranged theory. This was the first step backwards.

The second step, degrading human thought yet further, was the acceptance of the struggle for existence as a basic law, simply because that struggle can be observed among animals and plants. According to this theory the destruction of the weakest is a law which should not be opposed. And finally, the third step was taken when the childish originality of Nietzsche´s half-crazed thought, presenting nothing complete or coherent, but only various drafts of immoral and completely unsubstantiated ideas, was accepted by the leading figures as the final word in philosophical science. In reply to the question: what must we do? the answer is now put straightforwardly as: live as you like, without paying attention to the lives of others.

If anyone doubted that the Christian world of today has reached a frightful state of torpor and brutalization (not forgetting the recent crimes committed in the Boers and in China, which were defended by the clergy and acclaimed as heroic feats by all the world powers), the extraordinary success of Nietzsche´s works is enough to provide irrefutable proof of this.

Some disjointed writings, striving after effect in a most sordid manner, appear, written by a daring, but limited and abnormal German, suffering from power mania. Neither in talent nor in their basic argument to these writings justify public attention. In the days of Kant, Leibniz, or Hume, or even fifty years ago, such writings would not only have received no attention, but they would not even have appeared. But today all the so called educated people are praising the ravings of Mr. N, arguing about him, elucidating him, and countless copies of his works are printed in all languages.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Source: What is Religion, of What does its Essence Consist? (1902), Chapter 11

People , World , Education , Law

“The plans and schemes of tyrants are broken by many things. They shatter against cliffs of heroic struggle. They rupture on reefs of open resistance. And they are slowly eroded, bit by little bit, on the very beaches where they measure triumph, by countless grains of sand. By the stubborn little decencies of humble little men.”

Eric Flint (1947) American author

In the Heart of Darkness http://www.baen.com/Library/0671878859/0671878859.htm (1998)

Men

“An American has a stronger sympathy with this country than any other observer, and nourished as he is in the very bosom of liberty, he cannot but be deeply afflicted to see that in almost every event, this struggle must terminate in despotism. Yet such is the melancholy spectacle, which presents itself to my mind, and with which it has long been occupied. I eanestly wish and pray, that events may prove all my reasonings to have been fallacious, and all my apprehensions vain. I am, &c.”

Gouverneur Morris (1752–1816) American politician

1790s, First Letter to Thomas Pinckney (1792)

Affliction , Country

“Despite our profound differences, Americans on both or all sides of the great cultural struggles of our day must recognize their opponents (or most, or at least many, of their opponents) as reasonable people of goodwill who, doing their best, have arrived at different conclusions about fundamental moral questions — including basic questions of justice and human rights. If that is to happen, political and intellectual leaders, as well as people in the media, are going to have to model treating their adversaries with respect — and not demonizing them.”

Robert P. George (1955) American legal scholar

2017, Interview with Matthew Bunson (2017)

People , Justice , Question

“A deliberate and determined effort is being made to break down the guarantees of our fundamental law. It has for its purpose the confiscation of property and the destruction of liberty. At the present time the chief obstacle to this effort is the Supreme Court of the United States. In this contest there is but one place for a real American to stand. That is on the side of ordered liberty under constitutional government. This is not the struggle of the rich and powerful. They will be able to survive. It is the struggle of the common run of people. Unless we can maintain our institutions of liberty unimpaired they will see their savings swept away, their homes devastated, and their children perish from want and hunger.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Ordered Liberty and World Peace (1924)

Hunger , Children , People , Law

“We started our struggle from 2005, and…we organized a lot of protests, weekly protests, in a place we called the Square of Liberty…We knew and know that the freedom of speech is the door to democracy and justice.”

Tawakkol Karman (1979) Yemeni journalist, politician, human rights activist, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

2010s, Democracy Now! interview (2011)

Justice , Democracy , Freedom

“The sound education of the workers and their thorough organization, both economic and political, on the bassis of the class struggle, must precede their emancipation. Without such education and organization they can mke no substantial progress, and they will be robbed of the fruits of any temporary victory they may achieve, as they have been through all the centuries of the past.”

Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) American labor and political leader

Sound Socialist Tactics (1912)

Education , Past , Victory

“In the West our hand of peace has reached out into empty air. The responsibility there falls on our enemies. If we have to continue the struggle, then the hearts of the people will be where the flags of the country are flying, and we hope and pray for a German victory that will bring us the peace that has been denied to us…We thank Secretary of State von Kuehlmann and his collaborators for the tenacity and diplomatic skill with which they represented our German interests at the negotiations in Brest…I now come to the question of the strategic demarcation of frontiers, the possible allocation of Polish territories to Germany and Prussia. My political friends are of the opinion that in the question of the strategic safeguarding of frontiers decisive importance should be attached to the voice of the Supreme Command. From our own national point of view we are not at all interested in having Polish territory added to Germany in any way…It will be a matter for our military leaders to examine the question to what extent strategic security of our frontiers is a vital necessity to Germany. If so, we shall accept it because there is a national need for it.”

Gustav Stresemann (1878–1929) German politician, statesman, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate

Speech in the Reichstag (19 February 1918), quoted in W. M. Knight-Patterson, Germany. From Defeat to Conquest 1913-1933 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1945), pp. 149-150.
1910s

People , Peace , Hope , Way

“Every candid eye, I think, will read the Koran far otherwise than so. It is the confused ferment of a great rude human soul; rude, untutored, that cannot even read; but fervent, earnest, struggling vehemently to utter itself in words. With a kind of breathless intensity he strives to utter himself; the thoughts crowd on him pell-mell: for very multitude of things to say, he can get nothing said. The meaning that is in him shapes itself into no form of composition, is stated in no sequence, method, or coherence;—they are not shaped at all, these thoughts of his; flung out unshaped, as they struggle and tumble there, in their chaotic inarticulate state.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Prophet

Soul , Thinking , Reading

“Men and animals do not merely struggle to maintain their individual existence; they are members of larger social groups. And, all too often, it is the social unit, not the individual, whose survival comes first.”

Howard Bloom (1943) American publicist and author

The Clint Eastwood Conundrum
The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History (1997)

Men , Animals

“Where a government has come into power through some form of popular vote, fraudulent or not, and maintains at least an appearance of constitutional legality, the guerrilla outbreak cannot be promoted, since the possibilities of peaceful struggle have not yet been exhausted.”

Ernesto Che Guevara book Guerrilla Warfare

Source: Guerrilla Warfare (1961), Ch. I: 1. Essence of Guerrilla Warfare

Peace , Appearance

“I have so many friends who hate their jobs and man, it's such a struggle trying to find what they love or what they dream of. I feel so lucky that I found what I love and my dreams have started to come true.”

Taryn Manning (1978) American actor, musician and fashion designer

Interview, Pop-Rock Candy Mountain (2008-06-11)

Love , Hate , Dreams , Feeling

“It’s hard no matter where you come from. You have your own struggles.”

Shraddha Kapoor (1987) Indian film actress & Singer

I do eat everything and luckily, don’t gain much weight.
Personal Agenda: Shraddha Kapoor via Hindustan Times (October 25, 2013) http://www.hindustantimes.com/brunch/brunch-stories/personal-agenda-shraddha-kapoor/article1-1140298.aspx

“If poetry is emotion recollected in tranquility, then science is tranquility recollected in emotion: a struggle to think carefully in the swirl of passionate curiosity.”

George Musser

Spooky Action at a Distance (2015), Ch. 4 : The Great Debate

Thinking , Passion , Science

“To the Whigs of the seventeenth century we owe it that we have a House of Commons. To the Whigs of the nineteenth century we owe it that the House of Commons has been purified. The abolition of the slave-trade, the abolition of colonial slavery, the extension of popular education, the mitigation of the rigour of the penal code, all, all were effected by that party; and of that party, I repeat, I am a member. I look with pride on all that the Whigs have done for the cause of human freedom and of human happiness. I see them now hard pressed, struggling with difficulties, but still fighting the good fight. At their head I see men who have inherited the spirit and the virtues, as well as the blood, of old champions and martyrs of freedom…While one shred of the old banner is flying, by that banner will I at least be found.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

Speech http://www.bartleby.com/349/authors/133.html to the electors at Edinburgh (May 1839)

Men , Education , Freedom , Fight

“When the dialectical method is applied to the study of economic problems, economic phenomena are not viewed separately from each other, by bits and pieces, but in their inner connection as an integrated totality, structured around, and by, a basic predominant mode of production. This totality is analysed in all its aspects and manifestations, as determined by certain given laws of motion, which relate also to its origins and its inevitable disappearance. These laws of motion of the given mode of production are discovered to be nothing but the unfolding of the inner contradictions of that structure, which define its very nature. The given economic structure is seen to be characterized at one and the same time by the unity of these contradictions and by their struggle, both of which determine the constant changes which it undergoes.”

Ernest Mandel (1923–1995) Belgian economist and Marxist philosopher

Introduction to Capital. Introduction to volume 1 (1976)

Law , Nature , Problem , Study

“It is the most advanced industrial society which feels most directly threatened by the rebellion, because it is here that the social necessity of repression and alienation, of servitude and heteronomy is most transparently unnecessary, and unproductive in terms of human progress. Therefore the cruelty and violence mobilized in the struggle against the threat, therefore the monotonous regularity with which the people are made familiar with, and accustomed to inhuman attitudes and behavior-to wholesale killing as patriotic act.”

Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) German philosopher, sociologist, and political theorist

The Individual in the Great Society (1965)

People , Behavior , Feeling

“This province of Quebec is catholic and French and shall remain catholic and French. All the while asserting our friendship and our respect for the representatives of the other races and religions, all the while claiming our eagerness for giving them their fair share in every aspect […] we solemnly declare that we shall never renounce our rights that are garanteed by treatees, by law and by the constitution […] Let us cease our fratricidal struggles and let us unite!”

Honoré Mercier (1840–1894) Canadian politician

Cette province de Québec est catholique et française et restera catholique et française. Tout en affirmant notre amitié et notre respect pour les représentants des autres races et religions, tout en déclarant notre empressement de leur donner leur juste part en tout et partout (...) nous déclarons solennellement que nous ne renoncerons jamais aux droits qui nous sont garantis par les traités, par la loi et la constitution (...) Cessons nos luttes fratricides et unissons-nous!
Speech given of the Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day of 1889.

Friendship , Religion , Law

“Amid all these things, beyond all these things every man and nation, every plant and animal, every god and demon, charges upward like an army inflamed by an incomprehensible, unconquerable Spirit.
We struggle to make this Spirit visible, to give it a face, to encase it in words, in allegories and thoughts and incantations, that it may not escape us.
But it cannot be contained in the twentysix letters of an alphabet which we string out in rows; we know that all these words, these allegories, these thoughts, and these incantations are, once more, but a new mask with which to conceal the Abyss.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book The Saviors of God

The Saviors of God (1923)

God , Animals

“To fill up Liberia with an ignorant, inexperienced, half-barbarized race, just escaped from the chains of slavery, would be only to prolong, for ages, the period of struggle and conflict which attends the inception of new enterprises.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe book Uncle Tom's Cabin

Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Concluding Remarks

Age

“Tonight I am going to speak on the class struggle and I am going to make it so plain that even a lawyer can understand it.”

Bill Haywood (1869–1928) Labor organizer

Bread and Roses: Mills, Migrants, and The Struggle for the American Dream, Bruce Watson. Viking-Penguin, 2005; pg. 95.

Understanding

“Shall we then, I ask you, even for a moment, be hopeless of our great cause? I feel almost ashamed even to argue it to such a meeting as this. I call to mind where I am, and who are those whom I see before me. Am I not in the town of Birmingham—England's central capital; and do not these eyes look upon the sons of those who, not thirty years ago, shook the fabric of privilege to its base? Not a few of the strong men of that time are now white with age. They approach the confines of their mortal day. Its evening is cheered with the remembrance of that great contest, and they rejoice in the freedom they have won. Shall their sons be less noble than they? Shall the fire which they kindled be extinguished with you? I see your answer in every face. You are resolved that the legacy which they bequeathed to you, you will hand down in an accumulated wealth of freedom to your children. As for me, my voice is feeble. I feel now sensibly and painfully that I am not what I was. I speak with diminished fire; I act with a lessened force; but as I am, my countrymen and my constituents, I will, if you will let me, be found in your ranks in the impending struggle.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech in Birmingham (27 October 1858) referring to the Reform Crisis, quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), pp. 272-273.
1850s

Men , Children , Age , Feeling

“And love, above all when it struggles against destiny, overwhelms us with the feeling of the vanity of this world of appearances and gives us a glimpse of another world, in which destiny is overcome and liberty is law.”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), III : The Hunger of Immortality

Love , World , Law , Feeling

“I had been warned about Mr. Truman's quick and violent temper and prejudices, but he radiated nothing but courtesy and good humor during our meeting. He has an engaging personality, a quick and witty tongue, and I liked him from the start. At the conference itself, he seemed to take great pride in his historical knowledge, but, it seemed to me that in spite of his having read much, it was of a superficial character, encompassing facts without the logic and reasoning dictating those facts. Of the Far East he knew little, presenting a strange combination of distorted history and vague hopes that somehow, some way, we could do something to help those struggling against Communism.”

Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964) U.S. Army general of the army, field marshal of the Army of the Philippines

Source: Reminiscences (1964), p. 361

Hope , Way , History , Communication

“If I chose to speak, it is not to defend myself of the acts of which I'm accused, as only society, which by its organisation puts men into continual struggle each against the other, is responsible. Indeed, today do we not see in all classes and walks of life, people who desire, I will not say death as this sounds bad to the ear, but misfortune for their fellows if that can bring them advantages.”

Ravachol (1859–1892) French anarchist

Si je prends la parole, ce n'est pas pour me défendre des actes dont on m'accuse, car seule la société, qui, par son organisation, met les hommes en lutte continuelle les uns contre les autres, est responsable. En effet, ne voit-on pas aujourd'hui dans toutes les classes et dans toutes les fonctions des personnes qui désirent, je ne dirai pas la mort, parce que cela sonne mal à l'oreille, mais le malheur de leurs semblables, si cela peut leur procurer des avantages.
Trial statement

Life , Death , Men , People

“We have long struggles with ourself, of which the outcome is one of our actions; they are, as it were, the inner side of human nature. This inner side is God's; the outer side belongs to men.”

Honoré de Balzac book Séraphîta

Source: Seraphita (1835), Ch. 3: Seraphita - Seraphitus.

Men , God , Nature

“These battles shall not be mere street fights with stones against tear-gas bombs, or of pacific general strikes; neither shall it be the battle of a furious people destroying in two or three days the repressive scaffolds of the ruling oligarchies; the struggle shall be long, harsh, and its front shall be in the guerrilla's refuge, in the cities, in the homes of the fighters — where the repressive forces shall go seeking easy victims among their families — in the massacred rural population, in the villages or cities destroyed by the bombardments of the enemy.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Message to the Tricontinental (1967)

People , Family , Home , Tear

“One who loves God retains this humility at all times, not with weariness and struggle, but with pleasure and gladness.”

Walter Hilton (1340–1396) English Augustinian mystic.

Book II, ch. 37 (p. 214)
The Ladder of Perfection (1494)

Love , God , Pleasure , Time

“'Party,' in the general vocabulary of world intellectuals, is basically a unified social organization with a 'world-view,' an 'Ideology,' a 'philosophy of history,' and 'ideal social order,' a 'class foundation,' a 'class orientation,' a 'social leadership,' a 'political philosophy,' a 'political orientation,' a 'tradition,' a 'slogan,' a 'strategy,' a "tactic of struggle," and … a "hope" that wants to change the "status quo" in man, society, people, or a particular class, and establish the "desired status" in its stead.”

Ali Shariati (1933–1977) Iranian academic and activist

Ali Shariati, in: The Islamic Quarterly, Vol. 27-29, (1983), p. 215; as quoted in: Ali Mirsepassi (2000), Intellectual Discourse and the Politics of Modernization, p. 126.

People , World , Hope , History

“Crime is a form of "unorganized" class struggle, and the lowest groups in the society have always committed a disproportionate number of crimes.”

Daniel Bell book The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism

Source: The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1976), Chapter 5, Unstable America, p. 189

“I have been a vegetarian since I was fourteen for ethical reasons. I continued to eat eggs and dairy until I did some research on the dairy industry and discovered the horrific treatment of farm animals. … I went vegan about 3 ½ years ago [in late 2014]. It was a process that took time and patience. I wasn't perfect, in fact I struggled a lot during the first year. That said, once I educated myself on how and what to eat, it became much easier.”

Allie (wrestler) (1987) Canadian professional wrestler

"Allie, vegan wrestler" http://www.greatveganathletes.com/allie-vegan-wrestler, interview with GreatVeganAthletes.com (2018).

Education , Time , Animals , Perfection

“Nonviolence begins with the insights that all life is sacred, that all human beings are children of the God of peace, and that as God’s children, we are under certain obligations. Of course, we should never hurt or kill another human being, wage war, build nuclear weapons, or sit idly by while millions of human beings starve to death each year. Nonviolence invites us, also, to reevaluate the way we treat animals in our society. While we resist violence, injustice, and war, and while we practice nonviolence, seek peace, and struggle for justice for the poor, we are also invited to break down the species barrier, extending our belief in Christian compassion to the animal kingdom by, among other things, adopting a vegetarian diet.”

John Dear (1959) Catholic priest from the United States

Christianity and Vegetarianism (1990)

Life , Death , God , War

“In this struggle President Bush will find, like Lincoln, and like one who came before Lincoln, that "a man's foes will be those of his own household." However hard and long it might be, this battle must be borne. For what is at stake is nothing less than the future of our entire civilization.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, Bush's Lincolnian Challenge (2002)

Future

“It’s just that it’s mind-boggling to me how many people I encounter every day who are struggling to subsist on a diet of bad advice about fake solutions to nonexistent problems.”

Merlin Mann (1966) American blogger

Kung Fu Grippe http://www.kungfugrippe.com/post/243861520/marco
Websites, The KungFu Grippe Tumblr website

People , Problem

“Pacifism, to me, is primarily a way of actively struggling against injustice and inhumanity… My kind of pacifism may be called "non-violent resistance."”

Dwight Macdonald (1906–1982) journalist

Speech, 1947. Quoted in Scott H. Bennett, Radical Pacifism: The War Resisters League and Gandhian Nonviolence in America, 1915-1963, Syracuse University Press, 2003.

Way

“What persuades men and women to mistake each other from time to time for gods or vermin is ideology. One can understand well enough how human beings may struggle and murder for good material reasons—reasons connected, for instance, with their physical survival. It is much harder to grasp how they may come to do so in the name of something as apparently abstract as ideas. Yet ideas are what men and women live by, and will occasionally die for.”

Terry Eagleton (1943) British writer, academic and educator

1990s, Ideology (1991)

Women , Men , God , Idea

“I want to tell you that, when the army of Egypt came down the streets, came to protect you, and stayed for 18 months, none of the soldiers harmed you, Our hands must be cut if they would harm you. I am repeating this for you to know, during those 18 months, there were 150,000 soldier in the streets. it means for 500 days with 150,000 soldier in the street there were 7.5 million possibilities, we were struggling not to harm any Egyptian!”

Abdel Fattah el-Sisi (1954) Current President of Egypt

Remarks by el-Sisi on Sinai liberation celebrations day (28 April 2013) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-x1xN8LUYG4.
2013

Quotes about struggle page 18

Quotes about struggle
page 18