Struggle Quotes - Page 33

• Mozart. Vivaldi. Van Gogh. Stretched their genius on struggle, stress and survival.

  Billy Cannon

  Stress, Survival, Vivaldi

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• Devoutly the teachers point out huge fumigated domes; but beneath the statues there's no love, no love beneath the eyes set in crystal. Love is there, in flesh ripped by thirst, in the tiny hut struggling against the flood; love is there, in ditches where snakes of hunger wrestle, in the sad sea that rocks dead gulls, and in the darkest stinging kiss under pillows.

  Federico Garcia Lorca

  Teacher, Eye, Kissing

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• Christina Baker Kline writes exquisitely about two unlikely friends—one, a 91-year-old survivor of the grinding poverty of rural Ireland, immigrant New York and the hardscrabble Midwest; and the other, a casualty of a string of foster homes—each struggling to transcend a past of isolation and hardship. Orphan Train will hold you in its grip as their fascinating tales unfold.

  Cathy Marie Buchanan

  New York, Home, Writing

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• Are there many situations more sublimely tragic than the struggle of the soul with the demand to renounce a work which has been all the significance of its life--a significance which is to vanish as the waters which come and go where no man has need of them?

  George Eliot

  Work, Men, Water

  George Eliot (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated)”, p.2423, Delphi Classics

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• There can be no brotherhood when some nations indulge in previously unheard of luxuries, while others struggle to stave off famine.

  Peter Singer

  Indulge In, Luxury, Brotherhood

  Peter Singer (2011). “The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress”, p.119, Princeton University Press

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• Dada was given the Venus of Milo a clyster and has allowed the Laocoön and his sons to rest awhile, after thousands of years of struggle with the good sausage Python. The philosophers are of less use to Dada than an old toothbrush, and it leaves them on the scrap heap for the great leaders of the world.

  Hans Arp

  Son, Python, Years

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• A library is but the soul's burial ground; it is the land of shadows. Yet one is impressed with the thought, the labor, and the struggle, represented in this vast catacomb of books. Who could dream, by the placid waters that issue from the level mouths of brooks into the lake, all the plunges, the whirls, the divisions, and foaming rushes that had brought them down to the tranquil exit? And who can guess through what channels of disturbance, and experiences of sorrow, the heart passed that has emptied into this Dead Sea of books?

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Dream, Book, Heart

  Henry Ward Beecher (1855). “Star Papers: Or, Experiences of Art and Nature”, p.54, New York : Boston : J.C. Derby ; Phillips, Sampson & Company

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• Need and struggle are what excite and inspire us; our hour of triumph is what brings the void. Not the Jews of the captivity, but those of the days of Solomon 's glory are those from whom the pessimistic utterances in our Bible come.

  William James

  Inspire, Triumph, Captivity

  William James (1956). “The Will to Believe: And Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, and Human Immortality”, p.47, Courier Corporation

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• When you expand the civil-rights struggle to the level of human rights, you can then take the case of the black man in this country before the nations in the UN. You can take it before the General Assembly. You can take Uncle Sam before a world court. But the only level you can do it on is the level of human rights. Civil rights keeps you under his restrictions, under his jurisdiction. Civil rights keeps you in his pocket.

  Malcolm X

  Country, Uncles, Men

  "The Ballot or The Bullet (Cleveland Version)". Malcolm X's speech at Cory Methodist Church in Cleveland, Ohio (April 3, 1964) as quoted in "Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements" edited by George Breitman (pp. 23-44), 1965.

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• The novel remains for me one of the few forms where we can record man's complexity and the strength and decency of his longings. Where we can describe, step by step, minute by minute, our not altogether unpleasant struggle to put ourselves into a viable and devout relationship to our beloved and mistaken world.

  John Cheever

  Men, Records, World

  National Book Award, September 1958.

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• Lightning my pilot sits; In a cavern under is fettered the thunder, It struggles and howls at fits; Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion, This pilot is guiding me, Lured by the love of the genii that move In the depths of the purple sea; Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills, Over the lakes and the plains, Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream The Spirit he loves remains; And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile, Whilst he is dissolving in rains.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Dream, Rain, Ocean

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1847). “The works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. by mrs. Shelley”, p.259

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• In Paris on a chilling evening late in October of 1985 I first became fully aware that the struggle with the disorder in my mind - a struggle which had engaged me for several months - might have a fatal outcome.

  William Styron

  Paris, Mind, Might

  "Darkness Visible". Book by William Styron, 1990.

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• When it comes to the war in Iraq, the time for promises and assurances for waiting and for patience is over. Too many lives have been lost, too many billions of dollars have been spent for us to trust the president on another tired and failed policy that's opposed by generals and experts, Democrats and Republicans, Americans and many of the Iraqis themselves.

  Barack Obama

  Country, War, Iraq

  "Tucker" with Tucker Carlson, www.nbcnews.com. January 31, 2007.

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• America can do whatever we set our mind to. That is the story of our history, whether it's the pursuit of prosperity for our people, or the struggle for equality for all our citizens; our commitment to stand up for our values abroad, and our sacrifices to make the world a safer place. Let us remember that we can do these things not just because of wealth or power, but because of who we are: one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

  Barack Obama

  Commitment, Sacrifice, Justice For All

  Announces the Death of Osama Bin Laden, delivered 1 May 2011

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• I believe that we now have a duty to remove the aggressor from our land and to regain the Arab territory occupied by the Israelis. We can then engage in a clandestine struggle to liberate the land of Palestine, to liberate Haifa and Jaffa.

  Gamal Abdel Nasser

  Believe, Land, Territory

  Gamal Abdel Nasser's remarks at a meeting with King Hussein as quoted in Efraim Karsh "Islamic Imperialism: A History" (p. 172), 2006.

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• The moral issues with which Marcus struggles would be, as he points out, unchanged whether the universe were mechanical and devoid of meaning or value or ruled by deity or Providence; whether the will were in fact free or determined; whether there were or were not a future life, or any even fugitive rewards and punishments at all.

  Kenneth Rexroth

  Punishment, Issues, Would Be

  Kenneth Rexroth (1968). “Classics Revisited”, p.82, New Directions Publishing

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• The true clerc is Vauvenargues, Lamarck, Fresnel, Spinoza, Schiller, Baudelaire, César Franck, who were never diverted from single-hearted adoration of the beautiful and the divine by the necessity of earning their daily bread. But such clercs are inevitably rare. The rule is that the living creature condemned to struggle for life turns to practical passions, and thence to the sanctifying of those passions.

  Julien Benda

  Beautiful, Passion, Earning

  "Treason of the Intellectuals". Book by Julien Benda, p. 159, 1927.

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• Very little comes easily to our poor, benighted species (the first creature, after all, to experiment with the novel evolutionary inventions of self-conscious philosophy and art). Even the most "obvious," "accurate," and "natural" style of thinking or drawing must be regulated by history and won by struggle. Solutions must therefore arise within a social context and record the complex interactions of mind and environment that define the possibility of human improvement.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Art, Philosophy, Thinking

  Stephen Jay Gould (2011). “Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms”, p.72, Harvard University Press

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• In our struggle to understand the history of life, we must learn where to place the boundary between contingent and unpredictable events that occur but once and the more repeatable, lawlike phenomenon that may pervade life's history as generalities.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Events, May, History Of Life

  Stephen Jay Gould (2011). “Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms”, p.402, Harvard University Press

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• Perhaps the most concise summary of enlightenment would be: transcending dualism . ... Dualism is the conceptual division of the world into categories ... human perception is by nature a dualistic phenomenon - which makes the quest for enlightenment an uphill struggle, to say the least.

  Douglas Hofstadter

  Perception, Enlightenment, Would Be

  "Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid". Book by Douglas Hofstadter, 1979.

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• One was born a certain sort of person, and though by ceasless struggle one might become as nice as that sort of person ever is, one could never become as nice as a nicer sort of person.

  Elizabeth Goudge

  Nice, Might, Born

  Elizabeth Goudge (1938). “Towers in the Mist”

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• Yes, I did have to struggle very hard to get this [the vote on the Iraq war] through, but the reason I did it was because I thought it was the right thing to do. I didn't take this on myself... just because I thought, 'Let's give myself a really hard time for a couple of years!'

  Tony Blair

  Couple, War, Hard Times

  BBC Question Time's election special programme, April 28, 2005.

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• The economic and social theories used by those who take part in the social struggle ought to be judged not by their objective value but primarily for their effectiveness in arousing emotions. The scientific refutation of them which can be made is useless, however correct it may be objectively.

  Vilfredo Pareto

  Effectiveness, Useless, May

  Vilfredo Pareto (1971). “Manual of political economy”, Augustus m Kelley Pubs

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• For any exam in history, here is the answer: all human history is the struggle between systems that attempt to shackle the human personality in the name of some intangible good on the one hand and systems that enable and expand the scope of human personality in the pursuit of extremely tangible aims. The American system is the most successful in the world because it harmonizes best with the aims and longings of human personality while allowing the best protection to other personalities.

  Ben Stein

  Successful, Hands, Names

  Ben Stein (2010). “The Real Stars: In Today's America, Who Are the True Heroes?”, p.33, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• 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

  May, Way, Resistance

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

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