Quotes About Resistance

I was reminded once again that for Wen and the rest of China's leaders, foreign policy remained purely transactional. How much they gave and how much they got would depend not on abstract principles of international law but on their assessment of the other side's power and leverage. Where they met no resistance, they'd keep on taking.

Let the South," I said slowly, "spend every single penny of their treasure, which colored people have earned for them. Let them spill a drop of their own blood for every drop of colored people's blood they've spilled or contaminated. I have no pity and contemplate no mercy for the so-called bleeding Confederacy.

To fight against a war or, better yet, an entire war machine, we had to become warriors ourselves. This is the cunning symmetry of war: Enemies tend to come to resemble one another. And this was perhaps especially so in a culture that appallingly—to us—applied the war meme to just about anything, as in the War on Poverty.

La gran mayoría de los oficinistas despedidos se tragaron el sapo, como se suele decir, y aceptaron que les dieran pensamiento positivo en vez de la nómina mensual y la seguridad de antes. No tomaron las calles, no forzaron ningún cambio en la política, no se presentaron en su ex oficina con una pistola.

a good story doesn't just copy life, it pushes back on it.

He warned Mother not to flout God's Will by expecting too much of us. Sending a girl to college is like pouring water in your shoes,' he still loves to say, as often as possible. 'It's hard to say which is worse, seeing it run out and waste the water, or seeing it hold in and wreck the shoes.

prodigal summer, the season of extravagant procreation. It could wear out everything in its path with its passionate excesses, but nothing alive with wings or a heart or a seed curled into itself in the ground could resist welcoming it back when it came.

What we end up calling history is a kind of knife, slicing down through time. A few people are hard enough to bend its edge. But most won't even stand close to the blade. I'm one of those. We don't bend anything.

Like Daniel she enteres the lions' den, but lacking Daniel's pure and unblemished soul, Ada is spiced with the flavors of vice that make for a tasty meal. Pure and unblemished souls must taste very bland, with an aftertaste of bitterness.

In our darkest hours we may find comfort in the age-old slogan from the resistance movement, declaring that we shall not be moved. But we need to finish that sentence. Moved from where? Are we anchoring to the best of what we've believed in, throughout our history, or merely to an angry new mode of self-preservation? The American moral high ground can't possibly be an isolated mountaintop from which we refuse to learn anything at all to protect ourselves from monstrous losses.

One thing I learned from Mr. Armstrong while striving heartily to remain uneducated: a good story doesn't just copy life, it pushes back on it. It's why guys like Chartrain wear their clothes too big and their teeth edged with gold, why Mr. Dick puts words on kites and sends them to the sun. It's why I draw what I draw.

That a craving can ratchet itself up and up inside a body and mind, at the same time that body's strength for tolerating its favorite drug goes down and down.

a good story doesn't just copy life, it pushes back on it. It's

Before the redneck miner wars, the coal land grabs, the timber land grabs. Whiskey Rebellion: an actual war. George Washington marched the US Army on our people for refusing to pay tax on corn liquor. Which they weren't even selling for money, mainly just for neighborly enjoyment. How do you get tax money out of moonshine? Answer: You and what army. It goes a ways to explaining people's feelings about taxes and guns. (land economy vs. Money economy) -p. 523

George Washington marched the US Army on our people for refusing to pay tax on corn liquor. Which they weren't even selling for money, mainly just making for neighborly entertainment.

The article I haven't enclosed, but you know the kind of thing: "in attendance were Trotskyites, Teamsters, Socialist professors and old-line Quakers, the crackpot fringes of public opinion, hoping to arouse draft resistance while praying for an easy way out." In other words, the kind of thing you and

Blanche stared at Emmeline's door for a few moments, bristling with the desire to knock and trying to conquer her natural inclination to defy the voice of authority. It was one of the reasons she had not lasted in the waitressing, telephone sales, clerking, and typing jobs she'd tried over the years.

Siamo mutanti, tutti, alcuni piu' evoluti, altri meno, c'e' chi e' un po' in ritardo, c'e' chi non si e' accorto di niente, chi fa tutto per istinto e chi e' consapevole, chi fa finta di non capire e chi non capira' mai, chi punta i piedi e chi corre all'impazzata in avanti.

Caligula ne demiÅŸti? Oderint dum meduant. Bizden korktuklar? sürece, b?rak?n bizden nefret etsinler.

the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, the first Gulf war.

Quando, dalle prigioni delle nostre città, volgiamo lo sguardo alla wilderness, quando il nostro intelletto sperimenta il privilegio di condurre una vita scevra da convenzioni insensate o senza colpe né sotterfugi, in breve, una vita integra, credo che possiamo rivolgerci al lupo. In esso percepiamo il coraggio, la resistenza e un modo di vivere franco e leale; percepiamo che è in armonia con l'universo mentre noi non lo siamo ancora.

The powers of evil were far more powerful than we mortals, and even though people could resist them, they could not overcome them.

The world eventually sends out a mean-ass Patrol Boy to slow your progress and show you who's boss. You reading this have undoubtedly met yours (or will); I met mine, and I'm sure he'll be back. He's got my address. He's a mean guy, a Bad Lieutenant, the sworn enemy of goofery, fuckery, pride, ambition, loud music, and all things nineteen.

Ellie wept for the very intractability of death, its imperviousness to argument.