Quotes About Resistance

Long ago she had learned that to seem to yield is always stronger than to show resistance, and to acknowledge a fault quickly is always to show an invincible rectitude.

In a strange and ominous way the fate of women everywhere in the world is linked with the trend toward fascism. To delay might mean to be compelled to silence.

I'd believed I could keep out the tales and the toys but had failed on both counts.

When we resist change, it's called suffering. But when we can completely let go and not struggle against it, when we can embrace the groundlessness of our situation and relax into its dynamic quality, that's called enlightenment

The root of suffering is resisting the certainty that no matter what the circumstances, uncertainty is all we truly have.

When the resistance is gone, so are the demons. It's like a koan that we can work with by learning how to be more gentle, how to relax, and how to surrender to the situations and people in our lives.

The opposite of patience is aggression—the desire to jump and move, to push against our lives, to try to fill up space.

We try to resist it by making things that will last—forever, we say—things that we don't have to wash, things that we don't have to iron. Somehow, in the process of trying to deny that things are always changing, we lose our sense of the sacredness of life. We tend to forget that we are part of the natural scheme of things.

But we don't have to close down when we feel groundlessness in any form. Instead, we can turn toward it and say, "This is what freedom from fixed mind feels like. This is what freedom from closed-heartedness feels like. This is what unbiased, unfettered goodness feels like. Maybe I'll get curious and see if I can go beyond my resistance and experience the goodness." Buddhism holds

The Buddha spoke a lot about the importance of working with one's ego. But what did he mean by "ego"? There are various ways to talk about this word, but one definition I particularly like is "that which resists what is." Ego struggles against reality, against the open-endedness and natural movement of life. It is very uncomfortable with vulnerability and ambiguity, with not being quite sure how to pin things down.

I almost feel bad for declining, but I feel more terrible that I can't stop looking at how his chest rises and falls with each of his frustrated breaths.

Let your dissent fuel you, your anger inspire you, your rage convey you, and your fury strike a chilling fear onto the spines of your enemies.

I like your anger, ' the Hag said mildly. 'I like your resistance. It makes you less than courteous, but altogether more interesting.

After an argument, silence may mean acceptance or the continuation of resistance by other means.

Given the difficulty of resisting such temptations over the longer run, a proper concern for the welfare of congressional souls may well be the ultimate argument in favor of term limitations.

Several of them would have protested if they could have found the right arguments.

What use are the best of arguments when they can be destroyed by force?

The argument that resistance to the war should remain strictly nonviolent seems to me overwhelming.

Argument does not soften, but rather hardens, the obdurate heart.

For the choke, there are no "tough guys". With an arm lock he can be tough and resist the pain. With the choke he just passes out, goes to sleep.

The function of art is to struggle against obligation.

Art is our weapon. Culture is a form of resistance.

A wall is a very big weapon. It's one of the nastiest things you can hit someone with.

Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art - the art of words.