Quotes About Struggle

The poor teachers! Trained in the traditional sciences, they were totally lost when trying to teach us about pigs or paddy fields.

No matter what I did and where I went, the Cultural Revolution followed me.

Our great leader, Chairman Mao, has taught us, 'Every reactionary is the same; if you do not hit him, he will not fall. This is also like sweeping the floor; as a rule, where the broom does not reach, the dust will not vanish by itself.'" Her

Now you can show your revolutionary determination." He paused. "We want you to testify against your father at the struggle meeting.

Now, you have to choose between two roads." Thin-Face looked straight into my eyes. "You can break with your family and follow Chairman Mao, or you can follow your father and become an enemy of the people." His

You can tell your parents you'll follow Chairman Mao, not them. If they give you any trouble, just come here and tell us. We'll go to their work units and hold struggle meetings against them… .

That doesn't mean that you should make up a story about something you never did!" Dad's voice grew still louder. "So what if I never listened to foreign radio broadcasts? They'll stop beating me if I confess to it, won't they? 'Leniency to those who confess, and severity to those who resist.' Look at my face, Lao Jiang. I can't stand it anymore… .

Life was very hard, so hard that I could hardly breathe sometimes

We had a bad class status. That was why An Yi was not allowed to wear mourning bands or even cry aloud for her grandmother. That was why my house was searched, and strangers could come in and do whatever they wanted. It was just a simple fact. Why should I ask why? There was absolutely nothing I could do to change it.

The Red Guards at her school held struggle meetings to criticize her almost every day. During those struggle meetings they beat her and whipped her with their belts.

Well, you know the old saying. 'The wheel of fate makes a full turn every sixty years,'" An Yi said. "It's their turn to suffer now.

We finally learned that the whole Cultural Revolution had been part of a power struggle at the highest levels of the Party. Our leader had taken advantage of our trust and loyalty to manipulate the whole country. This

Now our chance had come. Destroying the fourolds was a new battle, and an important one: It would keep China from losing her Communist ideals. Though we were not facing real guns or real tanks, this battle would be even harder, because our enemies, the rotten ideas and customs we were so used to, were inside ourselves.

Learning to read again was by far the hardest thing I had to do. I don't know if those cells in my brain had died or what, but I had no recollection that reading was something I had ever done before, and I thought the concept was ridiculous.

If you are stuck sweating on a sandbar in the river of your life you've got to find a way back into those swift effervescent currents of joy that are your birthright.

The lesson of the Funk Dog: "You can forget what it used to feel like to feel good about life; feeling rotten—or just a low-grad funk—seems normal and therefore acceptable. I just don't believe that God intended for any of his creatures to be petted with sticks.

People love to believe they're so much better than they are. People who have never been tested, they're so quick to judge. What do they really know about themselves? All I'm saying is this: unless you've been there, found yourself with nothing, nothing but your own talent, you can't tell me you wouldn't do it the same way, too.

You have a wonderful child. Then, when he's 13, gremlins carry him away and leave in his place a stranger who gives you not a moment's peace.

You have a wonderful child. Then, when he's thirteen, gremlins carry him away and leave in his place a stranger who gives you not a moment's peace.

If you're struggling to get into big companies, you probably have a weak value proposition. Pure and simple.

In one of the most wrenching tragedies in American history—a chronicle not lacking for tragedy—the Confederacy had lost the war, but it had won the peace.

Between 1900 and 1930, the percentage of PhDs awarded to women doubled, and then, for three decades, it fell.6 The gains made by women in the beginning of the twentieth century were lost, everywhere, as women who had fought their way into colleges and graduate programs found that they were barred from the top ranks of the academy. No structural changes had been made that would have allowed women to pursue a life of the mind while raising children: many quit; many were kicked out; most gave up.

Jewish refugees trying to flee to the United States found themselves blocked by a grotesque paradox: Nazi law mandated that no Jew could take more than four dollars out of the country; American immigration laws banned anyone "likely to become a public charge.

It has often been said, in the twenty-first century and in earlier centuries, too, that Americans lack a shared past and that, built on a cracked foundation, the Republic is crumbling.