Quotes About Struggle

The real tragedy of humankind,' Shealtiel used to say, 'is not that the persecuted and enslaved crave to be liberated and to hold their heads high. No. The worst thing is that the enslaved secretly dream of enslaving their enslavers. The persecuted yearn to be persecutors. The slaves dream of being masters. As in the book of Esther.

A tormentor forces his victims to be hardy.

almost always, refusing to leave. When Devi heard her father

The fiercest emotional pain has the power to swallow you whole if you are stationary long enough.

some people bounced back from a train wreck and some people couldn't get over a bee sting.

And I surely cannot tell him that I'm no more good for me or for him than I ever was, that I will disappoint and confuse him, that I've been alone my whole life, and that it may really be too hard and too late, not even desirable, after such long, familiar cold, to be known, and heard, and seen.

These were my people: the abandoned, the unloved, the phenomenally unlucky.

She believes in will. It is so frail and delicate at night that she can't even imagine the next morning, but it is so wide and binding by the middle of the next day that she cannot even remember the terrible night. It is as if she gives birth every day.

Eviction," Frieda said. "You can't pay, you can't stay." She said in Yiddish, "Es iz shver tzu makhen a leben." It's hard to make a living.

The greatest struggle in my life is between a dignified silence and having my say.

I met Jay Jonhson. I won him the way poor people occasionally win the lottery: Shameless perseverance and embarrassingly dumb luck, and every time I see one of those sly, toothless, beaten-down souls on TV holding a winning ticket, I think, Go, team.

Carny people'd punch you in the face before they'd let you tell them your troubles and strangle their own selves before they'd tell you theirs.

Every day is an up-and-down. (Roller-coaster ride makes it sound thrilling; it is not thrilling. The ups and the downs both hurt, it's a mistake to scream, and nothing moves quickly.)

Many lower class Americans view protesters as disreputable and unhelpful, as 'professional activists' who are entirely disconnected from the working class because they've never experienced struggle in their own personal lives, and who protest mainly to find personal validation.

The peril we face today is not only that America might fail to live up to its promise, but that Americans might stop believing in that promise or the need to fight for it. The increasing belief on the left that this promise was always a lie, or on the right that it has always been true and has already been achieved, are two sides of the same coin.

This was one of those moments when I realized that my emotional baggage, once a few neatly packed pieces, was now like the Joads' truck, stacked high with old clothes, half a rocking chair, a mule, all barely secured with twine.

Real deprivation is not being able to afford the things that are high on your priority list.

She can paint a pretty picture but this story has a twist. The paintbrush is a razor and the canvas is her wrist.

And wishes, truly wishes, that she could say the same herself. Because hurting herself would be so much easier.

She can paint a lovely picture, but this story has a twist. her paintbrush is a razor, and her canvas is her wrist.

Sir... I... don't want... to... be... here," I said between sobs. There, I'd said it. Now everyone would be happy- Cadet Daily, my mother... Yes, you do, Davis." No, sir... I don't," I gasped. Homesick?" I shook my head from side to side. "No... sir... it's too much... like home.

Devon? Are you okay?" For the first time, Dom's voice sounds unsure. Devon sats nothing, not one word. She pushes herself up. She slides the papers toward herself. She slowly folds them into quarters. She closes her hand around them. Devon lifts her face to Dom's. Is she "okay"? Will she ever, ever be okay?

We are saved not by what we can do or accomplish but by our fealty to revolt, our steadfastness to the weak, the poor, the marginalized, and those who endure oppression. We must stand with them against the powerful. If we remain true to these moral imperatives, we win. And I am enough of an idealist to believe that the struggle to live the moral life is worth it. Chris Hedges, The World As It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress

My dad is dead. And as I type this, by the window, on the rainy day, I am alive, yes. I am living. But sometimes it doesn't feel like I am doing it fast enough, or hard enough, or all the way. And it is times like that when I can understand wanting a cigarette in my hand, then my mouth, then my hand again. Holding the cigarette. Tending to the cigarette. Giving the cigarette what it needs. Tapping it in the ashtray. Sucking on it. Then flicking it in the street, like it meant nothing to me.