Resistance Quotes - Page 40

• Heat is a universal solvent, melting out of things their power of resistance, and sucking away and removing their natural strength with its fiery exhalations so that they grow soft, and hence weak, under its glow.

  Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

  Melting, Heat, Weak

  "De architectura". Book by Vitruvius. Book I, Chapter IV, Section 3,

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• Liberalism regards all absolutes with profound skepticism, including both moral imperatives and final solutions... Insistence upon any particular solution is the mark of an ideologue.

  Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

  Faith, Freedom, Knowledge

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• In misfortune we often mistake dejection for constancy; we bear it without daring to look on it; like cowards, who suffer themselves to be murdered without resistance.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Mistake, Suffering, Coward

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• There is no movement without our own resistance.

  Laura Schlessinger

  Movement

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• All the living hold together, and all yield to the same tremendous push. The animal takes its stand on the plant, man bestrides animality, and the whole of humanity, in space and in time, is one immense army galloping beside and before and behind each of us in an overwhelming charge able to beat down every resistance and clear the most formidable obstacles, perhaps even death.

  Henri Bergson

  Army, Animal, Men

  Henri Bergson (2015). “Creative Evolution”, p.224, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• War is a brutal and fierce means of pacification; it means the suppression of resistance by the destruction or enslavement of the conquered.

  Henri Frederic Amiel

  War, Mean, Fierce

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• If a person is capable of rectifying his erroneous judgments in the light of new evidence he is not prejudiced. Prejudgments become prejudices only if they are reversible when exposed to new knowledge. A prejudice, unlike a simple misconception, is actively resistant to all evidence that would unseat it. We tend to grow emotional when a prejudice is threatened with contradiction. Thus the difference between ordinary prejudgments and prejudice is that one can discuss and rectify a prejudgment without emotional resistance.

  Gordon Allport

  Simple, Emotional, Light

  "The Nature of Prejudice" by Gordon Allport, (p. 9), 1954.

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• Yet never resist anything. If you think that by your resistance you will eliminate it, think again. You only plant it more firmly in place. Have I not told you all thought is creative?

  Neale Donald Walsch

  Inspirational, Religious, Thinking

  Neale Donald Walsch (1996). “Conversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue”, p.84, Penguin

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• It is no accident that this homeplace, as fragile and as transitional as it may be, a makeshift shed, a small bit of earth where one rests, is always subject to violation and destruction. For when a people no longer have the space to construct homeplace, we cannot build a meaningful community of resistance.

  Bell Hooks

  Meaningful, Women, Home

  bell hooks (2014). “Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics”, p.61, Routledge

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• Do your neighbour good by all means in your power, moral as well as physical - by kindness, by patience, by unflinching resistance against every outward evil - by the silent preaching of your own contrary life. But if the only good you can do him is by talking at him, or about him - nay, even to him, if it be in a self-satisfied, super-virtuous style - such as I earnestly hope the present writer is not doing - you had much better leave him alone.

  Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

  Kindness, Mean, Self

  "A Woman's Thoughts About Women" by Dinah Maria Murlock Craik, (Ch. 8), 1858.

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• To resist change, to try to cling to life, is therefore like holding your breath: if you persist you kill yourself.

  Alan Watts

  Life, Change, Trying

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• The most important thing about the gentleman was that he was an idealist. ... He was bred up to a code of self-restraint which taught resistance to pragmatic temptation. He was definitely a man of sentiment, who refused to put matters on a basis of materialism and self-aggrandizement.

  Richard M. Weaver

  Men, Self, Temptation

  Richard M. Weaver (2013). “Ideas Have Consequences: Expanded Edition”, p.50, University of Chicago Press

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• I do not personally regard the whole of the remaining cities of Germany as worth the bones of one British Grenadier. It therefore seems to me that there is one and only one valid argument on which a case for giving up strategic bombing could be based, namely that it has already completed its task and that nothing now remains for the Armies to do except to occupy Germany against unorganized resistance.

  Sir Arthur Harris, 1st Baronet

  Giving Up, Army, Cities

  Letter to Sir Norman Bottomley on March 29, 1945. "Bomber Harris: The Story of Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Arthur Harris". Book by Dudley Saward, p. 294, 1985.

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• It is in general true that in order to create works of art one has to have leisure. On the other hand I think that one needs to experience resistance in a practical sense, and even that which is poignant to bring out what makes easy reading for others. Too much deprivation of course, means death.

  Marianne Moore

  Art, Reading, Mean

  Marianne Moore (1997). “The Selected Letters of Marianne Moore”, Alfred A. Knopf

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• Wolf's wool is the best of wool, / but it cannot be sheared because / the wolf will not comply.

  Marianne Moore

  Wool, Assertiveness

  Marianne Moore (1994). “Complete Poems”, p.102, Penguin

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• The duration of a couple's passion is in proportion to the woman's original resistance or to the obstacles that social hazards have placed in the way of her happiness.

  Honore de Balzac

  Couple, Passion, Hazards

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• Virginity, like all monstrosities, possesses special riches and its own absorbing grandeur. Among the chaste, life forces are economized and thus gain in resistance and durability.

  Honore de Balzac

  Special, Riches, Gains

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• How far does one combine resistance to over-control with social justice, i.e. tolerable living for people in general? We are too selfish to be trusted, if left free, to give away enough to make people comfortable enough to give them a chance. Yet if all this is ordered for us, as to some extent it has to be, it so soon leads to tyranny. It is a very difficult problem. If only human beings had more pity, unselfishness, and justice and didn't need coercion to treat each other decently.

  Rose Macaulay

  Selfish, Compassion, Giving

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• There's no such thing as post-feminism. It's like saying post-democracy, excuse me, what does that mean? We're nowhere near equality, so the very idea of post-feminism is ridiculous. The same people who 30-40 years ago said the women's movement is not necessary, 'it's going against nature, my wife is not interested' [are] the same people now saying 'well it used to be necessary but not anymore.' The very invention of the word post-feminism is the current form of resistance.

  Gloria Steinem

  Mean, Years, Ideas

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• When the Gauls laid waste Rome, they found the senators clothed in their robes, and seated in stern tranquillity in their curule chairs; in this manner they suffered death without resistance or supplication. Such conduct was in them applauded as noble and magnanimous; in the hapless Indians it was reviled as both obstinate and sullen. How truly are we the dupes of show and circumstances! How different is virtue, clothed in purple and enthroned in state, from virtue, naked and destitute, and perishing obscurely in a wilderness.

  Washington Irving

  Rome, Purple, Waste

  Washington Irving (1983). “History, Tales, and Sketches”, p.1011, Library of America

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• It is impossible to combat enthusiasm with reason; for though it makes a show of resistance, it soon eludes the pressure, refers you to distinctions not to be understood, and feelings which it cannot explain. A man who would endeavor to fix an enthusiast by argument might as well attempt to spread quicksilver with his finger.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Men, Feelings, Might

  Oliver Goldsmith (1837). “The Miscellaneous Works of Oliver Goldsmith, M. B.: Including a Variety of Pieces”, p.432

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• Human progress had so often been checked by those who were afraid of losing what they had.

  Marya Mannes

  Change, Fear, Progress

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• There are two kinds of men and women, those who have in them resisting as their way of winning those who have in them attacking as their way of winning.

  Gertrude Stein

  Success, Winning, Men

  Gertrude Stein (2012). “Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein”, p.277, Vintage

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• When I myself had twice or thrice made a resolute resistance unto anger, the like befell me that did the Thebans; who, having once foiled the Lacedaemonians (who before that time had held themselves invincible), never after lost so much as one battle which they fought against them.

  Plutarch

  Anger, Battle, Ever After

  Plutarch (1871). “Plutarch's Morals”, p.37

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• Resistance, which is the function of conservatism, is essential to orderly advance.

  Agnes Repplier

  Change, Party, Political

  Agnes Repplier (1920). “Points of Friction”

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