Best 458 quotes in «resistance quotes» category

Taking the path with the least resistance does NOT mean take any opportunity that comes to you. Some opportunities are traps!

Terrorism is vicious, ugly, and dehumanizing for its perpetrators as well as its victims. But so is war. You could says that terrorism is the privatization of war. Terrorists are the free marketeers of war. They are people who don't believe that the state has a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence.

That’s what resistance looks like, Merlin. It’s not one glorious, shining victory. It’s a torch that you keep burning, no matter what.

The bloody-minded resilience with which they responded to disasters, especially those of their own making, their determination to liberate their territories no matter what, had been my first glimpse of what would one day be known as the Spirit of Resistance.

The car bomb is the poor man’s air force.

The change will happen in all circumstances, either with us all without us.

The Christian response to evil—to aggression—is resistance, of course, but nonviolent resistance, the resistance of love, prayer, and accepted suffering. When Christians do anything else, they have parted company with Jesus. Nonviolence is the expression of a faith that the greatest power in human history is the forward movement of love. Nonviolence is as realistic as Jesus himself, and it is one with the cross of Christ's victory over evil. The question of whether or not nonviolent resistance 'works' should be referred not so much to the gain of an immediate victory as to the transformation of history from within by the converging forces of love.

The concept of the "female" is a loaded one. Female. Woman. The entire concept of the womyn is derived from, and supports the existence and submission to the male. When you hear "female", the social association is weakness, incompetence, and fragility. Almost as if nothing done can shatter the chain of alleged inferiority. If you refuse this, society makes you a "radical".

The dominant culture eats entire biomes. No, that is too generous, because eating implies a natural biological relationship. This culture doesn't just consume ecosystems, it obliterates them, it murders them, one after another. This culture is an ecological serial killer, and it's long past time for us to recognize the pattern.

The French Philosopher of the 16th and the 17th Century, Rene Descartes, had said: "If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things." This is the best way for the public to approach whatever it perceives. The only way to resist to deceit. Education and knowledge can help people be more skeptics, but everyone could start by doubting everything and not believing anything. Even the things that seem too obvious or too reliable. I've noticed a tendency to this direction, but I don't know how broad it is. It has to broaden; for humanity's sake. For truth's sake.

The direction a cloud moves is always approved of by the wind.

The dreams you have that may meet mockeries from the lips of negative people will yield the success that will squeeze tears from their eyes later! Dare to resist every negative criticism and persist to make it happen!

The fulcrum of resistance is in your mind where you pit yourself against the weight of the external.

The German and Russian state apparatuses grew out of despotism. For this reason the subservient nature of the human character of masses of people in Germany and in Russia was exceptionally pronounced. Thus, in both cases, the revolution led to a new despotism with the certainty of irrational logic. In contrast to the German and Russia state apparatuses, the American state apparatus was formed by groups of people who had evaded European and Asian despotism by fleeing to a virgin territory free of immediate and effective traditions. Only in this way can it be understood that, until the time of this writing, a totalitarian state apparatus was not able to develop in America, whereas in Europe every overthrow of the government carried out under the slogan of freedom inevitably led to despotism. This holds true for Robespierre, as well as for Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin. If we want to appraise the facts impartially, then we have to point out, whether we want to or not, and whether we like it or not, that Europe's dictators, who based their power on vast millions of people, always stemmed from the suppressed classes. I do not hesitate to assert that this fact, as tragic as it is, harbors more material for social research than the facts related to the despotism of a czar or of a Kaiser Wilhelm. By comparison, the latter facts are easily understood. The founders of the American Revolution had to build their democracy from scratch on foreign soil. The men who accomplished this task had all been rebels against English despotism. The Russian Revolutionaries, on the other had, were forced to take over an already existing and very rigid government apparatus. Whereas the Americans were able to start from scratch, the Russians, as much as they fought against it, had to drag along the old. This may also account for the fact that the Americans, the memory of their own flight from despotism still fresh in their minds, assumed an entirely different—more open and more accessible—attitude toward the new refugees of 1940, than Soviet Russia, which closed its doors to them. This may explain why the attempt to preserve the old democratic ideal and the effort to develop genuine self-administration was much more forceful in the United States than anywhere else. We do not overlook the many failures and retardations caused by tradition, but in any event a revival of genuine democratic efforts took place in America and not in Russia. It can only be hoped that American democracy will thoroughly realize, and this before it is too late, that fascism is not confined to any one nation or any one party; and it is to be hoped that it will succeed in overcoming the tendency toward dictatorial forms in the people themselves. Only time will tell whether the Americans will be able to resist the compulsion of irrationality or whether they will succumb to it.

The harder the push, the greater the Rebel push-back. I laughed when a Rebel friend told me, 'No one can tell me to do anything. I recently got an email saying "Please read" in the subject line, and I immediately deleted it.

The greatest form of retaliation is not loving your enemy but ignoring them.

The less I know – the more the world opens up, wide and waiting. This is how I have come to understand the taste of freedom. I am filled with resistance. But still, I am here. One letter on this screen at a time, I am here. Neck aching and back bent and eyes burning, I am here. This is what it means to show up. This is what it means to trust the calling. This is what It means to write.

The inclination to act upon draws a contestation between the two competing self-interests between justification to act and justification to rest, between a law and a willingness.

The key of life symbolizes the map of existence. Once you free yourself from all resistance, your path will become white for the remainder of the distance.

The lizard brain is hungry, scared, angry, and horny. The lizard brain only wants to eat and be safe. The lizard brain will fight (to the death) if it has to, but would rather run away. It likes a vendetta and has no trouble getting angry. The lizard brain cares what everyone else thinks, because status in the tribe is essential to its survival. A squirrel runs around looking for nuts, hiding from foxes, listening for predators, and watching for other squirrels. The squirrel does this because that's all it can do. All the squirrel has is a lizard brain. The only correct answer to 'Why did the chicken cross the road?' is 'Because it's lizard brain told it to.' Wild animals are wild because the only brain they posses is a lizard brain. The lizard brain is not merely a concept. It's real, and it's living on the top of your spine, fighting for your survival. But, of course, survival and success are not the same thing. The lizard brain is the reason you're afraid, the reason you don't do all the art you can, the reason you don't ship when you can. The lizard brain is the source of the resistance.

The mind is a focusing and decision-making mechanism. We can focus on our spirit and decide to honour the voice of Truth, thus becoming free in the hands of God. Or we can focus on the world and decide to take the path of least resistance, thus becoming puppets in the hands of others. There is no other choice. Both come with a price, but the first brings life and the other brings death.

The Mayor spoke proudly. 'Yes, they will light it. I have no choice of living or dying, you see, sir, but—I do have a choice of how I do it. If I tell them not to fight, they will be sorry, but they will fight. If I tell them to fight, they will be glad, and I who am not a very brae man will have made them a little braver.' He smiled apologetically. 'You see, it is an easy thing to do, since the end for me is the same.' Lanser said, "If you say yes, we can tell them you said no. We can tell them you begged for your life.' And Winter broke in angrily, 'They would know. You do not keep secrets. One of your men got out of hand one night and he said the flies had conquered the flypaper, and now the whole nation knows his words. They have made a song of it. The flies have conquered the flypaper. You do not keep secrets, Colonel.

The more it rains and blows, the more certain we are to have him.

The necessity of political struggle especially means confronting and contradicting those on the left who say that resistance is futile. Such people have no place in a movement for justice. For actionists who choose to work aboveground, this confrontation with detractors - and some of these detractors reject the idea of resistance of any kind - is one of the small, constant actions you can take. Defend the possibility of resistance, insist on a moral imperative of fighting for this planet, and argue for direct action against perpetrators. Despite what much of the left has now embraced, we are not all equally responsible. There are a few corporations that have turned the planet into a dead commodity for their private wealth, destroying human cultures along with it.

Then help us.” “I don’t want to make trouble, Madame.” “Isn’t doing nothing a kind of troublemaking?” “Doing nothing is doing nothing.” “Doing nothing is as good as collaborating.” … “It’s not a person you wish to fight, Madame, it’s a system. How do you fight a system?” “You try.

The more you try to do good stuff, the more resistance you'll get.

Then, one demurs that essentially a society is entertained by the theatre of heroism, and in strict individualism of existence, without others, it is only a narcissistic struggle. There is no hero in a lonesome existence. A man lives in a shred and contradiction of duality between his splendid uniqueness out of nature with a grip of eternality and condemnable body of contemptible smallness, transient but delightfully comfortable to rot into the disappearance. This density and finiteness! Laughable yet strangely estimable quality of certitude from his inner drive in the making of his world. O this ambiguity, O this duality, O this weakness. O human! O human!

The NRA kills more Americans than Muslim terrorists do.

The question I'm most commonly asked is "Why?" A more pertinent question might be, why is it that more people don't attempt to escape the limitations imposed upon them? If Tracks has a message at all, it is that one can be awake to the demand for obedience that seems natural simply because it is familiar. Wherever there is pressure to conform (one person's conformity is often in the interests of another person's power), there is a requirement to resist. Of course I did not mean that people should drop what they were doing and head for the wilder places, certainly not that they should copy what I did. I meant that one can choose adventure in the most ordinary of circumstances. Adventure of the mind, or to use an old-fashioned word, the spirit.

The only people who experience no resistance are the unambitious and the dead. If you feel no resistance in your life, you need greater goals or you need to check your pulse. Life and movement come with resistance. Don’t be discouraged by it, be strengthened by it.

The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it. [These words are also inscribed upon his grave]

The political superstition is still holding sway over the hearts and minds of the masses, but the true lovers of liberty will have no more to do with it. Instead, they believe with Stirner that man has as much liberty as he is willing to take. Anarchism therefore stands for direct action, the open defiance of, and resistance to, all laws and restrictions, economic, social, and moral. But defiance and resistance are illegal. Therein lies the salvation of man. Everything illegal necessitates integrity, self-reliance, and courage. In short, it calls for free, independent spirits, for "men who are men, and who have a bone in their backs which you cannot pass your hand through.

[T]he radical geographer Iain Boal had prophesied, "The longing for a better world will need to arise at the imagined meeting place of many movements of resistance, as many as there are sites of closure and exclusion. The resistance will be as transnational capitalism.

There are many things to resist, but disease is not one of them.

There are moment of sadness and moment of joy. This is life.

There is beauty all around us, and the light finds us when we realize, we are all part of that beauty and worth the cherishing. If we despise any, we journey to despise ourselves. See all as beautiful, even if they choose to see themselves through you, as being less than so. We have the power to see for each, and be the reflection of what they may yet see.

There is no place for the resistance to go but to project outwards until you clear it within yourself. When you make the choice to surrender and release judgments you’re able to receive new information from another source for the purpose of growth; in this case for the purpose of growth within the relationship.

The resistant reasoning understands a revolt as a protester against the criminality of the universe—the crime of neglect and irresponsibility. To protest and revolt, we must exist because our existence is proof of its crime.

There is no such thing as a true madman.

The resistance, though it comes in many forms, begins with the mistaken belief that I am somehow separate from change, and that I can control it, rather than to align myself with change as it makes itself apparent, and ride it.

There isn’t any hell or heaven except for how we relate to our world. Hell is just resistance to life.

There's so much talk about justice, injustice, conquest. Our people are invaded, but I don't think they're conquered.

The retreat into sameness—assimilation for those who can manage it—is the most passive and debilitating of responses to political repression, economic insecurity, and a renewed open season on difference.

The Revolutionary War was fought over soft drinks.

There wasn't in the beginning. It wasn't until your kind discovered what was happening that any resistance started. That seems to be the key—knowing what’s going to happen.

The route of least resistance is always crowded.

These two trends - the decline of communal institutions and the expansion of corporate brands in our culture - have an inverse, seesaw-like relationship to one another over the decades: as the influence of those institutions that provided us with that essential sense of belonging went down, the power of commercial brands went up. I've always taken solace in this dynamic. It means that while our branded world can exploit the unmet need to be part of something larger than ourselves, it can't fill it in any sustained way: you make a purchase to be part of a tribe, a big idea, a revolution, and it feels good for a moment, but the satisfaction wears off almost before you've thrown out the packaging for that new pair of sneakers, that latest model iPhone, or whatever the surrogate is. Then you have to find a way to fulfill the void again. It's the perfect formula for endless consumption and perpetual self-commodification through social media, and it's a disaster for the planet, which cannot sustain these levels of consumption. But it's always worth remembering: at the heart of this cycle is that very powerful force - the human longing for community and connection, which simply refuses to die., And that means there is still hope: if we rebuild communities and begin to derive more meaning and a sense of the good life from them, many of us are going to be less susceptible to the siren song of mindless consumerism.

The role of smart, radical activists is to encourage, protract, organize, and multiply the chipping away not only at the mythology of presumed supremacy, but at power and its social and physical infrastructure. To find weak points within scriptures and structures of the system, as one might examine an old block wall before demolition, seeking out crumbling mortar lines and cracked blocks. Then, to strike, and recruit more help - more and more - and strike, and strike, and bring it down.

The system loves resistance. Resistance is often creative and it feeds on creativity until the subversive becomes just another pre-packaged lifestyle on special offer. So Cease to Resist. Relax and enjoy the PandaemonAeon. Believe everything and anything. Seek not proof, but take pleasure in your choice of belief. Wipe that superior sneer of your face and try smiling (if only inwardly) at the people/institutions/beliefs that you've waged your personal war against. Wouldn't it be more fun if you didn't run around quite so hard trying to be an individual, or fighting to prove or uphold your chosen belief-system?

The strength of a movement also relied on participation. Nonviolent campaigns succeeded or failed by the numbers of people willing to get in the way of injustice, or withdraw support from tyrants, or put their hands on the freedom plow and sow the seeds of change.