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1 " Experience has taught us that we have only one enduring weapon in our struggle against mental illness: the emotional discovery and emotional acceptance of the truth in the individual and unique history of our childhood. "
― Alice Miller , The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self
2 " Right words are born in courage, which results from our struggle to make sense of our various predicaments. Cheer is what words are " trying to tell us/... It's native to the words/and what they want us always to know/even when it seems quite impossible to do. "
3 " We wait too long to tell the people we love that they are the very reason that we exist. We assume that our wife, child, other family members, and friends understand our love and affection. We assume that people we care about understand our enigmatic idiosyncrasies and willingly accept the shrouded reasons behind our demonstrable oddities. We assume that other people sense that we struggle valiantly in our blackened landscape. We presume that other people comprehend our struggle to glean meaning amongst the ashes spewed from the absurd circumstances that we operate. Sometimes we need to stop and tell the tenderhearted persons whom we care about that we love them and explain that our awkward strangeness is not a rejection of them. "
― , Dead Toad Scrolls
4 " Anger is what makes our struggle visible, and our struggle is what exposes the hypocrisy of a nation that fashions itself a moral leader. To rise against the narrative and expose the lie gives opportunity to those whose identity depends on the lie to question and, hopefully, change. "
― , Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching: A Young Black Man's Education
5 " Our present intricate humanly consciousness evolved after a long journey of struggle. And the beauty of natural selection is that our struggle against nature made us worthy of being rewarded with the 3 lbs. lump of highly advanced biological computer by our Mother Nature herself. "
― Abhijit Naskar , Homo: A Brief History of Consciousness
6 " Violence can only breed more violence and suffering. Our struggle must remain non-violent and free of hatred. "
― Dalai Lama XIV
7 " In the midst of our struggle to find out who we are, there are infinite possibilities for beauty, and hope, and wonder, and love. "
― Mandy Hale , The Single Woman: Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass
8 " Experience has taught us that we have only one enduring weapon in our struggle against mental illness: the emotional discovery of our truth about the unique history of our childhood. "
― Alice Miller
9 " ...you want the sweetness of our beginning without the bitterness of our struggle - what are you asking - do you want light without shadow? ... "
― , A Familiar Rain
10 " For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Eph. 6:12 (NIV) "
― , Holy Bible: New International Version
11 " When the feminine and our vitality become lost to power drives and life becomes a wasteland, the stage is set for the mythic world to give rise to a hero to transform and revitalize the situation. They mythic hero is a metaphor for our struggle to transform our consciousness and bring new life to ourselves. "
― Massimilla Harris , Into the Heart of the Feminine: Facing the Death Mother Archetype to Reclaim Love, Strength, and Vitality
12 " Anger is what makes our struggle visible, and our struggle is what exposes they hypocrisy of a nation that fashions itself a moral leader. To rise against the narrative and expose the lie gives opportunity to those whose identity depends on the lie to question and, hopefully, change. "
13 " But the anger has not only drawn attention to injustice; it has driven people to action, sparking movements and spurring them forward. At the very least, the public expression of black rage has allowed communities and people who have felt isolated in their own anger to know that they are not alone. Anger is what makes our struggle visible. "
14 " My identity as Jewish cannot be reduced to a religious affiliation. Professor Said quoted Gramsci, an author that I’m familiar with, that, and I quote, ‘to know thyself is to understand that we are a product of the historical process to date which has deposited an infinity of traces, without leaving an inventory’. Let’s apply this pithy observation to Jewish identity. While it is tempting to equate Judaism with Jewishness, I submit to you that my identity as someone who is Jewish is far more complex than my religious affiliation. The collective inventory of the Jewish people rests on my shoulders. This inventory shapes and defines my understanding of what it means to be Jewish. The narrative of my people is a story of extraordinary achievement as well as unimaginable horror. For millennia, the Jewish people have left their fate in the hands of others. Our history is filled with extraordinary achievements as well as unimaginable violence. Our centuries-long Diaspora defined our existential identity in ways that cannot be reduced to simple labels. It was the portability of our religion that bound us together as a people, but it was our struggle to fit in; to be accepted that identified us as unique. Despite the fact that we excelled academically, professionally, industrially, we were never looked upon as anything other than Jewish. Professor Said in his book, Orientalism, examined how Europe looked upon the Orient as a dehumanized sea of amorphous otherness. If we accept this point of view, then my question is: How do you explain Western attitudes towards the Jews? We have always been a convenient object of hatred and violent retribution whenever it became convenient. If Europe reduced the Orient to an essentialist other, to borrow Professor Said’s eloquent language, then how do we explain the dehumanizing treatment of Jews who lived in the heart of Europe? We did not live in a distant, exotic land where the West had discursive power over us. We thought of ourselves as assimilated. We studied Western philosophy, literature, music, and internalized the same culture as our dominant Christian brethren. Despite our contribution to every conceivable field of human endeavor, we were never fully accepted as equals. On the contrary, we were always the first to be blamed for the ills of Western Europe. Two hundred thousand Jews were forcibly removed from Spain in 1492 and thousands more were forcibly converted to Christianity in Portugal four years later. By the time we get to the Holocaust, our worst fears were realized. Jewish history and consciousness will be dominated by the traumatic memories of this unspeakable event. No people in history have undergone an experience of such violence and depth. Israel’s obsession with physical security; the sharp Jewish reaction to movements of discrimination and prejudice; an intoxicated awareness of life, not as something to be taken for granted but as a treasure to be fostered and nourished with eager vitality, a residual distrust of what lies beyond the Jewish wall, a mystical belief in the undying forces of Jewish history, which ensure survival when all appears lost; all these, together with the intimacy of more personal pains and agonies, are the legacy which the Holocaust transmits to the generation of Jews who have grown up under its shadow. -Fictional debate between Edward Said and Abba Eban. "
― , Absolution: A Palestinian Israeli Love Story
15 " If [we] have a good, miserable day once in a while, or several in a row, stand steady and face them. Things will straighten out. There is great purpose in our struggle in life. "
16 " When we regularly struggle to achieve the goals, either we get used to the struggle or we find a way to avoid the struggle. If we get used to the struggle than every new task will increase the distance between our struggle & goals, but if we find a way to avoid the struggle the goals will be as close as the shortcut to any destination. "
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17 " An oath is the most powerful weapon we have in our struggle against fornication and adultery "
18 " [T]he heart is a very unreliable coinpass, and even will and knowledge, as all ideological factors in general, are not to be trusted as guides if they are without any material basis…. [I]t is not love nor help which is the guiding rule of our time, but hammer or anvil. In reality it is thus: who does not want to be a servant must try to become a master. Under such conditions it is idle to hope that people will sacrifice realities for ideal precepts. We are not sentimental enough to expect such things. Though we use moral arguments in our struggle against the bourgeois, we do all we can to stimulate our class consciousness. "
19 " We Jews have a secret weapon in our struggle with the Arabs - we have no place to go. "
20 " Surrender is when we come to the end of our struggle with ourselves and God can begin. Surrender is acknowledging that we need Divine Intervention; we don’t know it all, we do not see what God sees.When we give ourselves the first 15 minutes of the first hour of the day, to pray, meditate, read, journal, reflect, silently inquire after God, we set the tone for clear thinking throughout our day. - SHANNON TANNER "
― , Worthy: The POWER of Wholeness