#resistance

‎"There are two ways to do great mathematics. The first is to be smarter than everybody else. The second way is to be stupider than everybody else -- but persistent. ↗

— Raoul Bott

#math #practice #presistance #raoul-bott #humor

When a nation which has long groaned under the intolerable yoke of a tyrant rises at last and throws off its chains, do you call that weakness? The man who, to rescue his house from the flames, finds his physical strength redoubled, so that he lifts burdens with ease which in the absence of excitement he could scarcely move; he who under the rage of an insult attacks and puts to flight half a score of his enemies,—are such persons to be called weak? My good friend, if resistance be strength, how can the highest degree of resistance be a weakness? ↗

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

#love #resistance #strength #weakness #love

But nobody predicted anything of this magnitude in terms of resistance. And in part, the magnitude of the resistance was spurred by our failures in reconstruction. ↗

— Wayne White

#failures #magnitude #nobody #our #part

In Paris, I found myself surrounded by Germans; they were all over the place. They played music, and people would go and listen to them! All along rue de Rivoli, as far as you could see from place de la Concorde, there were enormous swastika banners five or six floors high. I just thought, This is impossible. Imagine that someone comes into your home—someone you don’t like—he settles down, gives orders: “Here we are, we’re at home now; you must obey.” To me that was unbearable. ↗

— Pearl Witherington Cornioley

#nazism #world-war-ii #home

My system uses no apparatus. The resistance of your own body is the best and safest apparatus. ↗

— Charles Atlas

#best #body #own #resistance #safest

The path of least resistance and least trouble is a mental rut already made. It requires troublesome work to undertake the alternation of old beliefs. ↗

— John Dewey

#beliefs #least #made #mental #old

In most of the European countries - France stands out in its resistance to this particular form of American cultural imperialism - the national film industries were forced onto the defensive after the war by such binding agreements. ↗

— Fredric Jameson

#agreements #american #binding #countries #cultural

Why should I be frightened of dying? I did not know what death truly was; no one did. Who had made dying a bad word? Yes, it was universally considered awful—unwanted, painful, feared—because when it happened it stopped us from moving and being, and we interpreted that as if something had ended. But what if it were actually a beautiful experience? What if, with death, something actually began instead? ↗

— Charles Novacek

#memoir #age

For months it seemed that a revolution was certain. But instead, slavery seems more likely now. The working class no longer has the physical resistance for a revolution, and the Entente is too strong, and Russia is too weak. ↗

— Agnes Smedley

#class #instead #likely #longer #months

What interests me, personally, is work which in some way, speaks the truth to power…I don’t think we speak the truth to power for power’s ear, but for the ear and the imagination of future generations, who would seek to live in a world free from the malign and self-serving influence of those who wield it. ↗

— Irvine Welsh

#political-commentary #politics #posterity #power #resistance