Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes

Over and over I'm on the point of giving it up.

Not a single one, not a single one among us [French Canadians], in 200 years, has won a battle... and this is what it is to be colonized! When we have but martyrs! How can we have aspirations!? How can we have the will to fight!?

'I throw my hand up in the air sometimes' is when you don't get your way - when you give up, and you're handing it over.

If we fail to see that there are powers that cause people to be bowed down in bondage, we are going to fight the wrong battle.

I kept pushing against the black, though, almost a reflex. I wasn't trying to lift it. I was just resisting. Not allowing it to crush me completely. I wasn't Atlas, and the black felt as heavy as a planet; I couldn't shoulder it. All I could do was not be entirely obliterated.

I used to feel like I was drowning. So I stopped trying to swim.

That feeling of hopelessness only serves your masters.

Do remember, though, that sometimes the people you oppress become mightier than you would like.

It was like being given a maths problem when your brain's exhausted, and you know there's some far-off solution, but you can't work up the energy even to give it a go. Something in me just gave up.

There's little in taking or giving, There's little in water or wine: This living, this living, this living, Was never a project of mine. Oh, hard is the struggle, and sparse is The gain of the one at the top, For art is a form of catharsis, And love is a permanent flop, And work is the province of cattle, And rest's for a clam in a shell, So I'm thinking of throwing the battle - Would you kindly direct me to hell?

By the end of the session, I am no one at all. Haymitch started drinking somewhere around witty, and a nasty edge has crept into his voice. "I give up, sweetheart. Just answer the questions and try not to let the audience see how openly you despise them.

Black people we've been taught that we will never be free, until some will have to die, some will have to give up wealth, their loved ones, and their health, So, what I'm doin' is for myself and for justice for black people, runnin' will kill it all, it'll make me a coward.

And at some point, the struggle becomes too much-too tiring-and you consider letting go. Allowing tragedy... or whatever... to happen.

Man and fascism cannot co-exist. If fascism conquers, man will cease to exist and there will remain only man-like creatures that have undergone an internal transformation. But if man, man who is endowed with reason and kindness, should conquer, then Fascism must perish, and those who have submitted to it will once again become people.

They will not criminalise us, rob us of our true identity, steal our individualism, depoliticise us, churn us out as systemised, institutionalised, decent law-abiding robots. Never will they label our liberation struggle as criminal.

How I loathe the servitude people try to hold up to me as being so valuable. I pity the man who is condemned to it, who cannot generally escape it, but it is not the burden of his labor that disposes me in his favor, it is - it can only be - the vigor of his protest against it.

I think about giving up. I almost do.

Even if you rise up a thousand times, your side will never achieve victory. ~Ulquiorra

It is Toussaint's supreme merit that while he saw European civilisation as a valuable and necessary thing, and strove to lay its foundations among his people, he never had the illusion that it conferred any moral superiority. He knew French, British, and Spanish imperialists for the insatiable gangsters that they were, that there is no oath too sacred for them to break, no crime, deception, treachery, cruelty, destruction of human life and property which they would not commit against those who could not defend themselves.

Under dictatorship, the people in prison are always superior to the people who put them there.

They benefit from all these people, "I just don't like the fighting. Could you stop the shouting? All I want to do is just get along." They're easily able to bulldoze large groups of people into laying down and letting it happen in the hope that this will be peace, in the hope that there will be no confrontations, in the hope that the shouting will stop.

Those who disagree with the dictator's plan have no other means to carry on than to defeat the despot by force of arms.

I think it's sad when people stop dreaming, or start losing hope. Because holding onto the bonkers dream might just turn out to be the most marvellous thing you ever did.

The realization that I’d have nothing to take home had finally sunk in. My knees buckled and I slid down the tree trunk to its roots. It was too much. I was too sick and weak and tired, oh, so tired. Let them call the Peacekeepers and take us to the community home, I thought. Or better yet, let me die right here in the rain.

I think hopelessness is the enemy of justice.