Resistance

“ You say injurious resistance, war and bloodshed will never cease till aggression cease! Will aggression ever cease? Can it ever cease? Is it not a necessary result of the laws of nature? What is the conclusion from such premises, but this - that man's nature obliges him to aggress and resist just as he does, and there is no hope that he will ever cease doing either. ”

“ The inequality of the ground that the enemies found in advancing, after having driven in our right, enabled our them to rally and to resist. But this resistance was of short duration. Every one had been engaged in hand-to-hand combats; every one was worn out with lassitude and despair of success, and a confusion so general and so unheard-of. ”

“ I cannot forbear to wish, that this commotion may end without bloodshed, and that the rebels may be subdued by terrour rather than by violence; and therefore recommend such a force as may take away, not only the power, but the hope of resistance, and by conquering without a battle, fave many from the sword. ”

“ We have too little power of resistance against this ferocity which champs us up. What front can we make against these unavoidable, victorious, maleficent forces? What can I do against the influence of Race, in my history? ”

“ Can it progress no farther in the path in which he stands to oppose me? His resistance is the last obstacle to be overcome—he must be overthrown—and then? ... and then! ...
O my cunning intellect! Canst thou not deceive thyself as thou hast deceived others?... ”

“ I have spoken of peace, yet declared that resistance is laudable; but the intellectual resistance which I recommend, I deem essential to the introduction of the millennium of virtue, whose period every one can, so far as he is concerned, forward by his own proper power. ”

“ And how are we to weigh the relative effects of temptation and powers of resistance upon any given man? How are we to say that an action which in one man may be desperately wicked may not be positively virtuous in another? ”

“ But what resistance can we count on from those who have long had the habit of stealing from fancy, cupidity, or a desire to gormandize? What resistance can be hoped for, especially when the habit has begun in youth? ”

“ But, nevertheless, I, although I fell when I should have stood, may have been fighting a battle and manifesting a power of resistance of which you, under similar temptation, would have been incapable. The only point from which a conflict of motives can be safely judged is that of the soul which is engaged in the struggle. ”

“ Go straight for the goal whenever circumstances permit: but when circumstances are against, follow along the path that offereth the least resistance.
674. Uncompleted work and enemies that are left unsubdued are like unextinguished sparks of fire : they will grow betimes and overwhelm the perfunctory man. ”

“ And, at the same time that, to carry on external aggression or resistance, the ruling power in each group sacrificed the personal claims of its members, the function of defending its members from one another was in but small degree discharged by it: they were left to defend themselves. ”

“ It might have occurred to you that these men were fighting on their own soil for their freedom and their country, and that the spirit which was blinding their eyes to the hopelessness of resistance, and urging them on to resist the stranger's progress with such passionate ineffectiveness, was after all, a natural and a poetic one. ”

“ But the extreme hollowness of the objection before us becomes at once obvious, when I turn the tables, and demand whether the practice of injurious resistance offers immunity from extreme trial, danger, hardship and suffering? How happens it that human beings enough to people from eighteen to forty such globes as ours, have perished in war? ”

“ A too universal evil invites resistance by means which in lesser cases might be scouted. In short, if the remedy is left to anarchy, anarchy there will be. Even in our young lands the shadow of the coming evil is beginning to show itself. ”

“ In setting up the standard of resistance, a large number of the leaders, and still more of the followers, must make an almost complete sacrifice of the pleasures or the alleviations of their own individual lot. ”

“ So that all human progress, all novelty, and non-conformity, must be carried against the resistance of this tyrannical herd-instinct which drives the individual into obedience and conformity with the majority. ”

“ Vicious habits, when opposed, offer the most vigorous resistance on the first attack; at each successive encounter this resistance grows weaker, until, finally, it ceases altogether, and the victory is achieved. ”

“ Those who fight and win with force, ultimately find it both convenient and expedient to follow the line of least resistance; and they continue to rely upon force in time of peace as well, ostensibly to maintain law and order, but practically to suppress and stifle every rising spirit. ”

“ It has been the peasants, reckless and fully conscious of their power, who have descended upon those in possession, measured the force of resistance and taken from them what they were no longer able to defend. ”

“ 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?" ”

“ The utter uselessness of resistance was very plain, and, reckless as the fellow might have proven if opportunity served, he realized now clearly enough that death would probably be the penalty of refusal. ”

“ The essential preliminary to any useful discussion of passive resistance is the clear recognition of the fact that it is rebellion, and nothing less. To say, or admit, this is not necessarily to condemn it; for there are few persons to-day, I suppose, who would contend that rebellion is never justifiable. ”

“ The groundwork, then, of our love of our enemies, the feature which principally characterises it, and the condition which renders it practicable, is an act of resistance exerted against our natural hatred of them ”

“ It is evident, from the trifling resistance they made, that they had neither energy to fight, nor property, laws, nor institutions to defend, and that they were merely serfs on the lands of the nobles or of the church, who had nothing to lose by a change of masters. ”

“ There is an active, firm, compound, moral and physical resistance, uninjurious to the evil-doer, and only calculated to restrain him from deadly violence or extreme outrage. Was Jesus contemplating such modes of resisting personal injury? ”

“ National ideals, based on a co-operative social order, would have the same power of resistance almost as a religion, which is, of all things, most unconquerable by physical force, and, when it is itself militant, the most powerful ally of military power. ”

“ It was to get the better of our assailants, and, having done so, to take exactly those steps which we should then consider necessary to our present and future safety. The more obstinate the resistance, the more completely must it be subdued. ”

“ It is manifest, if the perfect and virtuous mean of that fine spirit which is the distinctive quality of aristocracies, is to be found in a high, chivalrous style, and its excess in a fierce turn for resistance, that its defect must lie in a spirit not bold and high enough, and in an excessive and pusillanimous unaptness for resistance. ”

“ I would say that resistance to tyranny is man's highest ideal. ”

“ Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting. ”

“ Within those singular associations, thrown together by unreasoning accident, which we call States,—after they have subsisted for a time in peace, when the resistance excited by yet new oppression has been lulled to sleep, and the fermentation of contending forces appeased,—abuse, by its continuance, and by general sufferance, assumes a sort of established form ”

“ We must not take as argument a personal note that may sound only from a primitive and unregenerate mind. But when I look back upon the long travail of our race, it appears to me still impossible to adopt the peace position of non-resistance. ”

“ When it comes to be put in practice unexpected resistance crops up on all sides. National traditions, character, and recollections, all those social forces which have been overlooked, will not submit to the severe laws imposed on them. ”

“ Speaking generally, punishment hardens and numbs, it produces concentration, it sharpens the consciousness of alienation, it strengthens the power of resistance. ”

“ The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the Atmosphere. ”

“ There is such a difference in act, mode, and aim between what is called the force of resistance, attributed to bodies, and designated, we know not why, by the name of active force, and between the faculty of thinking, that no common appellation, no matter how specious it may be, can ever confound or identify them. ”

“ By suffering our natural enemies to oppress the Powers less able than we are to make a resistance, we have permitted them to increase their strength; we have lost the most favourable opportunities of opposing them with success ”

“ I believe there is yet a spirit of resistance in this country, which will not submit to be oppressed; but I am sure there is a fund of good sense in this country, which cannot be deceived. ”

“ The second class of reply is based upon what is called indirect Resistance, which, by the way, is often the strongest form of resistance, and accomplishes its intended effect while avoiding the opposition and antagonism of Direct Resistance. ”

“ Secondly, by their extreme ignorance, and little sense of religion in consequence of it, they are deprived of the strongest motives to resist them. Thus, all their temptations rendered stronger, their powers of resistance weaker, they could not be expected to be different from what we find them. ”

“ Passive resistance is a method of securing rights by personal suffering; it is the reverse of resistance by arms. When I refuse to do a thing that is repugnant to my conscience, I use soul-force. For instance, the government of the day has passed a law which is applicable to me: I do not like it, if, by using violence, I force the government to repeal the law. I am employing what may be termed body-force. If I do not obey the law and accept the penalty for its breach, I use soul-force. It involves sacrifice of self. ”

“ But they are not prohibited from resisting, opposing, preventing, or counteracting the injuries inflicted, attempted or threatened by man on man, in the use of any absolutely uninjurious forces, whether moral or physical. On the contrary, it is their bounden duty, by all such benevolent resistances, to promote the safety and welfare, the holiness and happiness of all human beings, as opportunity may offer. ”