Eager Quotes - page 6
I wrote the book just after Zimbabwe's independence to encourage young Zimbabweans to develop themselves in spite of the challenges they would face doing so. There was also a lot of talk after independence of going back to one's cultural roots. I wanted to interrogate that idea by examining aspects of the culture we were being told to go back to that affected women in my environment negatively. I was a newly minted feminist at the time and very eager. I also wanted to look at the ongoing effects of colonialism in the new dispensation. At the same time, I hoped to write a book that would be eminently readable, with recognizable characters.
Tsitsi Dangarembga
Joseph Knecht had often noticed that many schoolmates his own age, but even more the younger boys, liked him, sought his friendship, and moreover tended to let him dominate them. They asked him for advice, put themselves under his influence. Ever since, this experience had been repeated frequently. It had its pleasant and flattering side; it satisfied ambition and strengthened self-confidence. But it also had another, a dark and terrifying side. For there was something bad and unpalatable about the attitude one took toward these schoolmates so eager for advice, guidance, and an example, about the impulse to despise them for their lack of self-reliance and dignity, and about the occasional secret temptation to make them (at least in thought) into obedient slaves.
Hermann Hesse
In a crunch a man's reputation never counts for as much as it ought to. Most people are good-hearted and willing to give a man the benefit of the doubt, but the poisonous few are eager to see others brought down, ruined. ... Envy, Bob. Envy eats them alive. If you had money, they'd envy you that. But since you don't, they envy you for having such a good, bright, loving daughter. They envy you for just being a happy man. They envy you for not envying them. One of the greatest sorrows of human existence is that some people aren't happy merely to be alive but find their happiness only in the misery of others.
Dean Koontz
I do not know many Negroes who are eager to be "accepted" by white people, still less to be loved by them; they, the blacks, simply don't wish to be beaten over the head by the whites every instant of our brief passage on this planet. White people will have quite enough to do in learning how to accept and love themselves and each other, and when they have achieved this - which will not be tomorrow and may very well be never - the Negro problem will no longer exist, for it will no longer be needed.
James Baldwin
You nobles, you sons of my leading men, soft and dandified, trusting in your birth and your wealth, paying no attention to my command and your advancement, you neglected the pursuit of learning and indulged yourselves in the sport of pleasure and idleness and foolish pastimes. By the King of the heavens I think nothing of your nobility and your beauty. Others can admire you. Know this without any doubt; unless you rapidly make up for your idleness by eager effort, you will never receive any benefit from Charlemagne.
Charlemagne
In all the human societies we have ever reviewed, in every age and every state, there has seldom if ever been a shortage of eager young males prepared to kill and die to preserve the security, comfort and prejudices of their elders, and what you call heroism is just an expression of this fact; there is never a scarcity of idiots.
Iain Banks
A radical change occurred in the state of my consciousness. I was fifteen then. I made up my mind that my life would take a new turn. I was aspiring for a future which would have some valuable significance. I went to Lahore with a feeling of eager expectation. A cousin of my father had joined the Forman Christian College (Lahore) two years earlier. He arranged my admission and guided my first steps.
Gulzarilal Nanda
... a good university where one can study in peace and freedom may seem common place to you. But not so for many thousands of students in my homeland whose eager young minds remain constrained and constantly shackled by a closed and dogmatic atmosphere that has been ruthlessly imposed on them by an unpopular dictatorship. Consequently, universities in my country are not places for critical learning, and students are not given the kind of opportunities that they need to freely debate contemporary issues or contemplate the shape of the future in the manner that is common practice here in the West.
Reza Pahlavi
In this country - the most favored beneath the bending skies - we have vast areas of the richest and most fertile soil, material resources in inexhaustible abundance, the most marvelous productive machinery on earth, and millions of eager workers ready to apply their labor to that machinery to produce in abundance for every man, woman, and child - and if there are still vast numbers of our people who are the victims of poverty and whose lives are an unceasing struggle all the way from youth to old age, until at last death comes to their rescue and lulls these hapless victims to dreamless sleep, it is not the fault of the Almighty: it cannot be charged to nature, but it is due entirely to the outgrown social system in which we live that ought to be abolished not only in the interest of the toiling masses but in the higher interest of all humanity...
Eugene V. Debs
Our country has been populated by pioneers, and therefore it has in it more energy, more enterprise, more expansive power than any other in the wide world. [...] They have shown the qualities of daring, endurance, and far-sightedness, of eager desire for victory and stubborn refusal to accept defeat, which go to make up the essential manliness of the American character. Above all, they have recognized in practical form the fundamental law of success in American life-the law of worthy work, the law of high, resolute endeavor. We have but little room among our people for the timid, the irresolute, and the idle; and it is no less true that there is scant room in the world at large for the nation with mighty thews that dares not to be great.
Theodore Roosevelt
Under a cabinet constitution at a sudden emergency this people can choose a ruler for the occasion. It is quite possible and even likely that he would not be ruler before the occasion. The great qualities, the imperious will, the rapid energy, the eager nature fit for a great crisis are not required-are impediments-in common times. A Lord Liverpool is better in everyday politics than a Chatham-a Louis Philippe far better than a Napoleon. By the structure of the world we want, at the sudden occurrence of a grave tempest, to change the helmsman-to replace the pilot of the calm by the pilot of the storm.
Walter Bagehot
A few years ago, a motion picture version appeared of Sophocles' immortal tragedy "Oedipus Rex". This picture played only in the so-called art theaters, and it was not a financial success. And I maintain that the reason it was not a financial success... you're way ahead of me... was that it did not have a title tune which the people could hum, and which would make them actually eager to attend this particular... flick. So, I've attempted to supply this, and here then is the prospective title song from "Oedipus Rex".
Tom Lehrer
