corimagua

A strong man cannot help a weaker unless that weaker is strong of himself; he must, by his own efforts, develop the strength which he admires in another. None but himself can alter his condition. It has been usual for men to think and to say, ‘Many men are slaves because on is an oppressor, let us hate the oppressor’. Now, however, there is amongst an increasing few a tendency to reverse this judgment and to say ‘One man is an oppressor because many are slaves, let us despise the slaves’. The truth is that oppressor and slave are co-operators in ignorance, and while seeming to afflict each other, are in reality afflicting themselves. 

Before a man can achieve anything, even in worldly things, he must lift his thoughts above slavish animal indulgence. There can be no progress, no achievement without sacrifice, and a man’s worldly success will be the measure that he sacrifices his confused animal thoughts and fixes his mind on the development his his plans and the strengthening of his resolution and self-reliance.

-James Allen, As a Man Thinketh