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

The prospect is for times of turmoil, struggle, but also inspiration. There is a chance that such a movement could succeed in doing what the system itself has never done–bring about great change with little violence. This is possible because the more of the 99 percent that begin to see themselves as sharing needs, the more the guards and the prisoners see their common interest, the more the Establishment becomes isolated, ineffectual. The elite’s weapons, money, control of information would be useless in the face of a determined population. The servants of the system would refuse to work to continue the old, deadly order, and would begin using their time, their space–the very things given them by the system to keep them quiet–to dismantle that system while creating a new one.

-Howard Zinn

A People’s History of the United States 

Until one is committed there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness, concerning all acts of initiation (and creation)…. the moment one definitely commits, then Providence comes too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred… Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.

-Goethe