Quotes about Resilience

After the Vietnam War, a lot of us [antiwar graduate students] didn't just crawl back into our library cubicles; we stepped into academic positions. With the war over, our visibility was lost, and it seemed for awhile—to the unobservant—that we had disappeared. Now we have tenure, and the work of reshaping the universities has begun in earnest.2

mankind is resilient: the atrocities that horrified us a week ago become acceptable tomorrow.

But I'm afraid you have it backward. It is better to live on one's feet than die on one's knees. That is the way the saying goes.

Havermeyer was a lead bombardier who never missed. Yossarian was a lead bombardier who had been demoted because he no longer gave a damn whether he missed or not. He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt, and his only mission each time he went up was to come down alive.

I try not to think of that," Major Danby admitted frankly. "I try to concentrate on only the big result and to forget that they are succeeding, too. I try to pretend that they are not significant." "That's my trouble, you know," Yossarian mused sympathetically, folding his arms. "Between me and every ideal I always find Scheisskopfs, Peckems, Korns and Cathcarts. And that sort of changes the ideal.

You can be pitiful, or you can be powerful, but you can't be both

The biggest black eye that you can give the devil is to give God your pain and let Him turn it into gain.

The devil will give up when he sees that you are not going to give in.

Being negative only makes a difficult journey more difficult. You may be given a cactus, but you don't have to sit on it.

The absence of pain means death, so when something no longer bothers you, you've died to that thing.

Don't waste another day of your life grieving over something that you cannot do anything about. Let God give you a new beginning. Your mistakes are not enough to stop God if you don't let them.

If you only do what is easy, you will always remain weak.