resistance quotes from influential philosophers, authors and people
"Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance."
305
"Resistance cannot be seen, touched, heard, or smelled. But it can be felt. We experience it as an energy field radiating from a work-in-potential. It's a repelling force. It's negative. Its aim is to shove us away, distract us, prevent us from doing our work."
306
"The more important a call or action is to our soul's evolution, the more Resistance we feel toward pursuing it."
307
"Like a magnetized needle floating on a surface of oil, Resistance will unfailingly point to true North - meaning that calling or action it most wants to stop us from doing. We can use this. We can use it as a compass. We can navigate by Resistance, letting it guide us to that calling or action that we must follow before all others."
308
"The warrior and the artist live by the same code of necessity, which dictates that the battle must be fought anew every day."
309
"Resistance has no strength of its own. Every ounce of juice it possesses comes from us. We feed it with power by our fear of it. Master that fear and we conquer Resistance."
310
"The danger is greatest when the finish line is in sight. At this point, Resistance knows we're about to beat it. It hits the panic button. It marshals one last assault and slams us with everything it's got."
311
"The best and only thing that one artist can do for another is to serve as an example and an inspiration."
312
"Attention Deficit Disorder, Seasonal Affect Disorder, Social Anxiety Disorder. These aren't diseases, they're marketing ploys. Doctors didn't discover them, copywriters did. Marketing departments did. Drug companies did. Depression and anxiety may be real. But they can also be Resistance."
313
"When we drug ourselves to blot out our soul's call, we are being good Americans and exemplary consumers. We're doing exactly what TV commercials and pop materialist culture have been brainwashing us to do from birth. Instead of applying self-knowledge, self-discipline, delayed gratification and hard work, we simply consume a product."
314
"Doctors estimate that seventy to eighty percent of their business is non-health-related. People aren't sick, they're self-dramatizing. Sometimes the hardest part of a medical job is keeping a straight face. As Jerry Seinfeld observed of his twenty years of dating: 'That's a lot of acting fascinated.'"
315
"The acquisition of a condition lends significance to one's existence. An illness, a cross to bear. Some people go from condition to condition; they cure one, and another pops up to take its place. The condition becomes a work of art in itself, a shadow version of the real creative act the victim is avoiding by expending so much care cultivating his condition."
316
"A victim act is a form of passive aggression. It seeks to achieve gratification not by honest work or a contribution made out of one's experience or insight or love, but by the manipulation of others through silent (and not-so-silent) threat."
317
"Casting yourself as a victim is the antithesis of doing your work. Don't do it. If you're doing it, stop."
318
"What does Resistance feel like? First, unhappiness. We're bored, we're restless. We can't get no satisfaction. There's guilt but we can't put our finger on the source. We want to go back to bed; we want to get up and party. We feel unloved and unlovable. We're disgusted. We hate our lives. We hate ourselves."
319
"We unplug ourselves from the grid by recognizing that we will never cure our restlessness by contributing our disposable income to the bottom line of Bullshit, Inc., but only by doing our work."
321
"If you find yourself criticizing other people, you're probably doing it out of Resistance. When we see others beginning to live their authentic selves, it drives us crazy if we have not lived out our own."
324
"The more Resistance you experience, the more important your unmanifested art/project/enterprise is to you - and the more gratification you will feel when you finally do it."
326
"To predict the behavior of ordinary people in advance, you only have to assume that they will always try to escape a disagreeable situation with the smallest possible expenditure of intelligence."
385
"We must be diligent in our pursuit of virtue, for the resistance of our vices is strong."
412
"The only true disability is the inability to accept challenges."
413
"The wise man sees his difficulties as a challenge and not as a stumbling block."
414
"What is happiness? The feeling that power increases - that a resistance is overcome."
419
"Joy is only a symptom of the feeling of obtained power. One does not strive for joy… joy accompanies."
420
"Man, the bravest of animals, and the one most accustomed to suffering, does not repudiate suffering as such; he desires it, he even seeks it out, provided he is shown a meaning for it, a purpose of suffering."
421
"The meaninglessness of suffering, not the suffering itself, was the curse that lay over mankind so far."
422
"Human beings do not seek pleasure and avoid displeasure. What human beings want… is an increase of power; driven by that will they seek resistance, they need something that opposes it - displeasure, as an obstacle to their will to power, is therefore a normal fact; human being do not avoid it; they are rather in continual need of it."
423
"And life itself confided the secret to me: behold, it said, I am that which must always overcome itself."
424
"Resistance to the organized mass can be affected only by the man who is as well organized in his individuality as the mass itself."
59
"Grandiose fantasies are a symptom of Resistance. They're the sign of an amateur. The professional has learned that success, like happiness, comes as a by-product of work."
327
"Happiness is the feeling that power increases — that resistance is being overcome."
367