Injustice and Grievance
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Donald L. Hollowell: smart perseverance under injustice
Civil-rights attorney Donald Hollowell fought uphill across segregated Georgia day after day, winning the desegregation of the University of Georgia and freeing Martin Luther King Jr. while enduring hostile courts and constant danger without losing his composure: 'you can't get angry; you have to get smart.
“Human freedom involves our capacity to pause between the stimulus and response and, in that pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight.”
Break the chain of family dysfunction
Rather than resent past mistreatment, Chekhov recognised his parents were themselves victims of a poor upbringing, and that someone eventually had to break the chain of the family's dysfunction.
“The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.”
“It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own.”
“[Chekhov] made a vow to himself: no more bowing and apologising to people; no more complaining and blaming; no more disorderly living and wasting time. The answer to everything was work and love, work and love.”
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
“No one is laughable who can laugh at himself.”
“Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but don’t consider the beam that is in your own eye?”
“A man's shortcomings are taken from his epoch; his virtues and greatness belong to himself.”
“Reason gives each side time to plead; moreover, she herself demands adjournment, that she may have sufficient scope for the discovery of the truth; whereas anger is in a hurry: reason wishes to give a just decision; anger wishes its decision to be thought just. ... The sword of justice is ill-placed in the hands of an angry man.”
· Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers 6.58; Robin Hard translation in Sayings and Anecdotes (2012)
“When someone said to Diogenes, ‘Most people laugh at you’, he replied, ‘And doubtless donkeys laugh at them; but just as they pay no heed to the donkeys, I pay none to them.’”
“[Chekhov] made a vow to himself: no more bowing and apologizing to people; no more complaining and blaming; no more disorderly living and wasting time. The answer to everything was work and love, work and love.”
“A child certainly allows himself to be impressed by the grand talk of his parents, but do they really imagine he is educated by it? Actually it is the parents’ lives that educate the child - what they add by word at best serves only to confuse him.”
What did they think they gained?
When injured, ask: what good or harm did this person think would come of their action? Is my sense of good and evil the same as theirs, or different?
Socrates unfazed by belittlement
Mocked by Hippias for repeating himself, Socrates calmly turned the jibe into a boast, persisting throughout his life in exhorting Athenians to examine how they ought to live.