In talking about my cancer with family and friends, I feel the love that I know will get me through this. The old strategy of suffering in silence could not have been more misguided.
Interpretation
Acknowledging and sharing struggles can bring love and support during difficult times.
In this quote, George Monbiot emphasizes the importance of open communication about personal struggles, such as illness, with loved ones. He reflects on how sharing his experience with cancer has allowed him to feel the love and support from family and friends, contrasting this with the outdated notion of silently enduring hardships, which may lead to isolation rather than healing.
In practice
A motivational speech at a cancer awareness event.
The notions that nature exists to serve us; that its value consists of the instrumental benefits we can extract; that this value can be measured in cash terms; and that what can't be measured does not matter, have proved lethal to the rest of life on Earth.
I believe that anyone who wants to stand in a national election should receive a course of psychotherapy. Completing the course should be a qualification for office. This wouldn't change the behaviour of psychopaths, but it might prevent some people who exercise power from imposing their own deep wounds on others.
I became an environmentalist because I love the living world, but I spend much of my life thinking about electricity, industrial processes and civil engineering.
Places that have become agricultural deserts, trashed by giant corporations, could be reforested, drawing carbon dioxide from the air on a vast scale. The ecosystems of land and sea could recover, not just in pockets but across great tracts of the planet.
Never underestimate the power of intrinsic values. They inspire every struggle for a better world.
Why is it so easy to save the banks - but so hard to save the biosphere?
If I had not some strength of will I would make a first class drunkard.
There is a thin line between peace of the brave and peace of the hostage... between compromise - even calculated risk - and irresponsibility and capitulation.
When one has made a decision to kill a person, even if it will be very difficult to succeed by advancing straight ahead, it will not do to think about going at it in a long roundabout way. One's heart may slacken, he may miss his chance, and by and large there will be no success. The Way of the Samurai is one of immediacy, and it is best to dash in headlong.
I ran for the presidency, despite hopeless odds, to demonstrate the sheer will and refusal to accept the status quo.
Do you see over yonder, friend Sancho, thirty or forty hulking giants? I intend to do battle with them and slay them.
The pioneers of a warless world are the young men (and women) who refuse military service.
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