By a divine paradox, wherever there is one slave there are two. So in the wonderful reciprocities of being, we can never reach the higher levels until all our fellows ascend with us.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that the liberation of one is interconnected with the liberation of all, emphasizing collective upliftment.
Edwin Markham's quote speaks to the idea that individual freedom and progress are deeply intertwined with the freedom and progress of others. It posits that true advancement cannot be achieved in isolation; rather, in the journey towards higher states of existence and understanding, we must collectively elevate one another. This reflects a philosophy of interconnectedness and shared humanity, suggesting that we are all bound together in our struggles and triumphs.
In practice
During a speech on social justice.
Greed and Gain, grim guardians of the great god Mammon, continually cry in the ears of the poor, 'Give us your little ones!' And forever do the poor push out their little ones at the imperious ukase, feeding the children to a blind Hunger that is never filled.
Sorrows come to stretch out places in the heart for joy.
There is a destiny which makes us brothers; none goes his way alone. All that we send into the lives of others comes back into our own.
The crest and crowning of all good, life's final star, is Brotherhood.
He drew a circle that shut me out- Heretic , rebel, a thing to flout. But love and I had the wit to win: We drew a circle and took him In ! From the poem " Outwitted
The sequoias belong to the silences of the milleniums. Many of them have seen a hundred human generations rise, give off their little clamors and perish. They seem indeed to be forms of immortality standing here amoing the transitory shapes of time.
Maher Arar's case stands as a sad example of how we have been too willing to sacrifice our core principles to overarching government power in the name of security, when doing so only undermines the principles we stand for and makes us less safe.
Bigotry dwarfs the soul by shutting out the truth.
To like an individual because he's black is just as insulting as to dislike him because he isn't white.
It is neither just nor human so to grind men down with excessive labour as to stupefy their minds and wear out their bodies.
And the pain is too much it's too much it's too much and my hands are on my head and I'm rearing back and my mouth is open in a never-ending wordless wail of all the blackness that's inside me. And i fall back into it.
Born in iniquity and conceived in sin, the spirit of nationalism has never ceased to bend human institutions to the service of dissension and distress.
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