Indifference is harder to fight than hostility, and there is nothing that kills an agitation like having everybody admit that it is fundamentally right.
Interpretation
Indifference can be more damaging than active negativity, as it prevents change and validation.
This quote by Crystal Eastman highlights the complex nature of societal responses to agitation and social issues. It suggests that apathy or indifference can be more detrimental than outright hostility, as indifference allows unjust conditions to persist unchallenged, whereas hostility at least acknowledges the existence of a problem. When people recognize and agree with a cause, it weakens the impetus for change, highlighting the challenge of overcoming passive acceptance of the status quo.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech addressing social justice issues to emphasize the importance of active engagement.
The seeker after truth should be humbler than the dust. The world crushes the dust under its feet, but the seeker after truth should so humble himself that even the dust could crush him. Only then, and not till then, will he have a glimpse of truth.
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It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are... than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise.
I've found time can heal most anything and you just might find who you're supposed to be.
To praise it would amount to praising myself. For the entire content of the work... coincides almost exactly with my own meditations which have occupied my mind for the past thirty or thirty-five years.
Whatever difficulty you face, there are time-tried ways you can listen your way through. Because listening is the doorway to everything that matters. It enlivens the heart the way breathing enlivens the lungs. We listen to awaken our heart. We do this to stay vital and alive.
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