It seems that fighting is a game where everybody is the loser.
Zora Neale HurstonRead
People can be slave-ships in shoes.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that people can be imprisoned by societal expectations while appearing free.
Zora Neale Hurston's quote highlights the metaphorical bondage that individuals can experience, even when they are outwardly living in a society that claims to value freedom. The 'slave-ships in shoes' imagery implies that people may carry the weight of their struggles and limitations, trapped by cultural norms and economic structures that dictate their lives, thus hindering their true potential and freedoms.
In practice
During a discussion on social justice, one could use this quote to illustrate the hidden struggles individuals face.
It seems that fighting is a game where everybody is the loser.
Lack of power and opportunity passes off too often for virtue.
From barren brown stems to glistening leaf-buds; from the leaf-buds to snowy virginity of bloomβ¦It was like a flute song forgotten in another existence and remembered again. What? How? Why? This singing she heard that had nothing to do with her ears. The rose of the world was breathing out smell. It followed her through all her waking moments and caressed her in her sleep.
Someone is always at my elbow reminding me that I am the granddaughter of slaves. It fails to register depression with me.
Don't you realize that the sea is the home of water? All water is off on a journey unless it's in the sea, and it's homesick, and bound to make its way home someday.
Two things everybody's got tuh do fuh theyselves. They got tuh go tuh God, and they got tuh find out about livin' fuh theyselves.
Imagination is a very high sort of seeing, which does not come by study, but by the intellect being where and what it sees, by sharing the path, or circuits of things through forms, and so making them translucid to others.
Outsiders tend to be the first to recognize the inadequacies of our social institutions. But, precisely because they are outsiders, they are usually in a poor position to fix them.
All the higher, more penetrating ideals are revolutionary. They present themselves far less in the guise of effects of past experience than in that of probable causes of future experience, factors to which the environment and the lessons it has so far taught us must learn to bend.
A sentimentalist is simply one who desires to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it.
The sprinkling of people of color through elite institutions in the United States, due to affirmative action policies and the limited progress of middle-class and upper-middle-class African Americans, creates the illusion of great progress.
It is true that 'I seem to see a table' does not entail 'I see a table'; but 'I seem to feel a pain' does entail 'I feel a pain'. So scepticism loses its force - cannot open up its characteristic gap - with regard to that which ultimately most concerns us, pleasure and pain.
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