Misery, anger, indignation, discomfort-those conditions produce literature. Contentment-never. So there you are.
T. E. LawrenceRead
It seemed that rebellion must have an unassailable base, something guarded not merely from attack, but from the fear of it: such a base as we had in the Red Sea Parts, the desert, or in the minds of the men we converted to our creed.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Rebellion requires a strong foundation that is immune to fear and attacks.
This quote by T. E. Lawrence suggests that true rebellion must be rooted in a secure and unwavering foundation that can withstand not only external threats but also the internal fears that may arise. It emphasizes the importance of having a solid and convincing belief system, whether it be geographic, psychological, or ideological, to support and sustain acts of defiance or change.
Themes
RebellionFoundationFearCreedBelief
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a motivational speech about social change to emphasize the importance of having a strong belief system.
More from T. E. Lawrence
All quotes →All the revision in the world will not save a bad first draft: for the architecture of the thing comes, or fails to come, in the first conception, and revision only affects the detail and ornament, alas!
T. E. LawrenceRead
In peace-armies discipline meant the hunt, not of an average but of an absolute; the hundred per cent standard in which the ninety-nine were played down to the level of the weakest man on parade.... The deeper the discipline, the lower was the individual excellence; also the more sure the performance.
T. E. LawrenceRead
The common base of all the Semitic creeds, winners or losers, was the ever present idea of world-worthlessness. Their profound reaction from matter led them to preach bareness, renunciation, poverty; and the atmosphere of this invention stifled the minds of the desert pitilessly.
T. E. LawrenceRead
Arab civilizations had been of an abstract nature, moral and intellectual rather than applied; and their lack of public spirit made their excellent private qualities futile. They were fortunate in their epoch: Europe had fallen barbarous; and the memory of Greek and Latin learning was fading from men's minds.
T. E. LawrenceRead
We lived many lives in those whirling campaigns, never sparing ourselves; yet when we achieved, and the new world dawned, the old men came out again and took our victory to re-make in the likeness of the former world they knew.
T. E. LawrenceRead
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They learned to have a very high opinion of God and a very low opinion of His works—although they could tell you that this world had been made by God Himself. What they didn’t see was that it is beautiful, and that some of the greatest beauties are the briefest.
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What he could bear in the waking world he could not by night and he sat awake for fear the dream would return.
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I greet you from Smyrna together with the Churches of God present here with me. They comfort me in every way, both in body and soul. My chains, which I carry about on me for Jesus Christ, begging that I may happily make my way to God, exhort you: persevere in your concord and in you community prayers.
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Oppression that is clearly inexorable and invincible does not give rise to revolt but to submission.
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