Max

“What interest, in fact, can this depressing work have for the worker, when he knows that the fate awaiting him from the cradle to the grave will be to live in mediocrity, poverty, and insecurity of the morrow? Therefore, when we see the immense majority of men take up their wretched task every morning, we feel surprised at their perseverance, at their zeal for work, at the habit that enables them, like machines blindly obeying an impetus given, to lead this life of misery without hope for the morrow; without foreseeing ever so vaguely that some day they, or at least their children, will be part of a humanity rich in all the treasures of a bountiful nature, in all the enjoyments of knowledge, scientific and artistic creation, reserved to-day to a few privileged favourites.”
― Pyotr Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread

“And if I fight, then for what?"
"For nothing easy or sweet, and I told you that last year and the year before that. For your own challenge, for your own mistakes and the punishment for them, for your own definition of love and of sanity - a good strong self with which to begin to live.”
― Joanne Greenberg, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

“Measure the hate you feel now, and the shame. That quantity is your capacity also to love and to feel joy and to have compassion.”
― Joanne Greenberg, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

“When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.”
― Ha-Joon Chang, Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism