#avery

What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States at this very hour. ↗

— Frederick Douglass

#activism #agitation #dissent #human-rights #liberties

To believe yourself brave is to be brave; it is the one only essential thing. ↗

— Mark Twain

#wisdom #bravery

What is wrong with you?' I shake my head. 'Pull it together.' And that's what it feels like: pulling the different parts of me up and in like a shoelace. I feel suffocated, but at least I feel strong. ↗

— Veronica Roth

#dauntless #divergent #insurgent #tris-prior #bravery

You touch me again, you arrogant Ardenine swine, and I swear on the blood of Hanalea the warrior, I will geld you. Do you understand? ↗

— Cinda Williams Chima

#raisa #strength #arrogance

Heroes are people who face down their fears. It is that simple. A child afraid of the dark who one day blows out the candle; a women terrified of the pain of childbirth who says, 'It is time to become a mother'. Heroism does not always live on the battlefield. ↗

— David Gemmell

#fear #heroism #heroism

If you are too careful, you are so occupied in being careful that you are sure to stumble over something. ↗

— Gertrude Stein

#carefulness #caution #over-caution #bravery

Fighting giants was one thing. Bacchus making into a game was something else. ↗

— Rick Riordan

#bravery

The essence of warriorship, or the essence of human bravery, is refusing to give up on anyone or anything. ↗

— Chögyam Trungpa

#bravery

He is as full of valor as of kindness. Princely in both. ↗

— William Shakespeare

#graciousness #humility #kindness #meekness #bravery

What we call soul has been around a long time. It comes out of a particular culture that is African in origin, but influenced by 250 years of slavery, as well as other forms of racial oppression. ↗

— Roy Ayers

#around #been #call #comes #culture