Struggle Was Real Quotes & Sayings

It is not cynical to admit the past has been turned into a fiction. It is a story, not a fact. The real has been erased. Whole eras have been added or removed. Wars have been aggrandized, and human struggle relegated to the margins. Villains are redressed as heroes. Generous, striving, imperfect men and women have been stripped of their flaws or plucked of their virtues and turned into figurines of morality or depravity. Whole societies have been fixed with motive and visions and equanimity where there was none. Suffering has been recast as noble sacrifice! Do you know why the history of the Tower is in such turmoil? Because too many powerful men are fighting for the pen, fighting to write their story over our dead bodies. They know what is at stake: immortality, the character of civilization, and influence beyond the ages. They are fighting to see who gets to mislead our grandchildren. — Josiah Bancroft

It occurred to him that his scarcely perceptible attempts to struggle against what was considered good by the most highly placed people, those scarcely noticeable impulses which he had immediately suppressed, might have been the real thing, and all the rest false. — Leo Tolstoy

Bette Davis lived long enough to hear the Kim Carnes song, 'Bette Davis Eyes'. The lyrics to that song were not very interesting. But the fact of the song was the proof of an acknowledgement that in the twentieth century we lived through an age of immense romantic personalities larger than life, yet models for it, too - for good or ill. Like twin moons, promising a struggle and an embrace, the Davis eyes would survive her - and us. Kim Carnes has hardly had a consistent career, but that one song - sluggish yet surging, druggy and dreamy - became an instant classic. It's like the sigh of the islanders when they behold their Kong. And I suspect it made the real eyes smile, whatever else was on their mind. — David Thomson

Even though she let these thoughts run as fast as they would, she still stopped when her mind moved towards real fear or dread or, worse, towards the thought that she was going to lose this world for ever, that she would never have an ordinary day again in this ordinary place, that the rest of her life would be a struggle with the unfamiliar. — Colm Toibin

I had real concerns about the relationship between nature and culture and places I wanted to write about. I thought, well, maybe I should try prose. It was a real struggle to begin because, first of all, there were so many words on the page - it was terrifying. Beginning was awful. — Alison Hawthorne Deming

I've been through hell. It's hard to think you have this life, and then all of a sudden - was it a lie? You're struggling because it wasn't real. But I survived. It was hard, but it didn't kill me. — Elin Nordegren

You wouldn't believe how hard it was, keeping my eyes on his face. The struggle was real. — Kylie Scott

It is not cynical to admit that the past has been turned into a fiction. It is a story, not a fact. The real has been erased. Whole eras have been added and removed. Wars have been aggrandized, and human struggle relegated to the margins. Villains are redressed as heroes. Generous, striving, imperfect men and women have been stripped of their flaws or plucked of their virtues and turned into figurines of morality or depravity. Whole societies have been fixed with motive and vision and equanimity where there was none. Suffering has been recast as noble sacrifice! — Josiah Bancroft

The ruthless economic exploitation and political oppression of the peasants by the landlord class forced them into numerous uprisings against its rule ... It was the class struggles of the peasants, the peasant uprisings and peasant wars that constituted the real motive force of historical development in Chinese feudal society. — Mao Zedong

History's long rhythm of challenges and response, of solutions that breed new crises, is not to be interrupted. But the Cold War left one shining example of human wisdom as a legacy for the future. Fifty years after the first use of atomic weapons, the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain unique and poignant shrines to the inspiring fact that they have no successor. The long confrontation of the Cold War, a struggle to the death between two systems for the mastery of human destiny, was managed and resolved without that nuclear war which lurked in the monstrous imminence in silos and submarines around the globe. That was the real victory. — Martin Walker

Praise our choices, sister, for each doorway open to us was taken by squads of fighting women who paid years of trouble and struggle, who paid their wombs, their sleep, their lives that we might walk through these gates upright. Doorways are sacred to women for we are the doorways of life and we must choose what comes in and what goes out. Freedom is our real abundance. — Marge Piercy

We all know the story: how a defiant and undisciplined collection of citizen soldiers banded together to defeat the mightiest army on earth. But as those who lived through the nearly decadelong saga of the American Revolution were well aware, that was not how it actually happened. The real Revolution was so troubling and strange that once the struggle was over, a generation did its best to remove all traces of the truth. No one wanted to remember how after boldly declaring their independence they had so quickly lost their way; how patriotic zeal had lapsed into cynicism and self-interest; and how, just when all seemed lost, a traitor had saved them from themselves. — Nathaniel Philbrick

I wanted to present a sweep and scope of larger events, and a grander backdrop, but most important was to set against that a very singular, real and modest people struggling with every day and human struggles. — Chang-rae Lee

Some days, adulting was too much responsibility. Get up for work. Brush your hair. Pay bills. It was an endless list of too many things and not enough time. The struggle was real, my friends. But — Max Monroe

I spent a good portion of my life being unable to honor my feelings. When I started the process of having real friendships it was a huge change. I still struggle with it because it is not familiar ground. — Bonnie St. John

Housing projects are a great metaphor for the government's relationship to poor folks: these huge islands built mostly in the middle of nowhere, designed to warehouse lives. People are still people, though, so we turned the projects into real communities, poor or not. We played in fire hydrants and had cookouts and partied, music bouncing off concrete walls. But even when we could shake off the full weight of those imposing buildings and try to just live, the truth of our lives and struggle was still invisible to the larger country. The rest of the country was freed of any obligation to claim us. Which was fine, because we weren't really claiming them, either. — Jay-Z

We think we have to prove our allegiance to God by being poor. Many years ago, my own psychic development teacher taught me that to be on a spiritual path meant that you needed to be poor, because that was proving your allegiance to God. So growing up with that kind of teaching from her was a real struggle for me, also. — Echo Bodine

Since the day I'd left Yoroido, I'd done nothing but worry that every turn of life's wheel would bring yet another obstacle into my path; and of course, it was the worrying and the struggle that had always made life so vividly real to me. — Arthur Golden

It is impossible to live without hardship. The hardship of daily trifles, Ashely explains, ever accumulating and impossible to ignore, is so much meaner than pain or cold or fatigue. These annoyances make one weak and petty and shallow, just as greater struggles make one brave and wise. It's the little things that bring one down. Delayed trains and burnt puddings and drafty rooms. I was never so miserably cold on a mountain as I was in a drafty room. One can rise to dire occasions, but most of the time one worries about one's burnt pudding. It takes real struggle to see what life is. Then you realize you don't give two straws if your pudding's been burnt. — Justin Go

I'd listen to things that felt really good in the moment and realize they were clouded by enthusiasm or caffeine. And things that I was struggling to get out ended up being really compelling. It's an emotional roller coaster; there's exhilaration and there's shame. — Annie E. Clark

She glanced up at him. "Why does it matter? Why do you care?"
He'd been staring at her hands again, but jerked his gaze up to hers as if surprised by the question. He answered quickly, almost automatically. "I am a law enforcement officer. I found your aunt and saw what... that animal" -- he seemed to struggle with the words -- "I saw what he did. And we don't know why."
Ceelie nodded. "So this is how you'd treat anyone whose case you got involved with?"...
He leaned across the space that divided them, cupping his left hand around her jaw and pulling her toward him as if she were fragile, breakable. His kiss was soft, a pressure of lips, a slight parting, a promise of more. His stubble scratched her chin.
"That's the real answer." His voice was so soft the air around him seemed to soak it up. "And don't ask me what it means because I'll be damned if I know. — Susannah Sandlin

She acknowledged each person's nearness to the dead and helped the group in its struggle for order-who grieved most, whose pain was most real-because in life there is always hierarchy, and it is frankly not profitable to remain modest and anonymous, not even at a funeral. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

The real struggle between an American government and the people was one of power, which was settled when they designed their Constitution, which conceded the sovereignty of the people when it came to politics, and the sovereignty of the consumer when it came to economics. — Ndabaningi Sithole

The increasing white obsession with physical violation, therefore, must be taken as an integral part of the white minority's wider struggle for social control. The degree of shared interest and unavoidable intimacy which had held the two races in uneasy coexistence during the proprietary period was breaking down. Slaves were becoming a more numerous and distinctive group, and their very real efforts toward social and economic self-assertion prompted the anxious white minority to fantasies of ravishment and to concrete measures of containment. — Peter H. Wood

I was driven from my position as Interior Secretary, not because of my environmental record, but because of my Christian beliefs. That's the real struggle. — James G. Watt

Christie was one of that large class of women who, moderately endowed with talents, earnest and true-hearted, are driven by necessity, temperament, or principle out into the world to find support, happiness, and homes for themselves. Many turn back discouraged; more accept shadow for substance, and discover their mistake too late; the weakest lose their purpose and themselves; but the strongest struggle on, and, after danger and defeat, earn at last the best success this world can give us, the possession of a brave and cheerful spirit, rich in self-knowledge, self-control, self-help. This was the real desire of Christie's heart; this was to be her lesson and reward, and to this happy end she was slowly yet surely brought by the long discipline of life and labor. — Louisa May Alcott

The real battle for Christians today is not Armageddon, it is the battle for a sensible approach to that ancient library of books we call the Bible. The Bible was written by human beings, with all the longings, prejudices and illusions that characterise us as a species. It is not an apocalyptic almanac, a mystical code book, an inerrant textbook for living. It is a compendium of a particular people's struggle with meaning; so it should encourage us to do the same in our day. — Richard Holloway

The Thirty Years' War, 1618-1648, was a series of conflicts that became the last great struggle of religious wars in Europe. It was fought almost exclusively on German soil ... but before the war ended, it involved most of the nations of Europe. The underlying cause of the war was the deep-seated hostility between the German Protestants and German Catholics - with the Jesuits and Cardinal Richelieu, who was the real ruler of France, fanning the fires to accomplish their ends. — John Daniel

There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor
both black and white
through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. — Martin Luther King Jr.

The hardest part of being a Christian is surrendering and that is where the real struggle happens. Once we have overcome our own desire to be elevated, our own desire to be recognized, our own desire to be independent and all those things that we value very much because we are Americans and we are part of this American culture. Once we have overcome that struggle then God can use us as a part of His body to accomplish what the body of Christ was left here to accomplish. — Rich Mullins

Instead of attention being directed to people and what war would do to their lives, it was turned to the abstraction of the nation. The survival of the nation in the evolutionary struggle, the refusal to accept an insult to the nation, the avoidance of the nation being humiliated or dishonoured, seemed of supreme importance. Nations as imaginary people were put before the real people who made them up. — Jonathan Glover