I suffered evils, but without allowing them to rob me of the freedom to expand.
Gordon ParksRead
Nothing came easy. I was just born with a need to explore every part of my mind. And with long searching and hard work, I became devoted to my restlessness.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the value of hard work and the pursuit of personal exploration despite challenges.
Gordon Parks reflects on his journey of personal growth, highlighting that nothing of value comes effortlessly. His innate drive to explore his thoughts and creativity required dedication and perseverance, ultimately leading him to a deep commitment to understanding himself and the world around him through continuous effort and introspection.
In practice
In a motivational speech to college students about pursuing their passions.
I suffered evils, but without allowing them to rob me of the freedom to expand.
You know, the camera is not meant just to show misery.
If you don't have anything to say, your photographs aren't going to say much.
The camera could be a very powerful instrument against discrimination, against poverty, against racism.
And I think that after nearly 85 years upon this planet that I have a right after working so hard at showing the desolation and the poverty, to show something beautiful for somebody as well.
I saw that the camera could be a weapon against poverty, against racism, against all sorts of social wrongs. I knew at that point I had to have a camera.
We should take care, in inculcating patriotism into our boys and girls, that is a patriotism above the narrow sentiment which usually stops at one's country, and thus inspires jealousy and enmity in dealing with others... Our patriotism should be of the wider, nobler kind which recognises justice and reasonableness in the claims of others and which lead our country into comradeship with...the other nations of the world.
Jerusalem doesn't belong only to Israelis and Palestinians, Muslims and Jews, but to the world.
The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.
He was a tool of the boss, without brains or backbone.
Humanity today is like a waking dreamer, caught between the fantasies of sleep and the chaos of the real world. The mind seeks but cannot find the precise place and hour. We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology. We thrash about. We are terribly confused by the mere fact of our existence, and a danger to ourselves and to the rest of life.
But what if God himself can be simulated, that is to say can be reduced to signs that constitute faith? Then the whole system becomes weightless, it is no longer anything but a gigantic simulacrum - not unreal, but simulacrum, that is to say never exchanged for the real, but exchanged for itself, in an uninterrupted circuit without reference or circumference.
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