If I die a violent death, as some fear and a few are plotting, I know that the violence will be in the thought and the action of the assassins, not in my dying.
Indira GandhiRead
People with clenched fists can not shake hands.
Interpretation
Holding onto anger or resentment prevents meaningful connections with others.
This quote by Indira Gandhi emphasizes the importance of openness and willingness to interact with others. If one is tightly holding onto negativity or stubbornness, it becomes impossible to reach out for collaboration, friendship, or understanding. To build relationships, a person must be open to letting go of grievances and embracing humility.
In practice
During a team-building workshop, this quote was used to encourage participants to let go of their differences.
If I die a violent death, as some fear and a few are plotting, I know that the violence will be in the thought and the action of the assassins, not in my dying.
You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist.
All my games were political games; I was, like Joan of Arc, perpetually being burned at the stake.
The power to question is the basis of all human progress.
My father was a statesman, I'm a political woman. My father was a saint. I'm not.
A nation' s strength ultimately consists in what it can do on its own, and not in what it can borrow from others.
She knew that it would not be easy to submit to his miserliness, or the foolishness of his premature appearance of age, or his maniacal sense of order, or his eagerness to as for everything and give nothing at all in return, but despite all this, no man was better company because no other man in the world was so in need of love.
He was afraid that the secrets she'd kept would always be here, inside him, an ugly malignant thing lodged near enough to his heart to upset its rhythm, and though it could be removed, cut out, there would always be scars; bits and pieces of it would remain in his blood, making it wrong somehow, so that if he accidentally sliced his skin open, his blood would--for one heartbeat--flow as black as India ink before it remembered that it should be red.
After telling the hard facts to anyone from lover to friend, I have changed in their eyes. Often it is awe or admiration, sometimes it is repulsion, once or twice it has been fury hurled directly at me for reasons I remain unsure of.
Getting married is very much like going to a restaurant with friends. You order what you want then when you see what the other person has, you wish you had ordered that.
With the rise of chiefdoms around 7,500 years ago, people had to learn, for the first time in history, how to encounter strangers regularly without attempting to kill them.
That good disposition which boasts of being most tender is often stifled by the least urging of self-interest.
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