Adversity Quotes

"Homesickness is nothing. Fifty percent of the people in the world are homesick all the time."

- John Cheever

"The worst feeling in the world is the homesickness that comes over a man occasionally when he is at home."

- E. W. Howe

"I have no mercy or compassion in me for a society that will crush people, and then penalize them for not being able to stand up under the weight."

- Malcolm X

"There is no better teacher than adversity. Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance the next time."

- Malcolm X

"It's hard for anyone intelligent to be nonviolent. Everything in the universe does something when you start playing with his life, except the American Negro. He lays down and says, 'Beat me, daddy.'"

- Malcolm X

"I believe that there will ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those that do the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the systems of exploitation."

- Malcolm X

"To me, the thing that is worse than death is betrayal."

- Malcolm X

"The comfort zone is a region where great dreams go to get murdered, buried and forgotten."

- Michael Bassey Johnson

"Though I walk in the valley of deep shadow, I fear no harm, for you are with me."

- Psalm 23:4

"For all things I have the strength through the one who gives me power."

- Philippians 4:13

"There is no work nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom in the Grave."

- Ecclesiastes 9:10

"How are we (as OTs) decreasing barriers and increasing access?"

- Arameh Anvarizadeh, OTD, OTR/L, FAOTA

"They said separate: children, men, women, and the older people. Me and my sister were separated with the young ones. I had my little sister in my arms, and one of the SS came over and picked up my little sister and gave her to my stepmother. He pushed me to the other side."

- Bella Benozio Ouziel

"They brought us into Auschwitz. I could see the chimneys burning, smell the smoke. I did not think about it. They gave us tattoos: 33076. I did not have a name anymore; just a number."

- Sara Polonski Zuchowicki

"I was a little girl. I had done nothing to nobody, and I had to go there."

- Wellesina McCrary

"One of our friends we knew from the ghetto, Danka Joskowicz — she ran to the barbed wires. I yelled to her, ‘Don’t go to the barbed wires! You will get electrocuted.’ She said, ‘What should I have to live for?’"

- Rozalia Nowak Berke

"The smell was awful — things like that, you do not want to talk about it. Because the pain and memory of suffering comes back to you. You cannot deal with it."

- Eva Gryka Kohan

"She was beautiful, my little sister. You cannot imagine how beautiful she was. They mustn’t have looked at her. If they had, they would never have killed her. They couldn’t have."

- Charlotte Delbo

"My family was in the Warsaw Ghetto. We wrote to them in code for a while and secretly sent them money. Then, we received a letter saying they were living in a cabin in a camp. And then the letters stopped coming. We never heard from them again. I later found out the camp they were in was Auschwitz. I’ve never forgotten them."

- Stephanie Marks

"The SS guards pushed people with their [rifles] from both sides, and the crowd surged forward. As I searched for my father with my eyes and tried to catch up with him, I felt the firm grip of my mother’s hand on my arm. I knew she and I had to stay together — that going after my father would only separate me from my mother too."

- Anna Brunn Ornstein

"Today, looking back on the six years of that war, I realize that the worst thing I endured in the Holocaust was not the hunger, the cold, or the beatings; it was the humiliation. It was almost impossible to bear the helplessness of unjustified humiliation. Helplessness becomes linked with that dishonor."

- Israel Meir Lau

"Then for the first time, we became aware that our language lacks words to express this offense, the demolition of a man. In a moment, with almost prophetic intuition, the reality was revealed to us: we had reached the bottom. It is not possible to sink lower than this; no human condition is more miserable than this, nor could it conceivably be so. Nothing belongs to us anymore; they have taken away our clothes, our shoes, even our hair; if we speak, they will not listen to us, and if they listen, they will not understand. They will even take away our name: and if we want to keep it, we ill have to find ourselves the strength to do so, to manage somehow so that behind the name something of us, of us as we were, still remains."

- Primo Levi

"We are devastated by the Court of Arbitration for Sport ruling regarding women’s floor exercise."

- Jordan Chiles

"I have never been hit so hard in my life."

- Angela Carini

"They didn’t even hear what I had to say. I sacrificed everything for this."

- Steven Sabino

"Not everything in life is fun. Sometimes you have to do stuff you don’t want to."

- Bluey

"Houston, we've had a problem."

- Jim Lovell

"Every kid goes through puberty, wondering what to do about girls and struggling with homework, and every adult has been through that."

- Tom Holland

"I remember what it was like when my parents couldn't help me with my homework because they couldn't speak the language, or being a translator for my parents. I did that a lot."

- Milana Vayntrub

"My son died almost 4 years ago. I feel gutted and list inthe workd. I am on meds. I pray, walk, I have close friends and a living husband. Nothing touches the pain. I am lost in the world without my son. It seems so empty. He was my firstborn child. I felt him move inside me. I nursed him for a year. He is gone. I hate to have people ask me how I am. I will not be OK again. I will not kill myself, but each day I go through is a day without my son and it feels pointless."

- Sarah Cooper