Occupation Quotes

“What's a house when you've lost a country?' she says with a sigh.”
― Yasmina Khadra, The Attack

“Under the snow's reflected light creeping into the houses, beneath the dim lamplight, various types of manual work is taken up. This is how time is forgotten; this is how work absorbs the hours and days. If time remains unused, winter becomes a curse.”
― Soetsu Yanagi, The Beauty of Everyday Things

“Existence has taught me that a man can live on love and fresh water, on crumbs and promises, but he can never survive insults. And insults are all I've known since I came into the world. Every morning. Every evening. That's all I've seen for my whole life.”
― Yasmina Khadra, The Attack

“Kashmir is India’s greatest moral and political failure. It is here that even the most civilised amongst us begin to make excuses for repression, brutality and violence. It is here that we subsume all that we otherwise celebrate under the demands of freedom, progress, liberalism, liberty and secular ideals. Since 1947, the Indian state has responded to the political aspirations and the social and the legal demands in Kashmir through militarisation, repression, and indiscriminate violence, including, at various times, the denial of democratic rights, the manipulation of elections, and the murder and imprisonment of its political leaders.”
― Suchitra Vijayan

“COVID-19 has turned nursing into a very risky occupation.”
― Steven Magee

“The heinous misdeeds committed by the empire are no longer privy to debate. It's a known fact, at least to people with some basic brains... Imagine me coming to your home and then declaring myself the guardian of the house while helping myself with all your resources and keeping you as underling - you know, like the pilgrims did to the native Americans. Sucks right! Exactly my point!”
― Abhijit Naskar, Making Britain Civilized: How to Gain Readmission to The Human Race

“Thy can take everything you own --your property, your best years, all your joys, all your good works, everything down to your last shirt --but you'll always have your dreams, so you can reinvent your stolen world.”
― Yasmina Khadra, The Attack

“They can take everything you own --your property, your best years, all your joys, all your good works, everything down to your last shirt-- but you'll always have your dreams, so you can reinvent your stolen world.”
― Yasmina Khadra, The Attack

“You have to be careful about damaging workers health because those damaged workers may publicly research your toxic workplace to discover what made them sick.”
― Steven Magee

“Tigris. A young soldier said, ‘I want to tell you a story.’ When he was ten years old, he said, the Americans invaded. Between his school and his home in Baghdad sprang up an American checkpoint. At first he was scared of them. But then he found they were friendly. Every day after classes he’d go there and spend two hours with the soldiers. They fed him, played with him, showed him pictures of their children. He taught them Arabic words, they taught him English words. He loved them. They loved him. Even now, he thought of them every day. I looked at him expectantly. ‘That’s all,’ he said. ‘That’s my story.’

I asked whether he was glad America had come all those years ago. The stupidity of the question occurred to me only as it left my mouth.

‘No,’ he said, smiling.”
― James Verini, They Will Have to Die Now: Mosul and the Fall of the Caliphate

“Many of the foreign immigrants
will probably belong to races originally
conquered by and absorbed into the empire.
While the empire is enjoying its High Noon
of prosperity, all these people are proud and glad to be imperial citizens. But when decline
sets in, it is extraordinary how the memory
of ancient wars, perhaps centuries before, is
suddenly revived, and local or provincial
movements appear demanding secession or
independence. Some day this phenomenon
will doubtless appear in the now apparently
monolithic and authoritarian Soviet empire.
It is amazing for how long such provincial
sentiments can survive.”
― John Bagot Glubb, The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival

“The brits made a career out of oppressing people, they made a lifestyle out of oppressing people, but oppression itself is not a british thing - the Brits did it, the Nazis did it, the Brahmins did it, and today the neonazis do it.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Making Britain Civilized: How to Gain Readmission to The Human Race

“The biggest practical decisions for a man to make in his life are twofold: first, whom to marry, if anyone at all, and secondly, what work to do for a living. Marriage ties a man to the finite world of mortgages, overstuffed furniture, doctor bills, college savings plan for children, and the worries of how to support a wife once a man no longer feels capable of working every day. If a man chooses not to marry, his life probably will be less rich emotionally, but his occupational choice is less crucial since he can fritter about through life. In contrast, a man whom wishes to marry has a limited opportunity to pick an occupation, before he casts his future in concrete boots. Once a man marries, the possibility of changing careers grows remote. The importance of remaining at a dependable job to ensure financial support for his growing entourage will trump any unhappiness that he feels in his occupation.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“I was surprised at how corrupted the USA workers compensation scheme is for workers with occupational diseases.”
― Steven Magee

“Education is my occupation, not my business; we are sailing in the same ocean but in the opposite direction”
― P.S. Jagadeesh Kumar

“The latrine is not a place of welcome occupation. The pests, the heat and the stench oozing out from that abyss are strong enough to issue any visitor a premature quit notice.”
― Vincent Okay Nwachukwu, Weighty 'n' Worthy African Proverbs - Volume 1

“People ask me why I do what I do. And my answer is to do anything less is to do nothing at all.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“When you occupied today, and you kept silent, wait for more dangerous things tomorrow.”
― Kamaran Ihsan Salih

“In many ways, the language, the sect, and the ethnicity are the IDs in post-U.S. occupation Iraq—the 'new Iraq'.”
― Louis Yako, Bullets in Envelopes: Iraqi Academics in Exile

“The journey of this book started as a project to tell the story of exiled and displaced Iraqi academics in post-occupation Iraq. As I finished writing it, I found that, in telling their stories, these academics ended up telling a very important story about Iraq itself. With their firsthand, intelligent, and analytical voices, I find the testimonies captured in this book indispensable for understanding the effects of the U.S. occupation on Iraq. Moreover, these testimonies speak volumes about why what was done to Iraq should never happen again in another country.”
― Louis Yako, Bullets in Envelopes: Iraqi Academics in Exile

“While an extreme and violent case, Bullets in Envelopes shows that the conditions of Iraqi academics in exile are part and parcel of global trends marked by the commercialization and corporatization of higher education adversely affecting academic, social, and political freedoms of writing, thinking, and speaking truth to power. As such, countries and societies are being totally reshaped (and destroyed) in alarming ways. Bullets in Envelopes is about academics, but it’s not written for academics only. The stories in the book prove that the Iraq war is far from over. Instead, it has been happening over and over in other countries too.”
― Louis Yako, Bullets in Envelopes: Iraqi Academics in Exile

“Once upon a time, displaced people had a time and a place. They had a place in which they made plans about what to do with their future and their lives. Their time and place were prematurely destroyed and stolen from them. These people were then forced to exist in times and places that are not theirs. They were forced to learn the art of living and flourishing in the same empire that stole and destroyed their time and place back home.”
― Louis Yako

“It's already a good thing to have done a job you did enjoy at one point. That's pretty rare.”
― Manu Larcenet, Ordinary Victories

“When we do what the Spirit has anointed us to do, we are not just helping people; we are also terrorizing the enemy. It is so important that we find our place of calling in life, and that we understand that each of us is born to be an instrument of God, filled with the Spirit of God, to do the works of God.”
― Kris Vallotton, Spiritual Intelligence: The Art of Thinking Like God

“As we were leaving the camp, I wondered whether refugee and IDP camps are a sign of compassion towards displaced people, or are they signs of how far humans have gone in causing harm to each other?”
― Louis Yako

“The unimaginable atrocities inflicted on this city [Mosul] by a group of mercenaries known as ISIL should undoubtedly be considered one of the most horrendous crimes of the twenty-first century.”
― Louis Yako

“Perhaps it is the lack of useful occupation that renders lap dogs so vicious, Miss Burke countered, the fear in her voice now replaced by the more familiar bite.”
― Susanna Craig, The Companion's Secret

“I wont get into details, but the greeks are a loud people because they have been occupied for centuries by different peoples on different occasions, and so the best way to keep the 'bear' away is to make it think twice before approaching.”
― Monaristw

“It is my belief that we Americans, geographically isolated as we are, tend to be perhaps not as knowledgeable about other cultures as we might be. This is regrettable. Since we are the sole remaining superpower, it is desirable that we know something about the rest of the world, because otherwise, when we take over different parts of the world, how will we know how good we did?”
― George Saunders, The Braindead Megaphone

“Without a vision, how can you choose your vocation?”
― Lailah Gifty Akita