Occupation Quotes

“Any government that places profit before people is pure evil.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“Occupation maybe means when army of another country enters our country and refuses to return to their country on one pretext or other. To me occupation does also not mean when the army is at the border, but occupation is when the army knocks at our doors, enters our homes, kills our brothers, rape our sisters and the whole fucking world is silent. Occupation to me is when you need 7 lacs forces to kill 258 militants. To me occupation also means when you need bullets against stones. Occupation is also when you don't die once but several times everyday, when you don't have dreams but long last Nightmares. Occupation is also when a country launches a vicious campaign to present you, as a whole community, terrorists before the fucking world for justifying their violent suppression and other punitive measures.”
― Tarif Naaz

“Education is not merely meant for you to write and pass exams, get a good job and a good spouse, and settle down for survival.”
― Israelmore Ayivor, Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts

“Fully aware that life is too short for the choice to be anything but irreparable, he had been distressed to discover that he felt no spontaneous attraction to any occupation. Rather sceptically, he looked over the array of available possibilities: prosecutors, who spend their whole lives persecuting people; schoolteachers, the butt of rowdy children; science and technology, whose advances bring enormous harm along with a small benefit; the sophisticated, empty chatter of the social sciences; interior design (which appealed to him because of his memories of his cabinetmaker grandfather), utterly enslaved by fashions he detested; the occupation of the poor pharmacists now reduced to peddlars of boxes and bottles. When he wondered; what should I choose for my whole life's work? his inner self would fall into the most uncomfortable silence.”
― Milan Kundera, Identity

“There's no more powerful too for safety than communication.”
― Andy Weir, Artemis

“A person’s selection of a vocation is a crucial step with significant ramification relating to their degree of financial success, personal happiness, and sense of contributing the best part of themselves – their unique talent – to the community.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“We do not create happiness without integrating our passion into our work life.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Коли ми говоримо про відчуження, ми переживаємо історію, яку людство пережило вже купу разів. Це не щось специфічне. Це класична схема окупації, в якій кожна людина обирає, хто вона і з ким вона. Зрештою, цей вибір не буде остаточним. За цей час, люди, що залишились на окупованій території, багато чого зрозуміли про себе. Якщо ми подивимось на ситуацію з цієї точки зору, в нас буде така література. Ми вже її маємо. Пережити війну без літератури і вилікуватись не можна.

Якщо в людині була порожнеча, її може заповнити зло. Тим злом людина примножується. Зло — це вірус, хвороба. Людина втрачає себе. Головне питання, чи вона повернеться до себе.

[...] Можливо, Росія — теж окупована кремлівською владою країна. Зараз я розумію, що в мене на експорт добра немає. Я не хочу думати, ким вони є сьогодні і будуть завтра. Нам треба дуже багато добра, щоб провести деокупацію свідомості.”
― Олена Стяжкіна

“If you can devote yourself to your favorite occupation without getting money for it, but in order to discover your potential, then you will find out who you are”
― Sunday Adelaja

“Villainessa Tittel was a hired killer, an assassin by trade. She had enjoyed the best education and had been trained by assassins who had (until then at least) been considered the best in the business. She had turned to ‘cleaning’ as an occupation because she really enjoyed endings more than beginnings – and anyway, she didn’t need to know her mark’s entire pedigree or life’s story, or to have some kind of facetious moral justification just to collect her fee. Unsurprisingly, when she did read – on those rare occasions – her books were always dog-eared from the back.”
― Christina Engela

“LADY BRACKNELL: Do you smoke?
JACK: Well, yes, I must admit I smoke.
LADY BRACKNELL: I am glad to hear it. A man should always have an occupation of some kind. There are far too many idle men in London as it is.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“Now am I daring to accuse American strategic planners of deliberately eradicating peasant villages in order to smoke out the girls who would have little choice but to sexually service the same boys who bombed, shelled, strafed, torched, pillaged, or merely forcibly evacuated said villages? I am merely noting that the creation of native prostitutes to service foreign privates is an inevitable outcome of a war of occupation, one of those nasty little side effects of defending freedom that all the wives, sisters, girlfriends, mothers, pastors, and politicians in Smallville, USA, pretend to ignore behind waxed and buffed walls of teeth as they welcome their soldiers home, ready to treat any unmentionable afflictions with the penicillin of American goodness.”
― Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer

“Under alle omstendigheter, og da skyver jeg alle spørsmål om mine egne mangler til side, er jeg ankommet på et tidspunkt da disse folkene i sine hjerter må være grundig syke og kvalme av oss. For et år siden frigjorde vi dem fra fascistmonsteret, og de sitter fortsatt der og gjør sitt beste for å smile høflig til oss - like sultne som alltid og mer plaget av sykdommer enn noensinne, i ruinene av sin vakre by der lov og orden har opphørt å gjelde. Og hva er gevinsten de til slutt kan vinne? Demokratiets gjenfødelse. Den vidunderlige utsikten til en vakker dag å bli i stand til å velge sine egne herskere fra en liste over mektige menn, hvorav de flestes korrupthet er alment kjent og akseptert med trett resignasjon. Benito Mussolinis dager må fremstå som et tapt paradis sammenlignet med dette.”
― Norman Lewis, Naples '44: A World War II Diary of Occupied Italy

“Vladimir Putin [...] was convinced the US was set on a unilateralist course, not for a good practical purpose but as a matter of principle. Time and again, he would say, ‘Suppose we act against Georgia, which is a base for terrorism against Russia ― what would you say if we took Georgia out? Yet the Americans think they can do whatever they like to whomever they like.’ [447]”
― Tony Blair, A Journey: My Political Life

“Но в оккупации мы отмечали все майские и октябрьские праздники. Наши праздники! Наши! Обязательно пели песни, у нас вся семья певучая. Пусть это была картошка в мундирах, иногда один кусочек сахара на всех, но в этот день старались что-то чуточку лучше приготовить, пусть назавтра останемся голодными, но праздники мы все отмечали. Шепотом пели мамину любимую песню: «Утро красит нежным цветом стены древние Кремля…» Это обязательно…”
― Светлана Алексиевич, Ostatni świadkowie. Utwory solowe na głos dziecięcy

“Він намагався виправити все заподіяне, просив пробачення і спокутував провину, жертвуючи собою заради неї. На мить вона побачила чоловіка, яким він був раніше, — поета, у якого закохалася її мати. Та людина, якою він був до війни, могла б знайти слова, аби склеїти їхнє зруйноване минуле. Але тієї людини вже не існувало. Він надто багато втратив і багато від чого відмовився. Лише в такий спосіб він міг сказати, що любить її.

— Тільки не так, — прошепотіла вона.
— Іншого виходу немає. Пробач мені, — мовив він ніжно. [...]

Її батька вивели надвір — на залиту яскравим вранішнім сонцем площу, де вже чекала розстрільна команда з гвинтівками напоготові. [...]

— У нас зовсім не було часу, — прошепотіла вона, відчуваючи, як по щоках течуть сльози. Скільки разів вона уявляла, як вона й тато, як усі вони починають усе спочатку? Після війни Ізабель, В’янн і батько могли б знову навчитися сміятись і бути родиною.

Але цього ніколи не станеться. Вона ніколи не пізнає батька, ніколи не відчує тепла його рук, ніколи не засне на дивані поруч із ним, ніколи не скаже йому все, що хотіла. Вони ніколи не будуть разом, як обіцяла мама.

— Тату, — мовила вона. Раптом це слово набуло величезного значення. Перетворилося на нездійснену мрію.

Він повернувся обличчям до розстрільної команди й розправив плечі. Чоловік відкинув пасма волосся з очей, у яких не було жодної сльози. Їхні погляди зустрілися. Вона міцно стиснула ґрати.

— Я люблю тебе, — сказав він.

Постріли [385—86].”
― Крістін Генна, The Nightingale

“In the future, each of us must have the courage to follow our gift or to be engaged in a favorite occupation, even if it does not bring you any income at the moment”
― Sunday Adelaja

“You have to write down what you really want to do in this life and then you have to write down what you have to do every day to achieve the goal”
― Sunday Adelaja

“Bending to the will of others can become a full-time occupation.”
― Steven Redhead, Life Is A Cocktail

“Don’t only think of which job to get and live on. Think about which problem to solve and the jobs will keep suggesting themselves.”
― Israelmore Ayivor, Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts

“The occupation deprives you of your humanity by depriving you of the ability to control time.

A free human being controls his time: he gets up when he wants and goes to bed when he wants; he goes to work according to a simple daily routine; she visits her relatives and her fiance; he goes to the movies; she goes for a walk amid nature around her home any time she wishes. A human being is human because he makes his own decisions, because he has the ability to plan for tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, for next week and for the next ten years. A human being pursues her freedom through her ability to control her time. Freedom guarantees that simple, extraordinary, and sometimes hard-to-define thing: dignity.”
― Ala Hlehel

“Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is largely a government cover up department for badly behaved corporations.”
― Steven Magee

“But the main thing I learned from the war was that war is unjust, no matter who is pulling the trigger, and that, as my parents taught me, we owe it to each other as human beings to speak out against injustice.”
― Saree Makdisi, Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation

“The wall, in other words, is only one manifestation of an underlying process that preexisted it by decades, namely, the Israeli project to break up and isolate Palestinian spaces from each other, while unifying and tying together the Jewish-Israeli spaces of Israel and the occupied territories. So although the wall has had a devastating impact on Palestinian life all along the West Bank, it needs to be understood as an effect rather than a cause-- and the real problem that needs to be addressed isn't the wall as such, but rather the occupation.”
― Saree Makdisi, Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation

“Apart from the question of fatigue, this soldier is convinced that the only function of his checkpoint is "to put pressure on the Palestinian population. Officers explicitly told me that the checkpoint has no security value and was meant to harass the population." Another soldier agrees. "The idea is to make life hard for the Palestinian citizenry. There is no operational objective.”
― Saree Makdisi, Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation

“When the occupier attacks you, it considers more equitable and the owner than you.”
― Kamaran Ihsan Salih

“In this sense (although the 2004 Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice would, despite Oslo and subsequent agreements, reaffirm Israel's status as occupying power with all the responsibilities for the occupied population that are specified in the key documents of international humanitarian law), the Oslo agreements were designed in part to relieve Israel of many of the burdens of occupation-- as well as the need to police a restive population on a daily basis.”
― Saree Makdisi, Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation

“The Palestinian leadership failed disastrously by not coming up with an alternative to the U.S.-Israeli position at Camp David and subsequent negotiations through the end of the Clinton presidency. It also failed by not explaining what was wrong with the terms being negotiated at Camp David, and how the whole process, from Oslo on, represented the subordination of international law to Israeli demands.”
― Saree Makdisi, Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation

“Since they had established a household at Riverton, Beatrix had increased the size of her menagerie, and was constantly occupied with animal-related charities and concerns. She had also compiled a report for the newly established natural history society in London. For some reason it had not been at all difficult to convince the group of elderly entomologists, ornithologists, and other naturalists to include a pretty young woman in their midst. Especially when it became clear that Beatrix could talk for hours about migration patterns, plant cycles, and other matters relating to animal habitats and behavior. There was even discussion of Beatrix's joining a board to form a new natural history museum, to provide a lady's perspective on various aspects of the project.”
― Lisa Kleypas, Love in the Afternoon

“Of course, the word machine here is being used in its broadest definition, i.e., as the systematic organization of designs for the transmission of power. And since power can be social as well as mechanical it is important to remember that machines can be institutional in addition to being material. For this reason, we speak of political machines as well as the mechanics of government as comfortably as we discuss how many speakers our stereo contains or how many words per minute we can type. But when the persons who design, implement, and repair these machines, social and mechanical, are thought of as social types, this broader definition of machine often vanishes. Somehow the common usage of the word machine in its many modes does not extend into a consideration of the humans behind the machines. Instead, these persons are sequestered into diverse occupational categories: engineer, economist, radiologist, technician or political scientist. Yet, historically there is a sense in which a segment of this diverse collection of experts attained a uniformity of thought and action sufficient to justify a more unified categorization. And, indeed, it is the intention of this work to demonstrate that there were experts who had in common, from the beginning of the American machine age, the desire to sell society on their expertise by providing plans for systematically organized devices for the transmission of power in production and in politics.”
― Donald Stabile, Prophets of Order: The Rise of the New Class, Technocracy and Socialism in America