I retired from professional chess to form a pro-democracy, anti-Putin movement in Russia. As you could see, it didn't go so well. But it was not about winning or losing. I knew it was my moral duty in keeping with the slogan of Soviet dissidents: "Do what you must and so be it." Ah, my friends and critics both kept telling me, "Gary, you are a chess player, you're not a politician. This is not chess. You see everything in black and white. Politics are gray. You have to compromise." Really? Those who peacefully marched with me for free Russia are either in exile, like me. Or in jail, like Alexei Navalny. Or even murdered like Boris Nemtsov. Compromise? Not black and white? Are you sure? Compromise with this?
Garry KasparovRelated topics
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Long gone is the time when we opposed the notion that we all looked alike and talked alike. Somehow we have come to exalt the new black stereotype above all and to demand conformity to that norm. It is this notion - that our race defines us -- that Ralph Ellison so eloquently rebuts in his essay, "The World and the Jug." He sees the lives of black people as more than a burden, but also a discipline, just as any human life which has endured so long is a discipline, teaching its own insights into the human condition, its own strategies of survival. There's a fullness and even a richness here. And here despite the realities of politics, perhaps, but nevertheless here and real because it is human life.
Clarence Thomas
The terms "black box" and "white box" are convenient and figurative expressions of not very well determined usage. I shall understand by a black box a piece of apparatus, such as four-terminal networks with two input and two output terminals, which performs a definite operation on the present and past of the input potential, but for which we do not necessarily have any information of the structure by which this operation is performed. On the other hand, a white box will be similar network in which we have built in the relation between input and output potentials in accordance with a definite structural plan for securing a previously determined input-output relation.
Norbert Wiener
If you have weapons, take them home; if you do not have them, please do not seek to get them. We cannot solve this problem through retaliatory violence. We must meet violence with nonviolence. Remember the words of Jesus: «He who lives by the sword will perish by the sword.» We must love our white brothers, no matter what they do to us. We must make them know that we love them. Jesus still cries out in words that echo across the centuries: «Love your enemies; bless them that curse you; pray for them that despitefully use you.» This is what we must live by. We must meet hate with love. Remember, if I am stopped, this movement will not stop, because God is with the movement. Go home with this glowing faith and this radiant assurance.
Martin Luther King Jr.
The gospel freely admitted makes a man happy. It gives him peace with God, and makes him happy in God. It gives to industry a noble, contented look which selfish drudgery never wore; and from the moment that a man begins to do his work for his Saviour's sake, he feels that the most ordinary employments are full of sweetness and dignity, and that the most difficult are not impossible. And if any of you, my friends, is weary with his work, if dissatisfaction with yourself or sorrow of any kind disheartens you, if at any time you feel the dull paralysis of conscious sin, or the depressing influence of vexing thoughts, look to Jesus, and be happy. Be happy, and your joyful work will prosper well.
William Wilberforce
Do everything simply and meekly. Do nothing with an ulterior motive. Don't say, I'll do this in order to have that result, but do it naturally, without taking cognizance of it. That is, pray simply and don't think about what God will bestow on your soul. Don't make any calculations. You know, of course, what God bestows when you enter into communion with Him, but it is as if you don't know. Don't discuss the matter even with yourself. So when you repeat the prayer, "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me”, say it simply and ingenuously and think of nothing other than the prayer. These are very delicate matters and the intervention of the grace of God is required.
Porphyrios of Kafsokalyvia