Ghetto Inspirational Quotes

My cousin Helen, who is in her 90s now, was in the Warsaw ghetto during World War II. She and a bunch of the girls in the ghetto had to do sewing each day. And if you were found with a book, it was an automatic death penalty. She had gotten hold of a copy of ‘Gone With the Wind’, and she would take three or four hours out of her sleeping time each night to read. And then, during the hour or so when they were sewing the next day, she would tell them all the story. These girls were risking certain death for a story. And when she told me that story herself, it actually made what I do feel more important. Because giving people stories is not a luxury. It’s actually one of the things that you live and die for.

Who is left in the ghetto is the one man in a thousand in any age, in any culture, who through some mysterious workings of force within his soul will stand in defiance against any master. He is that one human in a thousand whose indomitable spirit will not bow. He is the one man in a thousand whose indomitable spirit cannot bow. He is the one man in a thousand who will not walk quietly to Umschlagplatz. Watch out for him, Alfred Funk, we have pushed him to the wall.

Today a great shot for freedom was heard. I think it stands a chance of being heard forever. It marls a turning point in the history of the Jewish people. The beginning of the return to a statues of dignity we have not known for two thousand years. Yes, today was the first step back. My battle is done. Now I turn the command over to the soldiers.

When gangs took over the [abandoned public land in Philadelphia] and the neighborhood took a turn for the worse, horses became a way of saving lives. By getting boys interested in raising a horse rather than killing another human being, these cowboys gave the youth something positive: father figures, focus, and the ability to stand tall.

Walking back across the St-Esprit bridge, to the ghetto I'd instinctively gravitated toward, I mentally erected a more appropriate statue on the square. It would depict an unknown Sephardic Jew, kneeling over a stone tripod covered with crushed cacao beans destined for a cup of chocolate for one of the gentiles of Bayonne. It would be a symbolic piece, executed in smooth, chocolate-hued marble, and dedicated to all the other forgotten heroes--coffee-drinking Sufi dervishes, peyote-eating Native Americans, Mexican hemp-smokers--who, throughout history, have faced the wrath of all the sultans, drug czars, and Vatican clerics who have resorted to any spurious pretext to squelch one of the most venerable and misunderstood of human drives: the desire to escape, however briefly, everyday consciousness.

I don't think the drug dealer in ghetto culture is really admired just because of the shit he owns. He isn't respected for his money, either. Think about it—there are plenty of people with money who aren't respected in ghettos all over the world. No, he's respected because he's capable. For those who feel broken and helpless, there does not exist a more inspiring thing.

The story of Carol's transformation evoked complicated feelings in Rose. It appalled her, of course. The idea of an educated, metropolitan woman voluntarily casting off every vestige of modernity in order to make herself over as a medieval ghetto-dweller was unconscionable - but it also inspired a sneaking envy. By submitting to the restraints of Orthodoxy, Carol had not only performed an impressive act of self-denial - an act guaranteed to appeal to Rosa's ascetic sensibility - but also freed herself from the burden of trying to improvise her own moral code. These days, she always knew what the right thing to do was - or if she didn't, she knew a rabbi who did. Every aspect of her daily life was consonant with her convictions.

I know one thing for sho Heaven’s gotta have a ghetto Cuz where else in death do I get to go?

school showed Geronimus something else. The girls weren’t losing out on higher education, careers, and other opportunities as a result of pregnancy. Those advantages didn’t exist in their communities. Plus, getting pregnant wasn’t necessarily a drag on the young women; many of them were experienced with raising children, having helped care for siblings and other family members. Inspired by the book All Our Kin, the anthropologist Carol B. Stack’s ethnography of three years in a low-income Black community, Geronimus understood that many of the young women lived in a warm embrace of family and community support, or kin, in stark contrast to the popular image of the “ghetto” as deficient and dysfunctional. She started to see that societal barriers, inequality, and lack of choices, not teen pregnancy, were the origin of the socioeconomic problems the Black community was struggling against.

The drama of the unsocialized black has become the commanding motif of American culture. Driven to the wall, threatened with emasculation, surrounded everywhere by formidable women, the black male has summoned from his own body and spirit the masculine testament on which much of American manhood now subsists. Black jazz is the most important serious American music, acknowledged around the world if not in our own universities. Our rock culture finds its musical and rhythmic inspiration and its erotic energy and idiom in the jazz, gospel, dance, and soul performances of blacks. The black stage provides dramatic imagery and acting charisma for both our theaters and our films. Black vernacular pervades our speech. The black athlete increasingly dominates our sports, not only in his performance but in his expressive styles, as even white stars adopt black idioms of talk, handshakes, dress, and manner. From the home-plate celebration to the touchdown romp, American athletes are now dancing to soul music. Black men increasingly star in the American dream. This achievement is an art of the battlefield-exhibiting all that grace under pressure that is the glory of the cornered male. Ordinarily we could marvel and celebrate without any deeper pang of fear. But as the most vital expression of the culture-widely embraced by a whole generation of American youth-this black testament should be taken as a warning. For much of it lacks the signs of that submission to femininity that is the theme of enduring social order. It suggests a bitter failure of male socialization. By its very strength, it bespeaks a broader vulnerability and sexual imbalance. Thus it points to the ghetto as the exemplary crisis of our society.

Preamble The Klassik Era was a cultural and musical revolution that swept through Kenya and East Africa in the early 2010s. It was a time of bold experimentation, fearless expression, and unapologetic individuality that challenged the norms of mainstream music and culture. For the first time, young people from the ghettos and slums of Nairobi, Mombasa, and Kisumu could see themselves represented and celebrated in the music and arts scene, and their voices and stories were given a platform like never before. The Klassik Era was characterized by a fusion of different musical genres and styles, from hip-hop and reggae to dancehall and afro-pop, to create a sound that was uniquely Kenyan and African. It was a time when young artists and producers like Blame It On Don (DON SANTO), Kingpheezle, Jilly Beatz, Tonnie Tosh, Kenny Rush, and many others came together under Klassik Nation, a record label that would change the face of Kenyan music forever. The Klassik Era was also marked by a sense of community and camaraderie, with young people from all walks of life coming together to support each other's art and creativity. It was a time when collaborations and features were the norm, and when artists and producers worked together to create something new and exciting. But the Klassik Era was not without its challenges and controversies. It was a time when the Kenyan music industry was dominated by a few powerful players who controlled the airwaves and the mainstream narrative, and who were resistant to change and innovation. It was a time when artists and producers had to fight tooth and nail to get their music played on the radio and to gain recognition and respect from their peers. Despite these challenges, the Klassik Era left an indelible mark on the Kenyan music industry and on the cultural landscape of Africa. It was a time of creativity, passion, and rebellion that inspired a generation of young people to dream big and to believe that anything was possible. This book is a tribute to that era and to the artists and producers who made it all possible.

I have to hurt other people in order to get what I want, I don’t have a choice but to. In life, you gotta do the right things for the wrong reasons. Or the wrong things for the right reasons.

While the ethnic paganisms have important things to teach us concerning the necessity of cultural authenticity, at their worst they become purist ghettos of nostalgia-driven re-enactors. We must never forget our Received Tradition or fail to learn from it; without it, we have no solid basis by which to evaluate our own experience. But ultimately the ways of our ancestors cannot teach us what we most need to know: how to be honestly pagan for our own time and place. That understand-ing can come only from our own encounter with the very sources that inspired these ethnic traditions in the first place. We must drink from the original wellspring itself." - Steven Posch, "Lost Gods of the Witches: A User’s Guide to Post-Ragnarok Paganism

The economic collapse of inner-city black communities could have inspired a national outpouring of compassion and support. A new War on Poverty could have been launched. Economic stimulus packages could have sailed through Congress to bail out those trapped in jobless ghettos through no fault of their own. Education, job training, public transportation, and relocation assistance could have been provided, so that youth of color would have been able to survive the rough transition to a new global economy and secure jobs in distant suburbs. Constructive interventions would have been good not only for African Americans trapped in ghettos, but also for blue-collar workers of all colors, many of whom were suffering too, if less severely. A wave of compassion and concern could have flooded poor and working-class communities in honor of the late Martin Luther King Jr. All of this could have happened, but it didn’t. Instead our nation declared a War on Drugs.

Saying Yes to Life in Spite of Everything: Viktor Frankl The story of Viktor Frankl (1905–1997), an Austrian psychiatrist and neurologist imprisoned in concentration camps during the Nazi Holocaust of WWII, inspired the world after the war. By 1997, when Frankl died of heart failure, his book Man’s Search for Meaning, which related his experiences in the death camps and the conclusions he drew from them, had sold more than 10 million copies in 24 languages. The book’s original title (translated from the German) reveals Frankl’s amazing outlook on life: Saying Yes to Life in Spite of Everything: A Psychologist Experiences the Concentration Camp. In 1942, Frankl and his wife and parents were sent to the Nazi Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia, which was one of the show camps used to deceive Red Cross inspectors as to the true purpose and conditions of the concentration camps. In October 1944, Frankl and his wife were moved to Auschwitz, where an estimated 1.1 million people would meet their deaths. Later that month, he was transported to one of the Kaufering labor camps (subcamps of Dachau), and then, after contracting typhoid, to the Türkheim camp where he remained until American troops liberated the camp on April 27, 1945. Frankl and his sister, Stella, were the only ones in his immediate family to survive the Holocaust. In Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl observed that a sense of meaning is what makes the difference in being able to survive painful and even horrific experiences. He wrote, “We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms—to choose one’s own attitude in any given set of circumstances—to choose one’s own way.” Frankl maintained that while we cannot avoid suffering in life, we can choose the way we deal with it. We can find meaning in our suffering and proceed with our lives with our purpose renewed. As he states it, “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” In this beautiful elaboration, Frankl wrote, “Between a stimulus and a response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. The last of human freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.

Saying Yes to Life in Spite of Everything: Viktor Frankl The story of Viktor Frankl (1905–1997), an Austrian psychiatrist and neurologist imprisoned in concentration camps during the Nazi Holocaust of WWII, inspired the world after the war. By 1997, when Frankl died of heart failure, his book Man’s Search for Meaning, which related his experiences in the death camps and the conclusions he drew from them, had sold more than 10 million copies in 24 languages. The book’s original title (translated from the German) reveals Frankl’s amazing outlook on life: Saying Yes to Life in Spite of Everything: A Psychologist Experiences the Concentration Camp. In 1942, Frankl and his wife and parents were sent to the Nazi Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia, which was one of the show camps used to deceive Red Cross inspectors as to the true purpose and conditions of the concentration camps. In October 1944, Frankl and his wife were moved to Auschwitz, where an estimated 1.1 million people would meet their deaths. Later that month, he was transported to one of the Kaufering labor camps (subcamps of Dachau), and then, after contracting typhoid, to the Türkheim camp where he remained until American troops liberated the camp on April 27, 1945. Frankl and his sister, Stella, were the only ones in his immediate family to survive the Holocaust. In Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl observed that a sense of meaning is what makes the difference in being able to survive painful and even horrific experiences. He wrote, “We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms—to choose one’s own attitude in any given set of circumstances—to choose one’s own way.” Frankl maintained that while we cannot avoid suffering in life, we can choose the way we deal with it. We can find meaning in our suffering and proceed with our lives with our purpose renewed. As he states it, “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” In this beautiful elaboration, Frankl wrote, “Between a stimulus and a response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. The last of human freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.” 7.2. In recent years, record numbers have visited Auschwitz. The ironic sign above the front gate means “Work sets you free.

Saying Yes to Life in Spite of Everything: Viktor Frankl The story of Viktor Frankl (1905–1997), an Austrian psychiatrist and neurologist imprisoned in concentration camps during the Nazi Holocaust of WWII, inspired the world after the war. By 1997, when Frankl died of heart failure, his book Man’s Search for Meaning, which related his experiences in the death camps and the conclusions he drew from them, had sold more than 10 million copies in 24 languages. The book’s original title (translated from the German) reveals Frankl’s amazing outlook on life: Saying Yes to Life in Spite of Everything: A Psychologist Experiences the Concentration Camp. In 1942, Frankl and his wife and parents were sent to the Nazi Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia, which was one of the show camps used to deceive Red Cross inspectors as to the true purpose and conditions of the concentration camps. In October 1944, Frankl and his wife were moved to Auschwitz, where an estimated 1.1 million people would meet their deaths. Later that month, he was transported to one of the Kaufering labor camps (subcamps of Dachau), and then, after contracting typhoid, to the Türkheim camp where he remained until American troops liberated the camp on April 27, 1945. Frankl and his sister, Stella, were the only ones in his immediate family to survive the Holocaust. In Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl observed that a sense of meaning is what makes the difference in being able to survive painful and even horrific experiences. He wrote, “We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms—to choose one’s own attitude in any given set of circumstances—to choose one’s own way.” Frankl maintained that while we cannot avoid suffering in life, we can choose the way we deal with it. We can find meaning in our suffering and proceed with our lives with our purpose renewed. As he states it, “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” In this beautiful elaboration, Frankl wrote, “Between a stimulus and a response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. The last of human freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.” 7.2. In recent years, record numbers have visited Auschwitz. The ironic sign above the front gate means “Work sets you free.” TRAUMA IS EVERYWHERE It’s not just veterans, crime victims, abused children, and accident survivors who come face-to-face with trauma. About 75% of Americans will experience a traumatic event at some point in their lives. Women are more likely to be victims of domestic violence than they are to get breast cancer.

I moved from one part of the city to another as though turning from an Ashkenazi fable to a Bedouin tale, with equal delight, and I didn't need to be a conscientious objector to distrust policies requiring armed struggle and sermons based on hatred. Gazing upon Jerusalem's sacred structures was enough to persuade me to oppose everything that might injure their enduring grandeur. And still today, beneath its surface holiness, the city is like an odalisque longing for her lover, ready to burst into sensuous joy. It frowns unhappily upon the uproar of its citizens, hoping against hope that enlightenment may come and deliver their minds from their dark torment. By turns Olympus and ghetto, muse and concubine, temple and arena, Jerusalem suffers from an inability to inspire poems without inflaming passions. It's crumbing, heavyhearted, breaking up like its prayers amid the blasphemy of guns....

Why is it, then, that in an 1899 essay Herzl would claim, “What made me a Zionist was the Dreyfus trial”?29 Why did he write in the same essay that the trial had inspired him to write The New Ghetto? After all, Herzl finished the play more than a month before the trial. To

The Star That Doesn't Shine by Maisie Aletha Smikle The cycle of woe Must have no place to grow No place to feed No place to breed No place to multiply Its dysfunctional traits Creating disillusional traitors And occupational deceivers A cycle of woe Creates envious foe This cycle ends when everyone Becomes everyone's foe You were hammered low Now you are the one hammering others low You lived in cave holes projects ghettos and slums Now you want to cave others in holes and cages You want them to behave like slum graduates With slum degrees Ghetto diplomas And cave hole certifications You survived years of lack and hunger Now you are frustrated if others prosper and never lack You had emotional pain and hardship Now you don't rest unless your boat is full of similar survivalists You were inflicted with bitter terror Now you inflict others with unbearable terror You are the lone non-illuminating star of the series A Bitter Cycle of Woe Unwilling to shed your bitter traits of hate You infiltrate bribe and duplicate The gloom of woe Creating foe where ever you go