Win The Race Quotes

The trouble with being in the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat.

The day you stop racing, is the day you win the race.

The sharpest minds often ruin their lives by overthinking the next step, while the dull win the race with eyes closed.

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.

You don't win races by wishing, you win them by running faster than everyone else does.

I saw then how I had changed. I did not mind anymore that I lost when we raced and I lost when we swam out to the rocks and I lost when we tossed spears or skipped stones. For who can be ashamed to lose to such beauty? It was enough to watch him win, to see the soles of his feet flashing as they kicked up sand, or the rise and fall of his shoulders as he pulled through the salt. It was enough.

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.

...slow and steady wins the race, till truth and talent claim their place.

I stare at him. "You can't risk not winning. Not because of me." Sean doesn't lift his eyes from the counter. "We make our move when you make yours. You on the inside, me on the outside. Corr can come from the middle of the pack; he's done it before. It's one side you won't have to worry about." I say, "I will not be your weakness, Sean Kendrick." Now he looks at me. He says, very softly, "It's late for that, Puck.

Don't ever forget the words on a postcard that my father sent me last year: "If you win the rat race, you're still a rat.

Winning has nothing to do with racing. Most days don't have races anyway. Winning is about struggle and effort and optimism, and never, ever, ever giving up.

Some people like the Jews, and some do not. But no thoughtful man can deny the fact that they are, beyond any question, the most formidable and most remarkable race which has appeared in the world. — Winston S. Churchill

Gravity is our playmate, momentum is our friend. We are blurs of motion. We are racing, and we are both winning, because we do not race each other. We race the world, and as fast as it rotates, as fast as it revolves, we are faster.

Conversations on racism should never be about winning.

You turn up your music to hide the noise. Other people turn up their music to hide yours. You turn up yours again. Everyone buy s a bigger stereo system. This is the arms race of sound. You don't win with a lot of treble.

Your wish, my Qu—”
I press my finger to his lips. “Let us race.”
“You will not win.” Holden grabs my wrist and kisses it.

You're in a horse race but you're thinking like a sheep. Sheep don't win horse races.

Is today the first time you’ve been beaten in an okton?’ ‘Technically, it was a draw,’ said Damen. ‘Technically. I told you I was quite good at riding. I used to beat Auguste all the time when we raced at Chastillon. It took me until I was nine to realise he was letting me win. I just thought I had a very fast pony. You’re smiling.

REMEMBER YOUR GREATNESS Before you were born, And were still too tiny for The human eye to see, You won the race for life From among 250 million competitors. And yet, How fast you have forgotten Your strength, When your very existence Is proof of your greatness. You were born a winner, A warrior, One who defied the odds By surviving the most gruesome Battle of them all. And now that you are a giant, Why do you even doubt victory Against smaller numbers, And wider margins? The only walls that exist, Are those you have placed in your mind. And whatever obstacles you conceive, Exist only because you have forgotten What you have already Achieved. Poetry by Suzy Kassem

The trouble with being in the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat. — Lily Tomlin

The wish of death had been palpably hanging over this otherwise idyllic paradise for a good many years. All business and politics is personal in the Philippines. If it wasn't for the cheap beer and lovely girls one of us would spend an hour in this dump. They [Jehovah's Witnesses] get some kind of frequent flyer points for each person who signs on. I'm not lazy. I'm just motivationally challenged. I'm not fat. I just have lots of stored energy. You don't get it do you? What people think of you matters more than the reality. Marilyn. Despite standing firm at the final hurdle Marilyn was always ready to run the race. After answering the question the woman bent down behind the stand out of sight of all, and crossed herself. It is amazing what you can learn in prison. Merely through casual conversation Rick had acquired the fundamentals of embezzlement, fraud and armed hold up. He wondered at the price of honesty in a grey world whose half tones changed faster than the weather. The banality of truth somehow always surprises the news media before they tart it up. You've ridden jeepneys in peak hour. Where else can you feel up a fourteen-year-old schoolgirl without even trying? [Ralph Winton on the Philippines finer points] Life has no bottom. No matter how bad things are or how far one has sunk things can always get worse. You could call the Oval Office an information rain shadow. In the Philippines, a whole layer of criminals exists who consider that it is their right to rob you unhindered. If you thwart their wicked desires, to their way of thinking you have stolen from them and are evil. There's honest and dishonest corruption in this country. Don't enjoy it too much for it's what we love that usually kills us. The good guys don't always win wars but the winners always make sure that they go down in history as the good guys. The Philippines is like a woman. You love her and hate her at the same time. I never believed in all my born days that ideas of truth and justice were only pretty words to brighten a much darker and more ubiquitous reality. The girl was experiencing the first flushes of love while Rick was at least feeling the methadone equivalent. Although selfishness and greed are more ephemeral than the real values of life their effects on the world often outlive their origins. Miriam's a meteor job. Somewhere out there in space there must be a meteor with her name on it. Tsismis or rumours grow in this land like tropical weeds. Surprises are so common here that nothing is surprising. A crooked leader who can lead is better than a crooked one who can't. Although I always followed the politics of Hitler I emulate the drinking habits of Churchill. It [Australia] is the country that does the least with the most. Rereading the brief lines that told the story in the manner of Fox News reporting the death of a leftist Rick's dark imagination took hold. Didn't your mother ever tell you never to trust a man who doesn't drink? She must have been around twenty years old, was tall for a Filipina and possessed long black hair framing her smooth olive face. This specter of loveliness walked with the assurance of the knowingly beautiful. Her crisp and starched white uniform dazzled in the late-afternoon light and highlighted the natural tan of her skin. Everything about her was in perfect order. In short, she was dressed up like a pox doctor’s clerk. Suddenly, she stopped, turned her head to one side and spat comprehensively into the street. The tiny putrescent puddle contrasted strongly with the studied aplomb of its all-too-recent owner, suggesting all manner of disease and decay.

You do not enter a race to lose

The spirited horse, which will try to win the race of its own accord, will run even faster if encouraged.

...tell me the word that will win you, and I will speak it. I will speak the stars of heaven into a crown for your head; I will speak the flowers of the field into a cloak; I will speak the racing stream into a melody for your ears and the voices of a thousand larks to sing it; I will speak the softness of night for your bed and the warmth of summer for your coverlet; I will speak the brightness of flame to light your way and the luster of gold to shine in your smile; I will speak until the hardness in you melts away and your heart is free...

There was a story going around about the Special Olympics. For the hundred-yard dash, there were nine contestants, all of them so-called physically or mentally disabled. All nine of them assembled at the starting line and, at the sound of the gun, they took off. But one little boy didn't get very far. He stumbled and fell and hurt his knee and began to cry. The other eight children heard the boy crying. They slowed down, turned around, and ran back to him--every one of them ran back to him. The little boy got up, and he and the rest of the runners linked their arms together and joyfully walked to the finish line. They all finished the race at the same time. And when they did, everyone in the stadium stood up and clapped and whistled and cheered for a long, long time. And you know why? Because deep down we know that what matters in this life is more than winning for ourselves. What really matters is helping others win, too, even if it means slowing down and changing our course now and then.

You were born a winner, a warrior, one who defied the odds by surviving the most gruesome battle of them all - the race to the egg. And now that you are a giant, why do you even doubt victory against smaller numbers and wider margins? The only walls that exist are those you have placed in your mind. And whatever obstacles you conceive, exist only because you have forgotten what you have already achieved.

Corr stood here," Sean says wonderingly. "I would've died. He didn't have to stay." For a moment, I see that it doesn't matter that he didn't win. The fact of Corr's loyalty is a bigger thing than the ownership of him.

Boy bands, fan fiction, soap operas, reality TV, most shows and movies with female main characters . . . We’re still so rarely front and center, even rarer when you consider race and sexuality, and then when we do get something that’s just for us, we’re made to feel bad for liking it. We can’t win.

I am made for running. Because when you run, you could be anyone. You hone yourself into a body, nothing more or less than a body. You respond as a body, to the body. If you are racing to win, you have no thoughts but the body's thoughts, no goals but the body's goals. You obliterate yourself in the name of speed. You negate yourself in order to make it past the finish line.

Racing is about discipline and intelligence, not about who has the heavier foot. The one who drives smart will always win in the end.

Letting your customers set your standards is a dangerous game, because the race to the bottom is pretty easy to win. Setting your own standards--and living up to them--is a better way to profit. Not to mention a better way to make your day worth all the effort you put into it." -

Human groupings have one main purpose: to assert everyone’s right to be different, to be special, to think, feel and live in his or her own way. People join together in order to win or defend this right. But this is where a terrible, fateful error is born: the belief that these groupings in the name of a race, a God, a party or a State are the very purpose of life and not simply a means to an end. No! The only true and lasting meaning of the struggle for life lies in the individual, in his modest peculiarities and in his right to these peculiarities.

Sometimes, she knew, the most important battles for dignity, pride, and progress were fought with the simplest of actions.

If you feel too much, there’s still a place for you here. If you feel too much, don’t go. It this world is too painful, stop and rest. It’s okay to stop and rest. If you need a break, it’s okay to say you need a break. This life –it’s not a contest, not a race, not a performance, not a thing that you win. It’s okay to slow down. You are here for more than grades, more than a job, more than a promotion, more than keeping up, more than getting by.This life is not about status or opinion or appearance. You don’t have to fake it. You do not have to fake it. Other people feel this way too. If your heart is broken, it’s okay to say your heart is broken. If you feel stuck, it’s okay to say you feel stuck. If you can’t let go, it’s okay to say you can’t let go.You are not alone in these places. Other people feel how you feel. You are more than just your pain. You are more than wounds, more than drugs, more than death and silence.There is still some time to be surprised. There is still some time to ask for help. There is still some time to start again. There is still some time for love to find you. It’s not too late. You’re not alone. It’s okay –whatever you need and however long it takes- its okay. It’s okay. If you feel too much, there’s still a place for you here. If you feel too much, don’t go. There is still some time.

Perfection of effort is not required, by the way. It is the consistency of attempting to work these tools that brings the progress. It’s like anything else. If I want to tone muscle, lifting a ten-pound weight a few times every day will move me toward my goal much quicker than hoisting a fifty-pound barbell once a week. Yes, it really is true: “Slow and steady wins the race.” Just try a little, every day. You’ll see.

I used to beat Auguste all the time when we raced at Chastillon. It took me until I was nine to realise he was letting me win. I just thought I had a very fast pony.

You either commit yourself as a professional racing driver that's designed to win races or you come second or you come third or fifth and am not design to come third, fourth or fifth, I race to win.

The only thing is, the more I see him and Corr together, the more I think of how unbearable it would be for Sean to lose him. But we can't both win.

Childhood is a race to find out who you really are, before you become the person you are going to be. Not everybody wins.

People run away from the love game because they know they won't win the race.

It's a bad job," he said, when I had done; "but the sun sets every day, and people die every minute, and we mustn't be scared by the common lot. If we failed to hold our own, because that equal foot at all men's doors was heard knocking somewhere, every object in this world would slip from us. No! Ride on! Rough-shod if need be, smooth-shod if that will do, but ride on! Ride on over all obstacles, and win the race!

It’s not winning the race that’s important. It’s this moment right here, when I’m lying in the mud staring up at the dark sky with rain falling in my eyes. It’s facing the pain, facing failure, facing myself, and finding a way to make it to the end.

Look, the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful; it is that they are unconscious. They are default-settings. They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing. And the world will not discourage you from operating on your default-settings, because the world of men and money and power hums along quite nicely on the fuel of fear and contempt and frustration and craving and the worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom to be lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default-setting, the “rat race” — the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing.

The fastest runners don't always win the race and the greatest heroes don't always win the battles. But just keep running and fighting if that's all you can do. Never lose faith. And one day, you just might attain all that you hoped for and... more.

...the real purpose of running isn’t to win a race. It’s to test the limits of the human heart.

Slow and steady wins the race.

Slow but steady wins the race.

IP filing is a race. The first person to file and get accepted wins and can shut you down, even if the idea was yours in the first place. Waiting too long means you don’t get a patent. Too many companies do just that.

It is impossible to win the race unless you venture to run, impossible to win the victory unless you dare to battle.

I don’t want to tame her; I just want a front-row seat to watch her win the race.

I'm just going to go out there and try to win the race. When you go out there trying to go for a record, you're usually not going to get it.

what we consider to be the most successful route for us to take, actually isn’t. Because too often our view of success is about some external bullshit idea of achievement – an Olympic medal, the ideal husband, a good salary. And we have all these metrics that we try and reach. When really success isn’t something you measure, and life isn’t a race you can win. It’s all . . . bollocks, actually . . .

Slow and steady wins the race." "That is almost always untrue." "Take it up with Aesop." "Aesop never existed. The stories credited to him were the work of two female slaves." "That sounds about typical. I'll ponder it on the way down.

Quick and dirty wins the race. Perfection is the enemy of done. Good enough is really effin’ good.

Christian life isn’t a one-person race. It’s a relay. You are not alone; you’re part of a team assembled by our unstoppable God to achieve his eternal purposes.

You can win the rat race but you're still a rat. The human race is an unfair and stupid competition. A lot of the runners don't even get decent sneakers or clean drinking water. Some runners are born with a massive head start, every possible help along the way and still the referees seem to be on their side. It's not surprising a lot of people have given up competing altogether and gone to sit in the grandstand, eat junk food and shout abuse. What we need in this race is a lot more streakers.

As an outsider, what do you think of the human race?

Every day you amass knowledge in a frantic race against death that death must win. You want to find out everything in the time you have; yet in the end you wonder why you bothered, it'll all be lost. I keep trying to explain this to anyone who will listen.

I became known as Lily Casey, the mustang-breaking, poker-playing, horse-race-winning schoolmarm of Coconino County, and it wasn't half bad to be in place where no one had a problem with a woman having a moniker like that.

We have got some very big problems confronting us and let us not make any mistake about it, human history in the future is fraught with tragedy ... It's only through people making a stand against that tragedy and being doggedly optimistic that we are going to win through. If you look at the plight of the human race it could well tip you into despair, so you have to be very strong.

Pain? Yes, of course. Racing without pain is not racing. But the pleasure of being ahead outweighed the pain a million times over. To hell with the pain. What's six minutes of pain compared to the pain they're going to feel for the next six months or six decades. You never forget your wins and losses in this sport. YOU NEVER FORGET.

Immediately after the race, even as he sat gasping for air in the Husky Clipper while it drifted down the Langer See beyond the finish line, an expansive sense of calm had enveloped him. In the last desperate few hundred meters of the race, in the searing pain and bewildering noise of that final furious sprint, there had come a singular moment when Joe realized with startling clarity that there was nothing more he could do to win the race, beyond what he was already doing. Except for one thing. He could finally abandon all doubt, trust absolutely without reservation that he and the boy in front of him and the boys behind him would all do precisely what they needed to do at precisely the instant they needed to do it. He had known in that instant that there could be no hesitation, no shred of indecision. He had had no choice but to throw himself into each stroke as if he were throwing himself off of a cliff into a void, with unquestioned faith that the others would be there to save him

They’re Americans when they win races, and when they get conscripted into the army,’ Dave said. ‘But they’re Negroes when they want to buy the house next door to yours.

I like the race, rather than the winning. Do you really? Yes, I've imagined great victories, and I've imagined great races. The races are better.

That England, a country not properly invaded since 1066 but which has invaded almost every nation on the planet, can have a party named the UK Independence Party win 13 per cent of the national vote in 2015 speaks volumes about collective amnesia and ability to distort the facts.

Whenever we doubt our own ability to achieve, it is worthwile pondering the obstacles that others have overcome. To name a few... *Napoleon overcame his considerable handicap, his tiny stature, to lead his conquering armies across Europe. *Abraham Lincon failed in business aged 31, lost a legislative race and 32, again failed in business at 34, had his sweetheart die when he was 35, had a nervous breakdown at 36, lost congressional races aged 43, 46 and 48, lost a senatorial race at 55, failed in his efforts to become vice president of the U.S.A aged 56 and lost a further senatorial contest at 58. At 60 years of age he was elected president of the U.S.A and is now remembered as one of the great leaders in world history. *Winston Churchill was a poor student with a speech impediment. Not only did he win a Nobel Prize at 24, but he became one of the most inspiring speakers of recent times. It is not where you start that counts, but where you choose to finish.

Where will you and Corr be?" I ask. Sean presses two fingers along the edge of the counter sweeping crumbs into a pile. I notice that his fingers are permanently dirt-stained like mine. He says," Right next to you and Dove." I stare at him. "You can't risk not winning. Not because of me." Sean doesn't lift his eye from the counter. "We make our move when you make yours. You on the inside, me on the outside. Corr can come from the middle of the pack; he's done it before. It's one side you don't have to worry about.

Think of horse races. People like to bet on the one with three legs and a wheeze.They don't bet on that one because they think it will win, but because they can see how very glorious it would be if it were to win

I discovered when I went all out, when I put 100 percent of my energy into some intense, impossible task - when my heart was jack-hammering, when lactic acid was sizzling through my muscles - that's when I felt good, normal, balanced.

There are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the 'rat race' - the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing.

It is never wise to run any race but your own.

We have made our mark on the world, but we have really done nothing that the trees and creeping plants, ice and erosion, cannot remove in a fairly short time.

Even when you win the rat race , you're still a rat .

To win the rat race, you have to think and behave like a cat.

Does anyone win the race of life, or do we all get participation trophies?

My friend Kira always said that life is like an extremely difficult, horribly unbalanced videogame. When you’re born, you’re given a randomly generated character, with a randomly determined name, race, face, and social class. Your body is your avatar, and you spawn in a random geographic location, at a random moment in human history, surrounded by a random group of people, and then you have to try to survive for as long as you can. Sometimes the game might seem easy. Even fun. Other times it might be so difficult you want to give up and quit. But unfortunately, in this game you only get one life. When your body grows too hungry or thirsty or ill or injured or old, your health meter runs out and then it’s Game Over. Some people play the game for a hundred years without ever figuring out that it’s a game, or that there is a way to win it. To win the videogame of life you just have to try to make the experience of being forced to play it as pleasant as possible, for yourself, and for all of the other players you encounter in your travels. Kira says that if everyone played the game to win, it’d be a lot more fun for everyone. —Anorak’s Almanac, chapter 77, verses 11–20

Fact One: Races are won or lost in key moments. Fact Two: Success in the sport is, above all else, about enduring suffering.

Trans campaigners intent on arguing that trans is hardware can only win their argument if they persuade people that being a woman is a matter of software. And not all feminists are willing to concede that one.

Next, the secretary advised me to take a seat while she notified the headmaster of my arrival. During those dreadful moments I did everything I could to remain calm. Nervously, I kept patting my foot to the floor and heard each and every tap. Suddenly, shouts of extreme havoc rung out just like the other times! “Oh God no! Jesus, please help me Lawd! I got you, Sir, I got you,” were screams filling the airwaves. The door opened and a battered female raced rightpast me with her hands covering her face. She kept mumbling phrases that shouldn’t be repeated by innocent lips. I couldn’t believe those disgusting words coming out of her baby-sized mouth. Then damn, another nightmare was possibly moments away. I needed an out and fast. Fearing for my life, I formulated my plan of action. Right before Principal Shellshock steadies his paddle, I was going to blow out all the gas I reserved in my little butt. I was never a fan of the fart game, but I was scheming like a veteran. That’s all I had, and it was my “A game.” My intentions were to rip a good hard one that opens my belt, ruffles my pants, and sends my new shoes flyingacross the room. Then all options would be left to the principal. He could chance tearing into me and losing a lung or take cover and let me go. Punishing me will become a hazard to his health. For the moment, I felt really good about that notion. I didn’t have much else to cling to, but I was dangerously packing breakfast from Aunt Kathy. Yes, I was sure my stink bomb defense would win that day. According to past reports, I would be the first and only kid at Mitchell Memorial to get on the scoreboard against the headmaster. Make that, Hal “1” and Principal Shell Shock “0.

I don’t want an end point to my sorrow. The death of a child is not a heat wave or a snowstorm, nor an obstacle race to rush through and win, nor an acute or chronic illness to recover from. What is grief but a word, a shortcut, a simplification of something much larger than that word?

The Hell of Regret He who wins the race cannot run with the pack. And once you get out you can’t come back, because caged lions don’t mate with free ones! If ever you are going to win, you must forsake the social construct of the cage and all the cage dwellers.

Virginia, a state with one of the highest concentrations of scientific talent in the world, led the nation in denying education to its youth.

If you meet the darkest moment of life, strive valiantly through it with courage and never retreat, for you shall surely meet light afterwards. If you meet the muddy stream of life, swim across it with tenacity to the very end for there is a clearer stream that shall wash your dirt away afterwards. If all people reject you in the mid of the arduous race of life, dare to smile and move on for there are people who await you to embrace you in the end

Even as a professional in an integrated world, I had been the only black woman in enough drawing rooms and boardrooms to have an inkling of the chutzpah it took for an African American woman in a segregated southern workplace to tell her bosses she was sure her calculations would put a man on the Moon.

Let me note, finally, that most of the research for this book was done in the libraries of Harvard University, the size of whose holdings is matched only by the school's determination to restrict access to them. I am delighted to have been able to use these resources, and it hardly matters that I was afforded this privilege only because the school thought I was someone else.

It's like the Negro in America seeing the white man win all the time. He's a professional gambler; he has all the cards and the odds stacked on his side, and he has always dealt to our people from the bottom of the deck.

I think it is just terrible and disgusting how everyone has treated Lance Armstrong, especially after what he achieved, winning seven Tour de France races while on drugs. When I was on drugs, I couldn’t even find my bike.

I have only one thing I hope to convey to you today. We are all human beings, individuals transcending nationality and race and religion, fragile eggs faced with a solid wall called The System. To all appearances, we have no hope of winning. The wall is too high, too strong - and too cold. If we have any hope of victory at all, it will have to come from our believing in the utter uniqueness and irreplaceability of our own and others' souls and from the warmth we gain by joining souls together. Take a moment to think about this. Each of us possesses a tangible, living soul. The System has no such thing. We must not allow The System to exploit us. We must not allow The System to take on a life of its own. The System did not make us: We made The System.

I saw many people who begun their marathon races lately, but they eventually came up as top winners. I believe that your "lateness" does not account for your "lastness". It's not too late for you to make a start... Begin it now! No further delays!

The minute we look away, the minute we stop fighting back, that's the minute bigotry wins.

However, if you fail to prepare, you will either go through stress to win your race or you may quit when the battle becomes tougher than you ever imagined.

God has plucked you out of eternity, positioned you in time, and given you gifts and talents to serve him in this generation. Your race is now. This is your time in history.

You must really want to win with all of your heart! Plan your race; do not ever get side tracked. Focus on your goal - “the finishing line”!

Slow and steady wins the race, not the person who wants to climb the whole stairs in one stride.

each of us should be allowed to rise as far as our talent and hard work can take us. The

Education topped her list of ideals; it was the surest hedge against a world that would require more of her children than white children, and attempt to give them less in return.

The race bullies win by relying on racial guilt. But collective racial guilt can only separate Americans. We are individuals, not homogenous members of racial subsets. Only when we learn to cherish the words of Martin Luther King, judging people as individuals, will we truly have the guts to stand up to the race bullies. After all, to paraphrase a man who once stood for unification rather than division, we're not black America or white America. We're the United States of America. We're brothers and sisters. If we don't begin to recognize that simple truth -- and recognize the inherent goodness of America, and our ability to look beyond skin color and ethnic heritage -- the race bullies will continue to tear American down for their own political gain, brick by brick.

Lisa Smith-Batchen, the amazingly sunny and pixie-tailed ultrarunner from Idaho who trained through blizzards to win a six-day race in the Sahara, talks about exhaustion as if it's a playful pet. 'I love the Beast,' she says. 'I actually look forward to the Beast showing up, because every time he does, I handle him better. I get him more under control.' Once the Beast arrives, Lisa knows what she has to deal with and can get down to work. And isn't that the reason she's running through the desert in the first place-to put her training to work? To have a friendly little tussle with the Beast and show it who's boss? You can't hate the Beast and expect to beat it; the only way to truly conquer something, as every great philosopher and geneticist will tell you , is to love it.

Desire is the key to motivation, but it's determination and commitment to an unrelenting pursuit of your goal--a commitment to excellence--that will enable you to attain the success you seek. --Mario Andretti

My Angel, My greatest hope is that you never have to read this. Vee knows to give you this letter only if my feather is burned and I’m chained in hell or if Blakely develops a devilcraft prototype strong enough to kill me. When war between our races ignites, I don’t know what will become of our future. When I think about you and our plans. I feel a desperate aching. Never have I wanted things to turn out right as as I do now. Before I leave this world, I need to make certain you know that all my love belongs to you. You are the same to me now as you were before you swore the Changeover Vow. You are mine. Always. I love the strength, courage, and gentleness of your soul. I love your body too. How could someone so sexy and perfect be mine? With you I have purpose-someone to love, cherish and protect. There are secrets in my past that weigh on your mind. You've trusted me enough not to ask about them, and it's your faith that has made me a better man. I don’t want to leave you with anything hidden between us. I told you I was banished from heaven for falling in love with a human girl. The I way I explained it, I risked everything to be with her. I said those words because they simplified my motivations. But they weren't the truth. The truth is I had become disenchanted with the archangels’s shifting goals and wanted to push back against them and their rules. That girl was an excuse to let go of an old way of living and accept a new journey that would eventually lead me to you. I believe in destiny, Angel. I believe every choice I've made has brought me closer to you. I looked for you for a very long time. I may have fallen from heaven but I fell for you. I will do whatever it takes to make sure you win this war. Nephilim will come out on top. You’ll fulfill your vow to the Black Hand and be safe. This is my priority even if the cost is my life. I suspect this will make you angry. It may be hard to forgive me. I promised that we would be together at the end of this and you may resent me for the breaking that vow. I want you to know I did everything to keep my word. As I write this I am going over ever possibility that will see us through this. I hope I find a way. But if this choice I have to make comes down to your or me, I choose you. I always have. All my love, Patch

But before a computer became an inanimate object, and before Mission Control landed in Houston; before Sputnik changed the course of history, and before the NACA became NASA; before the Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka established that separate was in fact not equal, and before the poetry of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech rang out over the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Langley’s West Computers were helping America dominate aeronautics, space research, and computer technology, carving out a place for themselves as female mathematicians who were also black, black mathematicians who were also female.

You know, you spend your childhood watching TV, assuming that at some point in the future everything you see will one day happen to you: that you too will win a Formula One race, hop a train, foil a group of terrorists, tell someone 'Give me the gun', etc. Then you start secondary school, and suddenly everyone's asking you about your career plans and your long-term goals, and by goals they don't mean the kind you are planning to score in the FA Cup. Gradually the awful truth dawns on you: that Santa Claus was just the tip of the iceberg - that your future will not be the rollercoaster ride you'd imagined,that the world occupied by your parents, the world of washing dishes, going to the dentist, weekend trips to the DIY superstore to buy floor-tiles, is actually largely what people mean when they speak of 'life'.

When others seem to take advantage of you, do not retaliate by trying to take advantage of them. Use your power in improving yourself, so that you can do better and better work. That is how you are going to win in the race. Later on, those who tried to take advantage of you will be left in the rear. Remember, those who are dealing unjustly with you or with anybody are misusing their mind. They are therefore losing their power, and will, in the course of time, begin to lose ground; but if you, in the mean time, are turning the full power of your mind to good account, you will not only gain more power, but you will soon begin to gain ground. You will gain and continue to gain in the long run, while others who have been misusing their minds will lose mostly everything in the long run. That is how you are going to win, and win splendidly regardless of ill treatment or opposition.

It´s a race, then. May the best Antari win.

Time tells you what you didn’t accomplish. Focus turns off the clock and directs all your energy to the result.

Race implies someone will win,

I feel like people around me are betters voting on the wrong horse in the race. I am that horse, always failing to make others win.

justice is something for which every generation has to strive.

Running away from someone you love is a race you will never win.

In the race of life, some win and some loose those who win think they are busy and those who loose remain free.

Time does not heal, but it can liberate. A race run well can never be lost.

It’s the steady, quiet, plodding ones who win in the lifelong race.

When really success isn’t something you measure, and life isn’t a race you can win. It’s all . . . bollocks, actually . . .

I begin to realize that the physical repetition can be a kind of meditation that transcends the simple goal of winning a race.

In the Christian race of life, we are not running to win - we have already won. We are just running to finish. Jesus has already finished the race, and He is standing on the other side.

I was proud of the way I was, but sometimes being bisexual was like running a race with your ankles tied together. If you dated a guy, people said you were really straight. If you were with a girl, you were actually gay. There was no winning. It only made telling people harder.

Restaurants that refused to serve Dorothy Vaughan had no problem waiting on Germans from the prisoner-of-war camp housed in a detention facility under the James River Bridge in Newport News.

Putting down the power right from the whistle would be ugly and brutal, but it would get the job done. He wanted to tell her that, but this was the thing with coaching: you had to step back at exactly the moment you ached to step forward.

Ask yourself: Am I trying to be right, or am I trying to do better? Conversations about racism should never be about winning. This battle is too important to be so simplified. You are in this to share, and to learn. You are in this to do better and be better. You are not trying to score points, and victory will rarely look like your opponent conceding defeat and vowing to never argue with you again. Because your opponent isn’t a person, it’s the system of racism that often shows up in the words and actions of other people.

Wolves did not keep secrets from one another. They didn’t worry about having enough money or finishing school or winning races . They didn’t interfere with nature and have to figure out what was too much and what was enough. They were nature.

t’s not winning the race that’s important. It’s this moment right here, when I’m lying in the mud staring up at the dark sky with rain falling in my eyes. It’s facing the pain, facing failure, facing myself, and finding a way to make it to the end.

And in "Elbow Room" the cast sings the glories of westward expansion in the United States, which involved the murder of native peoples and the violent conquest of half of Mexico. Among the lines in the song is one that intones, "There were plenty of fights / To win land right / But the West was meant to be / It was our Manifest Destiny?" Let it suffice to say that happily belting out a tune in which one merrily praises genocide is always easier for those whose ancestors weren't on the receiving end of the deal.

For strength of character in the race as in the individual consists mainly in the power of sacrificing the present for the future, of disregarding the immediate temptations of ephemeral pleasure for more distant and lasting sources of satisfaction. The more the power is exercised the higher and stronger becomes the character; till the height of heroism is reached in men who renounce the pleasures of life and even life itself for the sake of winning for others, perhaps in distant ages, the blessings of freedom and truth.

It’s Fortune,” he said. “I was given the hardest consulship a man has ever had. Just as I was given the hardest life a man has ever had. I’m not the kind to surrender, and I’m not the kind to care how I win. There are plenty of eggs in the cups and plenty of dolphins down. But the race won’t be over until I’m dead.

Women are another race. They are always changing, like the moon. You can only win by being the cool center of their being. You have to represent something solid and loving. The anchor. Even if you are not. You can't tell them the truth. You have to lie and play games. I’ve never in my entire life been with someone with whom I didn’t have to play a game. I've never been with anyone with whom I could be exactly who I am.

Musa Okwonga, the poet, journalist and essayist whose powerful ‘The Ungrateful Country’ closes the book, once said to me that the biggest burden facing people of colour in this country is that society deems us bad immigrants – job-stealers, benefit-scroungers, girlfriend-thieves, refugees – until we cross over in their consciousness, through popular culture, winning races, baking good cakes, being conscientious doctors, to become good immigrants. And we are so tired of that burden." (from "The Good Immigrant" by Nikesh Shukla)

We can control the future, my boy, just as we wind up the mechanism in a clock. Say to yourself: I will win that race--I will come first--and you wind up the future like clockwork. The world has no choice but to obey! Can the hands of that old clock in the corner decide to stop? Can the spring in your watch decide to wind itself up and run backward? No! They have no choice. And nor has the future, once you have wound it up.

But I knew I wanted to be with him, and he wanted to be with me, too, and also knew what he wanted to do with his life. So, we compromised. He took the job in Des Moines, and it was my responsibility to get a job that would make enough money for what we needed, and that I enjoyed enough. I didn’t have to love it, but it didn’t matter whether I did, either, because I had him. I kept trying new things, too, and eventually discovered pottery. It’s fun, of course, but the most important part is that I didn’t feel like my job had to be my everything.” This is what I have to keep reminding myself. Sometimes a job can just be a job. We aren’t all going to win the rat race. “I know.

But simple luck is the random birthright of the hapless. When seasoned by the subtleties of accident, harmony, favor, wisdom, and inevitability, luck takes on the cast of serendipity. Serendipity happens when a well-trained mind looking for one thing encounters something else: the unexpected. It comes from being in a position to seize opportunity from the happy marriage of time, place, and chance.

I am confident that someday in the future The Rock, who was once a professional wrestler, will run for president of the United States, and I think that he will win. I have seen with my own eyes the power of The Rock. The Rock is a uniter, not a divider. When the BOP showed Walking Tall, the turnout for every screening all weekend long was unprecedented. The Rock has an effect on women that transcends divisions of race, age, cultural background - even social class, the most impenetrable barrier in America. Black, white, Spanish, old, young, all women are hot for The Rock. Even the lesbians agreed that he was mighty easy on the eyes.

It wasn’t just the rowing but his crewmates that he had to give himself up to, even if it meant getting his feelings hurt. Pocock paused and looked up at Joe. “If you don’t like some fellow in the boat, Joe, you have to learn to like him. It has to matter to you whether he wins the race, not just whether you do.

The Story of the Rabbit and the Eggplant Once there was a race between a rabbit and an eggplant. Now, the eggplant, as you know, is a member of the vegetable kingdom, and the rabbit is a very fast animal. Everybody bet lots of money on the eggplant, thinking that if a vegetable challenges a live animal with four legs to a race, then it must be that the vegetable knows something. People expected the eggplant to win the race by some clever trick of philosophy. The race was started, and there was a lot of cheering. The rabbit streaked out of sight. The eggplant just sat there at the starting line. Everybody knew that in some surprising way the eggplant would wind up winning the race. Nothing of the sort happened. Eventually, the rabbit crossed the finish line and the eggplant hadn’t moved an inch. The spectators ate the eggplant. Moral: Never bet on an eggplant.

Nothing so difficult as a beginning In poesy, unless perhaps the end; For oftentimes when Pegasus seems winning The race, he sprains a wing, and down we tend, Like Lucifer when hurled from Heaven for sinning; Our sin the same, and hard as his to mend, Being Pride, which leads the mind to soar too far, Till our own weakness shows us what we are. But Time, which brings all beings to their level, And sharp Adversity, will teach at last Man,—and, as we would hope,—perhaps the Devil, That neither of their intellects are vast: While Youth's hot wishes in our red veins revel, We know not this—the blood flows on too fast; But as the torrent widens towards the Ocean, We ponder deeply on each past emotion.

I am all for churches being a part of the nonviolent marches and protests that have happened in the wake of violent killings, but these protests happen only after a tragic event has taken place. I want the church to be what prevents these acts from ever happening. I want the church to be the community that is so dedicated to loving our neighbors, to caring for the poor and neglected, and to living out true reconciliation that these killings do not even take place.

As children, we were given a choice between the talented but erratic hare and the plodding but steady tortoise. The lesson was supposed to be that slow and steady wins the race. But, really, did any of us ever want to be the tortoise? No, we just wanted to be a less foolish hare. We wanted to be swift as the wind and a bit more strategic—say, not taking quite so many snoozes before the finish line. After all, everyone knows you have to show up in order to win. The story of the tortoise and the hare, in trying to put forward the power of effort, gave effort a bad name. It reinforced the image that effort is for the plodders and suggested that in rare instances, when talented people dropped the ball, the plodder could sneak through.

There are few things we encounter in daily life that are more unlikely than winning the lottery. A person is more likely to have identical quadruplets, or be killed by a vending machine tipping over. It’s over a hundred times more likely that a person will be struck by lightning than win the lottery. Yet millions of people buy tickets.

Slowly, inch by inch, I felt myself recovering. After a few weeks, the darkness began to recede; my appetite for life returned. Haven was wonderful; she understood and nursed me through these weeks until I felt strong enough to go out in public, to get on my bike again.

You have to be a bit of a dreamer to imagine a world where love trumps hate--but I don't think being a dreamer is all that bad. Joel prophesied that God would "pour out [His] Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions" (Joel 2:28). I'm an old man, and this is one of my dreams: that my descendants will one day live in a land where people are quick to confess their wrongdoing and forgive the wrongdoing of others and are eager to build something beautiful together.

I was in Washington State, at a small-town YMCA, when a boy wandered into the lap lane and popped his head, seal-like, out of the water. I would later learn that he was nine, but at the time he was just this kid, slightly pudgy, with a stern haircut. It's like he went to a barbershop with a picture of Hitler, that's how severe it was. We got to talking, and when I told him I wasn't a very good swimmer, he challenged me to a race. I think he assumed that, like most adults, I'd slow down and intentionally let him win, but he didn't know who he was dealing with. I need all the confidence I can get, and one victory is just as good as any other. Thus I swam for my very life and beat the pants off him. I thought this was it - he'd accept his defeat and move on with his life - but five minutes later he stopped me again and asked me if I believed in God. "No," I told him. "Why?" I thought for a second. Because I have hair on my back, and a lot of other people, people who kill and rob and make life miserable, don't. A real God wouldn't let that happen.

Where will you and Corr be?" I ask. Sean presses two fingers along the edge of the counter, sweeping crumbs into a pile. I notice that his fingers are permanently dirt-stained like mine. He says, "Right next to you and Dove." I stare at him. "You can't risk not winning. Not because of me." Sean doesn't life his eyes from the counter. "We make our move when you make yours. You on the inside, me on the outside. Corr can come from the middle of the pack; he's done it before. It's one side you won't have to worry about." I say, "I will not be your weakness, Sean Kendrick." Now he looks at me. He says, very softly, "It's late for that Puck.

Lee’s hand shook as he filled the delicate cups. He drank his down in one gulp. “Don’t you see?” he cried. “The American Standard translation orders men to triumph over sin, and you can call sin ignorance. The King James translation makes a promise in ‘Thou shalt,’ meaning that men will surely triumph over sin. But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’—that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.’ Don’t you see?” “Yes, I see. I do see. But you do not believe this is divine law. Why do you feel its importance?” “Ah!” said Lee. “I’ve wanted to tell you this for a long time. I even anticipated your questions and I am well prepared. Any writing which has influenced the thinking and the lives of innumerable people is important. Now, there are many millions in their sects and churches who feel the order, ‘Do thou,’ and throw their weight into obedience. And there are millions more who feel predestination in ‘Thou shalt.’ Nothing they may do can interfere with what will be. But “Thou mayest’! Why, that makes a man great, that gives him stature with the gods, for in his weakness and his filth and his murder of his brother he has still the great choice. He can choose his course and fight it through and win.” Lee’s voice was a chant of triumph. Adam said, “Do you believe that, Lee?” “Yes, I do. Yes, I do. It is easy out of laziness, out of weakness, to throw oneself into the lap of deity, saying, ‘I couldn’t help it; the way was set.’ But think of the glory of the choice! That makes a man a man. A cat has no choice, a bee must make honey. There’s no godliness there. And do you know, those old gentlemen who were sliding gently down to death are too interested to die now?” Adam said, “Do you mean these Chinese men believe the Old Testament?” Lee said, “These old men believe a true story, and they know a true story when they hear it. They are critics of truth. They know that these sixteen verses are a history of humankind in any age or culture or race. They do not believe a man writes fifteen and three-quarter verses of truth and tells a lie with one verb. Confucius tells men how they should live to have good and successful lives. But this—this is a ladder to climb to the stars.” Lee’s eyes shone. “You can never lose that. It cuts the feet from under weakness and cowardliness and laziness.” Adam said, “I don’t see how you could cook and raise the boys and take care of me and still do all this.” “Neither do I,” said Lee. “But I take my two pipes in the afternoon, no more and no less, like the elders. And I feel that I am a man. And I feel that a man is a very important thing—maybe more important than a star. This is not theology. I have no bent toward gods. But I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. It is always attacked and never destroyed—because ‘Thou mayest.

When a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law, men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims, then money becomes its creators' avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.

Our weaponry was not dropped onto our laps one morning. It is not manna from Sinai’s skies. Since Agincourt, the White man has refined & evolved the gunpowder sciences until our modern armies may field muskets by the tens of thousands! Aha!’ you will ask, yes, ‘But why us Aryans? Why not the Unipeds of Ur or the Mandrakes of Mauritius?’ Because, Preacher, of all the world’s races, our love—or rather our rapacity—for treasure, gold, spices & dominion, oh, most of all, sweet dominion, is the keenest, the hungriest, the most unscrupulous! This rapacity yes, powers our Progress; for ends infernal or divine I know not. Nor do you know, sir. Nor do I overly care. I feel only gratitude that my Maker cast me on the winning side.

God has always wanted the vulnerable in society to be cared for. He never intended for them to languish in poverty, abuse, slavery, homelessness, or other types of devastation. When we care for individuals who are trapped in these ways, when we show them love and help them move toward freedom and wholeness, we participate in bringing a little part of God's Kingdom back into alignment with His greater plan. We do justice and God smiles.

Sport is a mystery to me. In primary school, sports day was the one day of the year when the less academically gifted students could triumph, winning prizes for jumping fastest in a sack, or running from Point A to Point B more quickly than their classmates. How they loved to wear those badges on their blazers the next day! As if a silver in the egg-and-spoon race was some sort of compensation for not understanding how to use an apostrophe.

Don’t just exist; do something meaningful with your life. Discover a problem and fix it. Don’t just fit in; make it a point to brighten your corner. Decide to resolve your challenges. Don’t just manage; go extra mile and win your race. Never give up the fight. You will win. Don’t just be able; always make sure you are available. Be present to make a change. Don’t just be alive; once you have arrived, find the reason why and make that reason accomplished. Don’t just wish; be passionate about what you wish to see happen. Rise up and make it happen. Don’t just create; create to change; change to improve; improve to increase. Aspire to inspire. Don’t just be making a living; make a life and leave an indelible footstep wherever you step. I want to meet you and many others on the top. Don’t be left out!

The great social, moral, and spiritual battles of the ages boiled down to Sandy McDougall slamming her snot-nosed kid in the corner and the kid would grow up and slam his own kid in the corner, world without end, hallelujah, chunky peanut butter. Hail Mary, full of grace, help me win this stock-car race.

At first sight, joy seems to be connected with being different. When you receive a compliment or win an award, you experience the joy of not being the same as others. You are faster, smarter, more beautiful, and it is that difference that brings you joy. But such joy is very temporary. True joy is hidden where we are the same as other people: fragile and mortal. It is the joy of belonging to the human race. It is the joy of being with others as a friend, a companion, a fellow traveler. This is the joy of Jesus, who is Emmanuel: God-with-us.

Some things you can't win, though I don't like to admit it. I'm not used to losing much of anything, whether its a race or a debate, but among the things that I nearly lost are my life, my neck, and my good name, and I've gained a realization: a life of unbroken success is not only impossible, it's probably not even good for you...

He tried to measure his day by tallying the hours on his wrist. I wiped it off and called him a prisoner. He placed the hours on a scale with hours from former days to compare. I took a hammer and broke it all. He bent down and picked up the shards of minutes first then swept the seconds. I told him he’d missed a spot; there were some sparkling specks left. 'What are they?' he asked. 'Those are moments,' I said. 'What are they made of?' he asked. They are times, I thought, when you win a race or win a heart. They are times when you give birth or lay something, someone to rest. When you wake up in the morning with a smile because anything is possible. When someone compliments the thing you hate most about yourself. Times when you are embarrassed. Times when you are hurtful. Times when you relish in a hearty meal. Times when you service others and are content with a well-spent day. 'What are they made of?' he asked again. 'They are made up of times when we are fully present.' I picked up one of the specks with the tip of my finger. 'Do you remember this?' I asked. 'Of course,' he said, 'I was whistling in the kitchen that morning.' 'Why?' I asked. 'Because of the knowledge that I was loved.

from the Prize winning poem - UNBORN in the book Terra Affirmative. "Under the surface / her body is curled, / seed of the one race, / shell of the world. // She is thw waterfall, / she is the womb, / she is the bubble, /she is the tomb. // Her hair flows upward, / blood red of the birth. / Her arms are folded / deep into the earth. // She is the fern, / she is the bark, / she is the lantern, / she is the dark. // Her eyes burn the flame / of the old and the young. / Her breath is the name / of each branch of each lung. // She is the ingredient. / She is the blend. / She is the beginning. / She is the end.

In business, what's required for short term profit and what's required for long term resilience are very often at a juxtaposition. I used to run track and field and any track runner will tell you that winning a 100 meter race requires a completely different skill set than winning a marathon. And the same skills that may win you the 100 meter race may infact cause you to lose a marathon. And the skills that may win you a marathon may cause you to lose a 100 meter race. It's not really about balance. But it's about management asking the question what race is this business in at this moment and what skills are required to win this exact race right now. And then it's about asking that question over and over and over again all of the time with every business that the company is engaged in.

But they don't deserve to be winning!" "And who does in this world, Roland? Only the gifted and the beautiful and the brave? What about the rest of us, Champ? What about the wretched, for example? What about the weak and the lowly and the desperate and the fearful and the deprived, to name but a few who come to mind? What about losers? What about failures? What about the ordinary fucking outcasts of this world - who happen to comprise ninety percent of the human race! Don't they have dreams, Agni? Don't they have hopes? Just who told you clean-cut bastards own the world anyway? Who put you clean-cut bastards in charge, that's what I'd like to know! Oh, let me tell you something. All-American Adonis : you fair-haired sons of bitches have had your day. It's all over, Agni. We're not playing according to your clean-cut rules anymore - we're playing according to our own! The Revolution has begun! Henceforth the Mundys are the master race! Long live Glorious Mundy!

You put money on a horse, it wins, and your winnings go on to the next horse in the next race, and so on. Your winnings accumulate. But do your losses? Not at the racetrack--there, you just lose your original stake. But in life? Perhaps here different rules apply. You bet on a relationship, it fails; you go on to the next relationship, it fails too: and maybe what you lose is not two simple minus sums but the multiple of what you staked. That's what it feels like, anyway. Life isn't just addition and subtraction. There's also the accumulation, the multiplication, of loss, of failure.

Let me share a famous life history with you. This was a man who failed in business at the age of twenty-one; was defeated in a legislative race at age twenty-two; failed again in business at age twenty-four; had his sweetheart die when he was age twennty-six; had a nervous breakdown at age twenty-seven; lost a congressional race at age thirty-four; lost a senatorial race at age forty-five; failed in an effort to become vice-president at age forty-seven; lost a senatorial race at age forty-nine; and was elected president of the United States at age fifty-two. This man was Abraham Lincoln.

I saw then how I had changed. I did not mind any more, that I lost when we raced and I lost when we swam out to the rocks and I lost when we tossed spears or skipped stones. For who can be ashamed to lose to such beauty? It was enough to watch him win, to see the soles of his feet flashing as they kicked up sand, or the rise and fall of his shoulders as he pulled through the salt. It was enough.

From this Legionary school a new man will have to emerge, a man with heroic qualities; a giant of our history to do battle and win over all the enemies of our Fatherland, his battle and victory having to extend even beyond the material world into the realm of invisible enemies, the powers of evil. Everything that our mind can imagine as more beautiful spiritually; everything the proudest that our race can produce, greater, more just, more powerful, wiser, purer, more diligent and more heroic, this is what the Legionary school must give us! A man in whom all the possibilities of human grandeur that are implanted by God in the blood of our people be developed to the maximum. This hero, the product of Legionary education, will also know how to elaborate programs; will also know how to solve the Jewish problem; will also know how to organize the state well; will also know how to convince other Romanians; and if not, he will know how to win, for that is why he is a hero. This hero, this Legionary of bravery, labour, and justice, with the powers God implanted in his soul, will lead our Fatherland on the road of its glory.

Businesses and entrepreneurs have become experts at microwaving rather than Crock-Potting their business plan. They are so worried about the moment, Q1 or Q2, that they lose their vision and their soul. They trade real, rich, abiding, deep success for the momentary win and then are constantly having to start over. Have a long-term vision and execute it. As the billionaire advised me, slow and steady wins the race.

The community certainly included black English professors, like my mother, as well as black doctors and dentists, black mechanics, janitors, and contractors, black cobblers, wedding planners, real estate agents, and undertakers, several black lawyers, and a handful of black Mary Kay salespeople. As a child, however, I knew so many African Americans working in science, math, and engineering that I thought that’s just what black folks did.

manufacturing false hierarchies based on race and gender in order to enforce a brutal class system is a very long story. Our modern capitalist economy was born thanks to two very large subsidies: stolen Indigenous land ​and stolen African people. Both required the creation of intellectual theories that ranked the relative value of human lives and labor, placing white men at the top. These church and state–sanctioned theories of white (and Christian) supremacy are what allowed Indigenous civilizations to be actively “unseen” by European explorers—visually perceived and yet not acknowledged to have preexisting rights to the land—and entire richly populated continents to be legally classified as unoccupied and therefore fair game on an absurd “finders keepers” basis.

And . . . and the thing is . . . the thing is . . . what we consider to be the most successful route for us to take, actually isn’t. Because too often our view of success is about some external bullshit idea of achievement–an Olympic medal, the ideal husband, a good salary. And we have all these metrics that we try and reach. When really success isn’t something you measure, and life isn’t a race you can win. It’s all . . . bollocks, actually . . .

There are at least two ways to believe in the idea of quality. You can believe there's something ineffable going on within the human mind, or you can believe we just don't understand what quality in a mind is yet, even though we might someday. Either of those opinions allows one to distinguish quantity and quality. In order to confuse quantity and quality, you have to reject both possibilities. The mere possibility of there being something ineffable about personhood is what drives many technologists to reject the notion of quality. They want to live in an airtight reality that resembles an idealized computer program, in which everything is understood and there are no fundamental mysteries. They recoil from even the hint of a potential zone of mystery or an unresolved seam in one's worldview. This desire for absolute order usually leads to tears in human affairs, so there is a historical reason to distrust it. Materialist extremists have long seemed determined to win a race with religious fanatics: Who can do the most damage to the most people?

Justice is a process, and change takes time, but I believe we ought to dream big dreams and make big statements as we pursue those dreams. Amos didn't tell the people that God wants justice to trickle through their society. The New Living Translation uses the phrase "mighty flood of justice" (Amos 5:24) to describe what God wants to see. One thing we learned in Mendenhall is that once flood waters start rushing through a place, there's no turning them back with human strength.

We are going to win our freedom because both the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of the Almighty God are embodied in our echoing demands. So however difficult it is during this period, however difficult it is to continue to live with the agony and the continued existence of racism, however difficult it is to live amidst the constant hurt, the constant insult and the constant disrespect, I can still sing we shall overcome. We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice. We shall overcome because Carlisle is right. "No lie can live forever." We shall overcome because William Cullen Bryant is right. "Truth crushed to earth will rise again." We shall overcome because James Russell Lowell is right. "Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne."   Yet that scaffold sways the future. We shall overcome because the Bible is right.  "You shall reap what you sow." With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when all of God's children all over this nation - black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old negro spiritual, "Free at Last, Free at Last, Thank God Almighty, We are Free At Last.

... And here it is: You don't win races by wishing, you win them by running faster than everyone else. And to do that you have to train hard and strive your utmost, and sometimes even that isn't enough, because another runner just might be more talented than you are. Here's the truth: If you want something, you can have it, but only if you want everything that goes with it, including all the hard work and the despair, and only if you're willing to risk failure. That's the problem with Karl: He was afraid of failing, so he never really tried.

Years before this country had a significant black and immigrant presence, there was an entrenched class hierarchy. The people who maintain these class divisions didn't care about those on the bottom rung then, and they don't care now. But immigration blamers encourage you to point to your neighbour and convince yourself that they are the problem, rather than question where wealth is concentrated in this country and exactly why resources are so scarce. And the people who push this rhetoric couldn't care less either way, just as long as you're not pointing the finger at them. It isn't right to suggest that every win for race equality results in a loss for white working-class people.

MYSTIC WARRIOR I’ve fought side by side with him through the centuries He holds the sword that doubles rainbows He negotiates with the moon Racing with the wind He annihilates all my demons He resuscitates my fallen battle horse Gallops next to me back to the front of the line and reminds me that courage must be in my every step in order to win for just an inkling of terror in the heart is the strategy of loss and to stay alive is to further one’s destiny but one has to struggle beyond simple existence to attain the outcome of fulfillment Excerpt: Soulmates by Sondra Faye

That until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned: That until there are no longer first-class and second class citizens of any nation; That until the color of a man's skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes; That until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race; That until that day, the dream of lasting peace and world citizenship and the rule of international morality will remain but a fleeting illusion, to be pursued but never attained; And until the ignoble and unhappy regimes that hold our brothers in Angola, in Mozambique and in South Africa in subhuman bondage have been toppled and destroyed; Until bigotry and prejudice and malicious and inhuman self-interest have been replaced by understanding and tolerance and good-will; Until all Africans stand and speak as free beings, equal in the eyes of all men, as they are in the eyes of Heaven; Until that day, the African continent will not know peace. We Africans will fight, if necessary, and we know that we shall win, as we are confident in the victory of good over evil.

The doppelganger nature of the country’s identity is embedded in the dualistic language used to describe it, in which everything is double and never singular: Israel-Palestine, Arab and Jew, Two States, The Conflict. Based on a fantasy of symmetrical power, this suturing together of two peoples implies conjoined twins in a state of unending struggle, an irresolvable sibling rivalry between the two peoples, both descended from Abraham. For Rooney, Israel as doppelganger exists on two levels. First, it is a doppelganger of the forms of chauvinistic European nationalisms that turned Jews into pariahs on the continent since well before the Inquisition. That was Zionism’s win-win pitch to anti-Semitic European powers: you get rid of your “Jewish problem” (i.e., Jews, who will leave your countries and migrate to Palestine), and Jews get a state of their own to mimic/twin the very forms of militant nationalism that had oppressed them for centuries. (This is why Zionism was so fiercely opposed by the members of the Bund, who believed that nationalism itself was their enemy and the wellspring of race hatred.) Israel also became a doppelganger of the colonial project, specifically settler colonialism. Many of Zionism’s basic rationales were thinly veiled Judaizations of core Christian colonial conceptions: Terra Nullius, the claim that continents like Australia were effectively empty because their Indigenous inhabitants were categorized as less than fully human, became “A land without a people for a people without a land”—a phrase adopted by many Zionists and that originated with nineteenth-century Christians. Manifest Destiny became “land bequeathed to the Jews by divine right.” “Taming the wild frontier” became “making the desert bloom.

This is the war where we change. This is the trickster war. It's where we disappear, just like they desire us disappear. I spoke it you before: They wish us blank," he said, gesturing without thinking at Dr. Trefusis, who was the nearest exemplar of the white race. "They want us with no history and no memory. They want us empty as paper so they can write on us, so we ain't nothing but a price and an owner's name and a list of tasks. And that's what we'll give them. We'll give them your Nothing. We'll give them my William Williams and Henry Henry. We'll slip through and we'll change to who we must needs be and I will be all sly and have my delightful picaresque japes. But at the end of it, when it's over, I shall be one thing. I shall be one man, fixed, and not have to take no other name. I shall be one person steadily for some years." "This is why we got to win...If we ever wish to be one person, we got to win.

Let me be very clear. I am headed north to escape everything you are, and everything you represent. You are all I loathe about the aristocracy – arrogant, vapid, without purpose, and altogether too reliant on your title and your fortune, which you have come by without any effort of your own. You haven’t a thought in your head worth thinking – as all of your intelligence is used up in planning seductions and winning silly carriage races. In case you have not noticed, I was perfectly fine in the stables until you came along and revealed me to be a woman. And when I left, with every intention of finding my own way north, it was you who followed me! And somehow I am looking to trap you into marriage?” She paused. “I do not know how I can put it more plainly. Go away.

Ancient astrology was rather different from the modern horoscope. Its more learned practitioners enjoyed intellectual respectability, and there was a substantial overlap between astrology and philosophy. People would consult astrologers on anything, from the time and manner in which they were going to die to who was likely to win in the chariot-races that afternoon. The chronology of the origins and development of astrology are impossible to establish, and were debated even in the ancient world. Suffice it to say here that the Western tradition was one of many traditions: Indian, Chinese, Middle Eastern. It was Ptolemy, the Hellenistic geographer and astrologer, who first laid the technical foundations of Western astrology in his Tetrabiblos (‘Four Books’). But the rise in the prominence of astrology was closely tied to the Roman imperial regime. It greatly benefited emperors to have their sovereignty ‘written in the stars’.

Sometimes when a person is not being heard, it is appropriate to blame him or her. Perhaps he or she is speaking obscurely; perhaps he is claiming too much; perhaps she is speaking rather too personally. And one can, perhaps, charge Spielrein on all three counts. But, on balance, her inability to win recognition for her insight into repression was not her fault; it was Freud’s and Jung’s. Preoccupied with their own theories, and with each other, the two men simply did not pause even to take in the ideas of this junior colleague let alone to lend a helping hand in finding a more felicitous expression for her thought. More ominously still, both men privately justified their disregard by implicitly casting her once more into the role of patient, as though that role somehow precluded a person from having a voice or a vision of his or her own. It was and remains a damning comment on how psychoanalysis was evolving that so unfair a rhetorical maneuver, one so at odds with the essential genius of the new therapeutic method, came so easily to hand. In the great race between Freud and Jung to systematize psychoanalytic theory, to codify it once and for all, a simpler truth was lost sight of: Sometimes a person is not heard because she is not listened to.

Do you know the first thing Jesus did with that meager offering? He looked up to heaven and gave thanks to God for the little he was given by the boy. I wonder what it was like for that boy to see his meager meal held up to the heavens by the hands of a grateful Jesus. Jesus, of course, knew it wasn’t going to remain little, that it was about to be multiplied into great abundance. But let’s not miss this moment. The Son of God, holding our offering up to Almighty God and blessing it with his thanks! Remember Kalli, unable to imagine what she could possibly do to help but volunteering anyway? We need to be like her. We don’t need to know how God is going to use our meager offering. We only need to know that he wants to use it. Always remember that God celebrates our gifts to him and blesses them. Next, Jesus broke the bread and the fish. When he blessed it, there were five and two. But when he broke it, we lose count. The more Jesus broke the bread and fish, the more there was to feed and nourish. The disciples started distributing the food, and soon what was broken was feeding thousands. The miracle is in the breaking. It is in the breaking that God multiplies not enough into more than enough. Are there broken places in your life so painful that you fear the breaking will destroy you? Do you come from a broken home? Did you have a broken marriage? Did you have a broken past? Have you experienced brokenness in your body? Have your finances been broken? You may think your brokenness has disqualified you from being able to run in the divine relay, but as with my own life and Kalli’s, when we give God our brokenness, it qualifies us to be used by God to carry a baton of hope, restoration, and grace to others on the sidelines who are broken.

Women, on the other hand, had to wield their intellects like a scythe, hacking away against the stubborn underbrush of low expectations. A woman who worked in the central computing pools was one step removed from the research, and the engineers’ assignments sometimes lacked the context to give the computer much knowledge about the afterlife of the numbers that bedeviled her days. She might spend weeks calculating a pressure distribution without knowing what kind of plane was being tested or whether the analysis that depended on her math had resulted in significant conclusions. The work of most of the women, like that of the Friden, Marchant, or Monroe computing machines they used, was anonymous. Even a woman who had worked closely with an engineer on the content of a research report was rarely rewarded by seeing her name alongside his on the final publication. Why would the computers have the same desire for recognition that they did? many engineers figured. They were women, after all. As

The winning candidate, now the president elect, calls for rapid increase in use of fossil fuels, including coal; dismantling of regulations; rejection of help to developing countries that are seeking to move to sustainable energy; and in general, racing to the cliff as fast as possible. Trump has already taken steps to dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by placing in charge of the EPA transition a notorious (and proud) climate change denier, Myron Ebell. Trump's top adviser on energy, billionaire oil executive Harold Hamm, announced his expectations, which were predictable: dismantling regulations, tax cuts for the industry (and the wealthy and corporate sector generally), more fossil fuel production, lifting Obama's temporary block on the Dakota Access pipeline. The market reacted quickly. Shares in energy corporations boomed, including the world's largest coal miner, Peabody Energy, which had filed for bankruptcy, but after Trump's victory, registered a 50 percent gain.

There's a race of men that don't fit in, A race that can't stay still; So they break the hearts of kith and kin, And they roam the world at will. They range the field and they rove the flood, And they climb the mountain's crest; Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood, And they don't know how to rest. If they just went straight they might go far; They are strong and brave and true; But they're always tired of the things that are, And they want the strange and new. They say: "Could I find my proper groove, What a deep mark I would make!" So they chop and change, and each fresh move Is only a fresh mistake. And each forgets, as he strips and runs With a brilliant, fitful pace, It's the steady, quiet, plodding ones Who win in the lifelong race. And each forgets that his youth has fled, Forgets that his prime is past, Till he stands one day, with a hope that's dead, In the glare of the truth at last. He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance; He has just done things by half. Life's been a jolly good joke on him, And now is the time to laugh. Ha, ha! He is one of the Legion Lost; He was never meant to win; He's a rolling stone, and it's bred in the bone; He's a man who won't fit in.

Make sure that you don’t get so absorbed and exhausted in taking care of all your day-by-day obligations that you lose track of the time and doze off, oblivious to God. The night is about over, dawn is about to break. Be up and awake to what God is doing! God is putting the finishing touches on the salvation work he began when we first believed. We can’t afford to waste a minute, must not squander these precious daylight hours in frivolity and indulgence, in sleeping around and dissipation, in bickering and grabbing everything in sight. Get out of bed and get dressed! Don’t loiter and linger, waiting until the very last minute. Dress yourselves in Christ, and be up and about! ROMANS 13:11 – 14 MSG

My instinct, of course, is to imagine us as one of many planets racing its evolution against its sun--merely one in the galactic Darwinian pursuit. But maybe we're not. Maybe all this talk of the inevitability of aliens is garbage and we're miraculously, beautifully alone in our biological success. What if we're winning? What if we're actually the most evolved intelligence in all this big bang chaos? What if other planets have bacteria and single-celled genotypes but nothing more? The precedent is all the more pressing. Humans alone could be winning the race against our giant gas time bomb and running with the universal Olympic torch. What an honor. What a responsibility. What a gift we have been given to be born in an atmosphere with oxygen and carbon dioxide and millions of years and phenotypes cheering us on with recycles of energy. The thing is, I think we can make it. I think we can shove ourselves into spaceships before things get too cold. I only hope we don't fuck things up before that. Because millions of years is a long time and I don't want to let the universe down.

Violet,' Xaden groans against my mouth. The plea in his tone floods my veins with a whole different form of power. Knowing he's just as affected by our attraction as I am is a rush. 'This isn't what you want.' 'It's exactly what I want,' I counter. I want to replace the anger with lust, the death of the day with the pulse-pounding assurance of my own life, and I know he's capable of delivering all that and more. 'You said to do whatever I need.' I arch my back, pressing the tips of my breasts against his chest. His breathing changes, and there's a war in his eyes that I'm determined to win. It's time to stop dancing around this unbearable tension and break it. He leans down, his mouth only inches from mine. 'And I'm telling you that I'm the last thing you need.' The barely leashed growl of his voice rumbles up through his chest, and every nerve ending in my body flares to life. 'Are you suggesting someone else?' My heart races as I chance calling his bluff. 'Fuck no.' The unmistakable flare of jealousy narrows his eyes for a heartbeat before his hips pin mine to the door, and my instant relief at his answer is replaced by a jolt of pure lust. I can see that infamous control of his hovering on the edge, balancing precariously on the point of a knife. All he needs is one. Little. Push. And I'm about to shamelessly shove. 'Good.' I tilt my head up to his and draw his bottom lip between mine, sucking before gently nipping him with my teeth. 'Because I only want you, Xaden.' The words breach something within him, and he gives. Finally. One mouths collide, and the kiss is hot and hard and completely out of our control.

Note to self: Try to extend positive feelings associated with Scratch-Off win into all areas of life. Be bigger presence at work. Race up ladder (joyfully, w/smile on face), get raise. Get in best shape of life, start dressing nicer. Learn guitar? Make point of noticing beauty of world? Why not educate self re. birds, flowers, trees, constellations, become true citizen of natural world, walk around neighborhood w/kids, patiently teaching kids names of birds, flowers, etc. etc.? Why not take kids to Europe? Kids have never been. Have never, in Alps, had hot chocolate in mountain café, served by kindly white-haired innkeeper, who finds them so sophisticated/friendly relative to usual snotty/rich American kids (who always ignore his pretty but crippled daughter w/braids) that he shows them secret hiking path to incredible glade, kids frolic in glade, sit with crippled pretty girl on grass, later say it was most beautiful day of their lives, keep in touch with crippled girl via email, we arrange surgery here for her, surgeon so touched he agrees to do surgery for free, she is on front page of our paper, we are on front page of their paper in Alps? Ha ha. Just happy.

There's a hardness I'm seeing in modern people. Those little moments of goofiness that used to make the day pass seem to have gone. Life's so serious now. Maybe it's just because I'm with an older gang now.[...]I mean nobody even has hobbies these days. Not that I can see. Husbands and wives both work. Kids are farmed out to schools and video games. Nobody seems able to endure simply being themselves, either - but at the same time they're isolated. People work much more, only go home and surf the Internet and send e-mail rather than calling or writing a note or visiting each other. They work, watch TV, and sleep. I see these things. The world is only about work: work work work get get get...racing ahead...getting sacked from work...going online...knowing computer languages...winning contracts. I mean, it's just not what I would have imagined the world might be if you'd asked me seventeen years ago. People are frazzled and angry, desperate about money, and, at best, indifferent to the future.

For the Orthodox tradition, then, Adam's original sin affects the human race in its entirety, and it has consequences both on the physical and the moral level: it, results not only in sickness and physical death, but in moral weakness and paralysis. But does it also imply an inherited guilt? Here Orthodoxy is more guarded. Original sin is not to be interpreted in juridical or quasi-biological terms, as if it were some physical 'taint' of guilt, transmitted through sexual intercourse. This picture, which normally passes for the Augustinian view, is unacceptable to Orthodoxy. The doctrine of original sin means rather that we are born into an environment where it is easy to do evil and hard to do good; easy to hurt others, and hard to heal their wounds; easy to arouse men's suspicions, and hard to win their trust. It means that we are each of us conditioned by the solidarity of the human race in its accumulated wrong-doing and wrong-thinking, and hence wrong-being. And to this accumulation of wrong we have ourselves added by our own deliberate acts of sin. The gulf grows wider and wider. It is here, in the solidarity of the human race, that we find an explanation for the apparent unjustness of the doctrine of original sin. Why, we ask, should the entire human race suffer because of Adam's fall? Why should all be punished because of one man's sin? The answer is that human beings, made in the image of the Trinitarian God, are interdependent and coinherent. No man is an island. We are 'members one of another'(Eph. 4:25), and so any action, performed by any member of the human race, inevitably affects all the other members. Even though we are not, in the strict sense, guilty of the sins of others, yet we are somehow always involved.

Disillusioned words like bullets bark As human gods aim for their marks Made everything from toy guns that sparks To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark It's easy to see without looking too far That not much Is really sacred. While preachers preach of evil fates Teachers teach that knowledge waits Can lead to hundred-dollar plates Goodness hides behind its gates But even the President of the United States Sometimes must have To stand naked. An' though the rules of the road have been lodged It's only people's games that you got to dodge And it's alright, Ma, I can make it. Advertising signs that con you Into thinking you're the one That can do what's never been done That can win what's never been won Meantime life outside goes on All around you. Although the masters make the rules For the wise men and the fools I got nothing, Ma, to live up to. For them that must obey authority That they do not respect in any degree Who despite their jobs, their destinies Speak jealously of them that are free Cultivate their flowers to be Nothing more than something They invest in. While some on principles baptized To strict party platforms ties Social clubs in drag disguise Outsiders they can freely criticize Tell nothing except who to idolize And then say God Bless him. While one who sings with his tongue on fire Gargles in the rat race choir Bent out of shape from society's pliers Cares not to come up any higher But rather get you down in the hole That he's in. Old lady judges, watch people in pairs Limited in sex, they dare To push fake morals, insult and stare While money doesn't talk, it swears Obscenity, who really cares Propaganda, all is phony. While them that defend what they cannot see With a killer's pride, security It blows the minds most bitterly For them that think death's honesty Won't fall upon them naturally Life sometimes Must get lonely. And if my thought-dreams could been seen They'd probably put my head in a guillotine But it's alright, Ma, it's life, and life only.

I’m often asked about my generation, which some people call the Greatest Generation but which I also call the Hardy Generation. What made us hardy? The Depression years. We were not spoiled with money, that’s for sure. When we had disputes we didn’t use attorneys; we settled them on the street, even got broken bones and noses from fighting. In all ways we helped one another. We shared, we had neighborhood picnics, we made our own toys. (There were no toy stores; I built racing cars.) I also rode one of the first skateboards, with a box on the front. We had a single soccer ball for four or five blocks’ worth of kids; you were lucky if you got to kick it once. We had free time to burn. Distractions? Radio, yes, but no TV. Movies were only once a week. We were happier than people are today, despite the hard times. We overcame adversity and each time we did we enhanced our hardiness. We also knew how to win and lose gracefully.

Tell me something true about you.” “Okay …” She mentally rifled through birthplace (Portland, Oregon), college major (sociology), astrological sign (Virgo), favorite movie (The Apple Dumpling Gang—don’t judge), until she hit a fact that wasn’t completely mundane. “One of my favorite things in the world are those charity events where everyone buys a rubber ducky with a number and the first person’s duck to get down the river wins.” “Why?” “I like seeing the river teeming with all those outrageously yellow and orange ducks. It’s so friendly. And I love the hope of it. Even though it doesn’t matter if you win, because all that wonderful, candy-colored money is going to something really important like a free clinic downtown or cleft palate operations for children in India, you still have that playful hope that you will win. You run alongside the stream, not knowing which is your duck but imagining the lead one is yours.” “And this is the essence of your soul—the ducky race?” “Well, you didn’t ask for the essence of my soul. You asked for something true about me, and so I went for something slightly embarrassing and secret but true nonetheless. Next time you want the essence of my soul, I’ll oblige you with sunsets and baby’s laughter and greeting cards with watercolor flowers.” He squinted at her thoughtfully. “No, so far as I’m concerned, the yellow duckies are the essence of your soul.

Of those few fools, who with ill stars are curst, Sure scribbling fools, called poets, fare the worst: For they're a sort of fools which fortune makes, And, after she has made them fools, forsakes. With Nature's oafs 'tis quite a different case, For Fortune favours all her idiot race. In her own nest the cuckoo eggs we find, Over which she broods to hatch the changeling kind: No portion for her own she has to spare, So much she dotes on her adopted care. Poets are bubbles, by the town drawn in, Suffered at first some trifling stakes to win: But what unequal hazards do they run! Each time they write they venture all they've won: The Squire that's buttered still, is sure to be undone. This author, heretofore, has found your favour, But pleads no merit from his past behaviour. To build on that might prove a vain presumption, Should grant to poets made admit resumption, And in Parnassus he must lose his seat, If that be found a forfeited estate.

To say that Christ is unable to win to Himself those who are unwilling, is to deny that all power in heaven and earth is His. To say that Christ cannot put forth His power without destroying man’s responsibility is a begging of the question here raised, for He has put forth His power and made willing those who have come to Him, and if He did this without destroying their responsibility, why “cannot” He do so with others? If He is able to win the heart of one sinner to Himself, why not that of another? To say, as is usually said, the others will not let Him, is to impeach His sufficiency. It is a question of His will. If the Lord Jesus has decreed, desired, purposed the salvation of all mankind, then the entire human race will be saved, or, otherwise, He lacks the power to make good His intentions; and in such a case it could never be said, “He shall see of the travail of His soul and be satisfied” (Isa 53:11). The issue raised involves the deity of the Saviour, for a defeated Saviour cannot be God.

THERE IS STILL SOME TIME If you feel too much, there’s still a place for you here. If you feel too much, don’t go. If this world is too painful, stop and rest. It’s okay to stop and rest. If you need a break, it’s okay to say you need a break. This life—it’s not a contest, not a race, not a performance, not a thing that you win. It’s okay to slow down. You are here for more than grades, more than a job, more than a promotion, more than keeping up, more than getting by. This life is not about status or opinion or appearance. You don’t have to fake it. You do not have to fake it. Other people feel this way too. If your heart is broken, it’s okay to say your heart is broken. If you feel stuck, it’s okay to say you feel stuck. If you can’t let go, it’s okay to say you can’t let go. You are not alone in these places. Other people feel how you feel. You are more than just your pain. You are more than wounds, more than drugs, more than death and silence. There is still some time to be surprised. There is still some time to ask for help. There is still some time to start again. There is still some time for love to find you. It’s not too late. You’re not alone. It’s okay—whatever you need and however long it takes—it’s okay. It’s okay. If you feel too much, there’s still a place for you here. If you feel too much, don’t go. There is still some time.

It was not easy to go from being one of the seven righteous pillars holding up the whole planet and human race to being just another mental patient. I remember talking to a woman who was ending racism and asking her if it was part of a bigger program or if racism was the whole deal. As someone who had gone back to the beginning of time and dealt with issues of whether or not life itself was a good idea, I wasn’t sure that just getting rid of racism was a big enough prize. ....In the eighties when I was called out of retirement to defeat communism, it was over my strenuous objections. “I don’t even dislike communism all that much,” I objected. “It seems so beside the point.” “The Republicans are going to take credit for this and ride it into the ground,” I correctly predicted. After winning many many preliminary rounds which I honestly hoped I’d lose, I was smuggled into what was thought to be just another psychiatric hospital where the Russian bear took one look at me, declined to dance, and the rest is history. My delusional world always felt kind of tinny and hollow, but that never helped me get out of it.

The Men That Don't Fit In There's a race of men that don't fit in, A race that can't stay still; So they break the hearts of kith and kin, And they roam the world at will. They range the field and they rove the flood, And they climb the mountain's crest; Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood, And they don't know how to rest. If they just went straight they might go far; They are strong and brave and true; But they're always tired of the things that are, And they want the strange and new. They say: "Could I find my proper groove, What a deep mark I would make!" So they chop and change, and each fresh move Is only a fresh mistake. And each forgets, as he strips and runs With a brilliant, fitful pace, It's the steady, quiet, plodding ones Who win in the lifelong race. And each forgets that his youth has fled, Forgets that his prime is past, Till he stands one day, with a hope that's dead, In the glare of the truth at last. He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance; He has just done things by half. Life's been a jolly good joke on him, And now is the time to laugh. Ha, ha! He is one of the Legion Lost; He was never meant to win; He's a rolling stone, and it's bred in the bone; He's a man who won't fit in.

of the problem was that Chaos got a little creation-happy. It thought to its misty, gloomy self: Hey, Earth and Sky. That was fun! I wonder what else I can make. Soon it created all sorts of other problems—and by that I mean gods. Water collected out of the mist of Chaos, pooled in the deepest parts of the earth, and formed the first seas, which naturally developed a consciousness—the god Pontus. Then Chaos really went nuts and thought: I know! How about a dome like the sky, but at the bottom of the earth! That would be awesome! So another dome came into being beneath the earth, but it was dark and murky and generally not very nice, since it was always hidden from the light of the sky. This was Tartarus, the Pit of Evil; and as you can guess from the name, when he developed a godly personality, he didn't win any popularity contests. The problem was, both Pontus and Tartarus liked Gaea, which put some pressure on her relationship with Ouranos. A bunch of other primordial gods popped up, but if I tried to name them all we’d be here for weeks. Chaos and Tartarus had a kid together (don’t ask how; I don’t know) called Nyx, who was the embodiment of night. Then Nyx, somehow all by herself, had a daughter named Hemera, who was Day. Those two never got along because they were as different as…well, you know. According to some stories, Chaos also created Eros, the god of procreation... in other words, mommy gods and daddy gods having lots of little baby gods. Other stories claim Eros was the son of Aphrodite. We’ll get to her later. I don’t know which version is true, but I do know Gaea and Ouranos started having kids—with very mixed results. First, they had a batch of twelve—six girls and six boys called the Titans. These kids looked human, but they were much taller and more powerful. You’d figure twelve kids would be enough for anybody, right? I mean, with a family that big, you’ve basically got your own reality TV show. Plus, once the Titans were born, things started to go sour with Ouranos and Gaea’s marriage. Ouranos spent a lot more time hanging out in the sky. He didn't visit. He didn't help with the kids. Gaea got resentful. The two of them started fighting. As the kids grew older, Ouranos would yell at them and basically act like a horrible dad. A few times, Gaea and Ouranos tried to patch things up. Gaea decided maybe if they had another set of kids, it would bring them closer…. I know, right? Bad idea. She gave birth to triplets. The problem: these new kids defined the word UGLY. They were as big and strong as Titans, except hulking and brutish and in desperate need of a body wax. Worst of all, each kid had a single eye in the middle of his forehead. Talk about a face only a mother could love. Well, Gaea loved these guys. She named them the Elder Cyclopes, and eventually they would spawn a whole race of other, lesser Cyclopes. But that was much later. When Ouranos saw the Cyclops triplets, he freaked. “These cannot be my kids! They don’t even look like me!” “They are your children, you deadbeat!” Gaea screamed back. “Don’t you dare leave me to raise them on my own!

The rock spun out of his hand so fast, she heard it buzz through the air. It skimmed across the water, hop after hop like a leapfrog racing across the water. It went on and on until it had crossed the lake and had hopped onto the opposite shore. “Well,” he mused softly, a masculine taunt in his voice, “I would say that about wraps things up. Twenty-two skips all the way to the other side.” He sounded very complacent. “I believe you get to be my slave and brush my hair for me at each rising.” Francesca shook her head. “What I believe is, you rigged this wager. You did something to win.” “It is called practice. I have spent much time skipping rocks across the lake.” Francesca laughed softly. “You are not telling the truth, Gabriel. I don’t believe you ever skipped a rock in your life until now. You tricked me.” “You think?” He asked it innocently. Too innocently. “You know you did. Just to win a silly bet. I can’t believe you.” He reached out to tuck a wayward strand of hair behind her ear, making her heart leap wildly. “It was not just a silly bet, honey, it was a way to get you to brush my hair. No one has ever done such a thing for me and I think I crave attention.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose again and grinned at her almost boyishly. “I asked Lucian to do so once and he threatened to beat me to a bloody pulp.” He shrugged his broad shoulders. “Some things are just not worth it, you know.

Will you just tell me, Brian.I need you to tell me you love me." "I'm getting to it." He turned back. "I never thought I wanted family.I want to make children with you,Keeley.I want ours. Please don't cry." "I'm trying not to.Hurry up." "I can't be rushed at such a time.Sniffle those back or I'll blunder it.That's the way." He moved to her. "I don't want to own horses, but I can make an exception for the gift you gave me today.As a kind of symbol of things. I didn't have faith in him, not pure faith, that he'd run to win.I didn't have faith in you, either.Give me your hand." She held it out, clasping his. "Tell me." "I've never said the words to another woman. You'll be my first, and you'll be my last.I loved you from the first instant, in a kind of blinding flash. Over time the love I have for you has strengthened, and deepened until it's like something alive inside me." "That's everything I needed to hear." She brought his hand to her cheek. "Marry me, Brian." "Bloody hell.Will you let me do the asking?" She had to bite her lip to hold off the watery chuckle. "Sorry." With a laugh, he plucked her off her feet. "Well, what the hell.Sure, I'll marry you." "Right away." "Right away." He brushed his lips over her temple. "I love you,Keeley, and since you're birdbrain enough to want to marry a hardheaded Irish horse's ass, I believe it was, I'll go up now and ask your father." "As my-Brian, really." "I'll do this proper. But maybe I'll take you with me,in case he's found that shotgun." She laughed, rubbed her cheek against his. "I'll protect you." He set her on her feet.They began to walk together past the sharply colored fall flowers, the white fences and fields where horses raced their shadows. When he reached to take her hand, Keeley gripped his firmly.And had everything.

Nick grinned, swooping in for another kiss and then leaning back and scruffing his hair up. “Harriet Manners, I’m about to give you six stamps. Then I’m going to write something on a piece of paper and put it in an envelope with your address on it.” “OK …” “Then I’m going to put the envelope on the floor and spin us as fast as I can. As soon as either of us manage to stick a stamp on it, I’m going to race to the postbox and post it unless you can catch me first. If you win, you can read it.” Nick was obviously faster than me, but he didn’t know where the nearest postbox was. “Deal,” I agreed, yawning and rubbing my eyes. “But why six stamps?” “Just wait and see.” A few seconds later, I understood. As we spun in circles with our hands stretched out, one of my stamps got stuck to the ground at least a metre away from the envelope. Another ended up on a daisy. A third somehow got stuck to the roundabout. One of Nick’s ended up on his nose. And every time we both missed, we laughed harder and harder and our kisses got dizzier and dizzier until the whole world was a giggling, kissing, spinning blur. Finally, when we both had one stamp left, I stopped giggling. I had to win this. So I swallowed, wiped my eyes and took a few deep breaths. Then I reached out my hand. “Too late!” Nick yelled as I opened my eyes again. “Got it, Manners!” And he jumped off the still-spinning roundabout with the envelope held high over his head. So I promptly leapt off too. Straight into a bush. Thanks to a destabilised vestibular system – which is the upper portion of the inner ear – the ground wasn’t where it was supposed to be. Nick, in the meantime, had ended up flat on his back on the grass next to me. With a small shout I leant down and kissed him hard on the lips. “HA!” I shouted, grabbing the envelope off him and trying to rip it open. “I don’t think so,” he grinned, jumping up and wrapping one arm round my waist while he retrieved it again. Then he started running in a zigzag towards the postbox. A few seconds later, I wobbled after him. And we stumbled wonkily down the road, giggling and pulling at each other’s T-shirts and hanging on to tree trunks and kissing as we each fought for the prize. Finally, he picked me up and, without any effort, popped me on top of a high wall. Like Humpty Dumpty. Or some kind of really unathletic cat. “Hey!” I shouted as he whipped the envelope out of my hands and started sprinting towards the postbox at the bottom of the road. “That’s not fair!” “Course it is,” he shouted back. “All’s fair in love and war.” And Nick kissed the envelope then put it in the postbox with a flourish. I had to wait three days. Three days of lingering by the front door. Three days of lifting up the doormat, just in case it had accidentally slipped under there. Finally, the letter arrived: crumpled and stained with grass. Ha. Told you I was faster. LBxx

The world has been changing even faster as people, devices and information are increasingly connected to each other. Computational power is growing and quantum computing is quickly being realised. This will revolutionise artificial intelligence with exponentially faster speeds. It will advance encryption. Quantum computers will change everything, even human biology. There is already one technique to edit DNA precisely, called CRISPR. The basis of this genome-editing technology is a bacterial defence system. It can accurately target and edit stretches of genetic code. The best intention of genetic manipulation is that modifying genes would allow scientists to treat genetic causes of disease by correcting gene mutations. There are, however, less noble possibilities for manipulating DNA. How far we can go with genetic engineering will become an increasingly urgent question. We can’t see the possibilities of curing motor neurone diseases—like my ALS—without also glimpsing its dangers. Intelligence is characterised as the ability to adapt to change. Human intelligence is the result of generations of natural selection of those with the ability to adapt to changed circumstances. We must not fear change. We need to make it work to our advantage. We all have a role to play in making sure that we, and the next generation, have not just the opportunity but the determination to engage fully with the study of science at an early level, so that we can go on to fulfil our potential and create a better world for the whole human race. We need to take learning beyond a theoretical discussion of how AI should be and to make sure we plan for how it can be. We all have the potential to push the boundaries of what is accepted, or expected, and to think big. We stand on the threshold of a brave new world. It is an exciting, if precarious, place to be, and we are the pioneers. When we invented fire, we messed up repeatedly, then invented the fire extinguisher. With more powerful technologies such as nuclear weapons, synthetic biology and strong artificial intelligence, we should instead plan ahead and aim to get things right the first time, because it may be the only chance we will get. Our future is a race between the growing power of our technology and the wisdom with which we use it. Let’s make sure that wisdom wins.

Speaking of the happy new year, I wonder if any year ever had less chance of being happy. It’s as though the whole race were indulging in a kind of species introversion — as though we looked inward on our neuroses. And the thing we see isn’t very pretty. Before the year is over, I think I will be looking back longingly on the Gulf of Lower California — that sea of mirages and timelessness. It is a very magical place. It is cold and clear here now - the leaves all fallen from the trees and only the frogs are very happy. Great cheering sections of frogs singing all the time. The earth is moist and water is seeping out of the ground everywhere. So we go into this happy new year, knowing that our species has learned nothing, can, as a race, learn nothing — that the experience of ten thousand years has made no impression on the instincts of the million years that preceded. Maybe you can find some vague theology that will give you hope. Not that I have lost any hope. All the goodness and the heroisms will rise up again, then be cut down again and rise up. It isn’t that the evil thing wins — it never will — but that it doesn’t die. I don’t know why we should expect it to. It seems fairly obvious that two sides of a mirror are required before one has a mirror, that two forces are necessary in man before he is man. I asked Paul de Kruif once if he would like to cure all disease and he said yes. Then I suggested that the man he loved and wanted to cure was a product of all his filth and disease and meanness, his hunger and cruelty. Cure those and you would have not man but an entirely new species you wouldn’t recognize and probably wouldn’t like. There it is — It is interesting to watch the German efficiency, which, from the logic of the machine is efficient but which (I suspect) from the mechanics of the human species is suicidal. Certainly man thrives best (or has at least) in a state of semi-anarchy. Then he has been strong, inventive, reliant, moving. But cage him with rules, feed him and make him healthy and I think he will die as surely as a caged wolf dies. I should not be surprised to see a cared for, thought for, planned for nation disintegrate, while a ragged, hungry, lustful nation survived. Surely no great all-encompassing plan has ever succeeded. And so I'll look to see this German plan collapse because they do not know enough to plan for everything.

Despite a seemingly pervasive belief that only people of colour ‘play the race card’, it does not take anything as dramatic as a slave revolution or Japanese imperialism to evoke white racial anxieties, something as trivial as the casting of non-white people in films or plays in which a character was ‘supposed’ to be white will do the trick. For example, the casting of Olivier award-winning actress Noma Dumezweni to play the role of Hermione in the debut West End production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child got bigots so riled up that J. K. Rowling felt the need to respond and give her blessing for a black actress to play the role. A similar but much larger controversy occurred when the character Rue in the film The Hunger Games was played by a black girl, Amandla Stenberg. Even though Rue is described as having brown skin in the original novel, ‘fans’ of the book were shocked and dismayed that the movie version cast a brown girl to play the role, and a Twitter storm of abuse about the ethnic casting of the role ensued. You have to read the responses to truly appreciate how angry and abusive they are.- As blogger Dodai Stewart pointed out at the time: All these . . . people . . . read The Hunger Games. Clearly, they all fell in love with and cared about Rue. Though what they really fell in love with was an image of Rue that they’d created in their minds. A girl that they knew they could love and adore and mourn at the thought of knowing that she’s been brutally killed. And then the casting is revealed (or they go see the movie) and they’re shocked to see that Rue is black. Now . . . this is so much more than, 'Oh, she’s bigger than I thought.’ The reactions are all based on feelings of disgust. These people are MAD that the girl that they cried over while reading the book was ‘some black girl’ all along. So now they’re angry. Wasted tears, wasted emotions. It’s sad to think that had they known that she was black all along, there would have been [no] sorrow or sadness over her death.

Sonia Gandhi and her son play an important part in all of this. Their job is to run the Department of Compassion and Charisma and to win elections. They are allowed to make (and also to take credit for) decisions which appear progressive but are actually tactical and symbolic, meant to take the edge off popular anger and allow the big ship to keep on rolling. (The best example of this is the rally that was organised for Rahul Gandhi to claim victory for the cancellation of Vedanta’s permission to mine Niyamgiri for bauxite—a battle that the Dongria Kondh tribe and a coalition of activists, local as well as international, have been fighting for years. At the rally, Rahul Gandhi announced that he was “a soldier for the tribal people”. He didn’t mention that the economic policies of his party are predicated on the mass displacement of tribal people. Or that every other bauxite “giri”—hill—in the neighbourhood was having the hell mined out of it, while this “soldier for the tribal people” looked away. Rahul Gandhi may be a decent man. But for him to go around talking about the two Indias—the “Rich India” and the “Poor India”—as though the party he represents has nothing to do with it, is an insult to everybody’s intelligence, including his own.) The division of labour between politicians who have a mass base and win elections, and those who actually run the country but either do not need to (judges and bureaucrats) or have been freed of the constraint of winning elections (like the prime minister) is a brilliant subversion of democratic practice. To imagine that Sonia and Rahul Gandhi are in charge of the government would be a mistake. The real power has passed into the hands of a coven of oligarchs—judges, bureaucrats and politicians. They in turn are run like prize race-horses by the few corporations who more or less own everything in the country. They may belong to different political parties and put up a great show of being political rivals, but that’s just subterfuge for public consumption. The only real rivalry is the business rivalry between corporations.

Consider for a few moments the enormous aesthetic claim of its chief contemporary rival—what we may loosely call the Scientific Outlook, 1 the picture of Mr. [H. G.] Wells and the rest. Supposing this to be a myth, is it not one of the finest myths which human imagination has yet produced? The play is preceded by the most austere of all preludes: the infinite void, and matter restlessly moving to bring forth it knows not what. Then, by the millionth millionth chance—what tragic irony—the conditions at one point of space and time bubble up into that tiny fermentation which is the beginning of life. Everything seems to be against the infant hero of our drama—just as everything seems against the youngest son or ill-used stepdaughter at the opening of a fairy tale. But life somehow wins through. With infinite suffering, against all but insuperable obstacles, it spreads, it breeds, it complicates itself, from the amoeba up to the plant, up to the reptile, up to the mammal. We glance briefly at the age of monsters. Dragons prowl the earth, devour one another, and die. Then comes the theme of the younger son and the ugly duckling once more. As the weak, tiny spark of life began amidst the huge hostilities of the inanimate, so now again, amidst the beasts that are far larger and stronger than he, there comes forth a little naked, shivering, cowering creature, shuffling, not yet erect, promising nothing, the product of another millionth millionth chance. Yet somehow he thrives. He becomes the Cave Man with his club and his flints, muttering and growling over his enemies’ bones, dragging his screaming mate by her hair (I never could quite make out why), tearing his children to pieces in fierce jealousy till one of them is old enough to tear him, cowering before the horrible gods whom he created in his own image. But these are only growing pains. Wait till the next act. There he is becoming true Man. He learns to master Nature. Science comes and dissipates the superstitions of his infancy. More and more he becomes the controller of his own fate. Passing hastily over the present (for it is a mere nothing by the time scale we are using), you follow him on into the future. See him in the last act, though not the last scene, of this great mystery. A race of demigods now rules the planet—and perhaps more than the planet—for eugenics have made certain that only demigods will be born, and psychoanalysis that none of them shall lose or smirch his divinity, and communism that all which divinity requires shall be ready to their hands. Man has ascended his throne. Henceforward he has nothing to do but to practise virtue, to grow in wisdom, to be happy. And now, mark the final stroke of genius. If the myth stopped at that point, it might be a little bathetic.