Labor Camp Quotes

Before this grief, mountains must bend down
And rivers stop,
But prison locks are strong,
And behind them are the labor-camp bunks
And the deadly tedium.
For others the fresh breeze is blowing,
For others the extravagant sun sets -
For us everything is the same, we know nothing,
We hear only the keys and their hateful grinding.
Only the soldiers' stiff steps.
We get up as for early Mass in the city,
The savaged city, and coming
We meet ourselves, the dead, the unbreathing.
The sun is low, the Neva misty,
It is only in the distance that hope is singing.
The sentence . . . and at once tears,
Now everything has been taken,
The rest of life, torn from her heart,
Knocked backwards by a hoodlum
And yet she walks . . . stumbles . . . alone . . .
Where are they now, unwilling friends
Of years in Hell?
What visions do they see in Siberian snow-storms?
What hallucinations in the circle of the moon?
I send them this goodbye and wish them well. ~ Anna Akhmatova

A TWIST OF LIGHT-prologue
Reissue date; 6-16-14

The new mother mover the sacking away from the tiny red face, marveling at the perfect mouth and the arc of dark eyebrows of the child she cradled. "Did you ever see anything so pretty?" She spoke to no one in particular, but addressed her question to the group of women huddled inside the hut. Fashioned from cardboard and corrugated iron, the hut wasn't much bigger than the flatbed of the truck that had brought her here.

"Nothing's quite as pretty as a healthy baby." the flat vowels marked the midwife's origins in Oklahoma as surely as her faded sunbonnet and her residence in the labor camp. Set up less than two months ago, it already bulged with over five hundred people who'd been blown out of their homes along with the rich topsoil.(less) ~ Joyce Mandeville

There would be a paragraph about some veteran digging tunnels for the Germans in a slave labor camp, or something like that. Finally I decided to look it up and go further into it. ~ Charles Guggenheim

The acceleration of contemporary life also plays a role in this lack of being. The society of laboring and achievement is not a free society. It generates new constraints. Ultimately, the dialectic of master and slave does not yield a society where everyone is free and capable of leisure, too. Rather, it leads to a society of work in which the master himself has become a laboring slave. In this society of compulsion, everyone carries a work camp inside. This labor camp is defined by the fact that one is simultaneously prisoner and guard, victim and perpetrator. One exploits oneself. It means that exploitation is possible even without domination. ~ Byung-Chul Han

This was what he stood for: a world where there would be room enough even for such a mass of clumsy and cumbersome freedom. A margin of humanity, of tolerance, where some of life's beauty could take refuge. His eyes narrowed a little, and an ironic, bitter smile came to his lips. I know you all, he thought. Today you say that elephants are archaic and cumbersome, that they interfere with roads and
telegraph poles, and tomorrow you'll begin to say that human rights too are obsolete and cumbersome, that they interfere with progress, and the temptation will be so great to let them fall by the road and not to burden ourselves with that
extra load. And in the end man himself will become in your eyes a clumsy luxury, an archaic survival from the past, and you'll dispense with him too, and the only thing left will be total efficiency and universal slavery and man himself will disappear under the weight of his material achievement. He had learned that much behind the barbed wire of the forced labor camp: it was our education, a lesson be was not prepared to forget. ~ Romain Gary

You don't want to stir things up by questioning the specialists.And it's terribly difficult to end something that's already been established.You interfere and you're out of a job.No, worse yet, you might be sent to a forced labor camp for ideological deviation.Even if everyone were against it, no one would say it out loud.That's why nothing changes. ~ Koushun Takami

All college students are being asked to sign an official statement to the effect that they "sympathize with the Germans and approve of the New Order." Eighty percent have decided to obey the dictates of their conscience, but the penalty will be severe. Any student refusing to sign will be sent to a German labor camp. What's to become of the youth of our country if they've all got to do hard labor in Germany? ~ Anne Frank

All this [Soviet labor camp for political prisoners] brings about one marked change in your physical appearance; by the end of your first year, you will have what are known as 'zek's eyes.' The look in a zek's eyes is impossible to describe, but once encountered, it is never forgotten. When you emerge, your friends, embracing you, will exclaim: 'Your eyes! Your eyes have changed!' And not one of your tormentors will be able to bear your scrutiny. They will turn away from it, like beaten dogs. ~ Irina Ratushinskaya

Neither fate, nor history, nor the anger of the State, nor the glory or infamy of battle has any power to affect those who call themselves human beings. No, whatever life holds in store
hard-won glory, poverty and despair, or death in a labor camp
they will live as human beings and die as human beings, the same as those who have already perished; and in this alone lies man's eternal and bitter victory over all the grandiose and inhuman forces that ever have been or will be ... ~ Vasily Grossman

On July 3, 1968, Chairman Mao issued an order calling for the ruthless suppression of class enemies. He wanted all members of the Five Black Categories to be eliminated, together with TWENTY THREE NEW TYPES of enemy , which included anyone who had ever served as a policeman before the Liberation, or who had been sent to prison or labor camp. And not only them but their family and distant relatives as well.
That's a lot of people.
Yes. Just think, the literal meaning of the Chinese characters for "revolution" is "elimination of life ~ Ma Jian

In all my activities as Armament Minister I never once visited a labor camp, and cannot, therefore, give any information about them. ~ Albert Speer

On my show, I'm definitely the youngest one. So going from a show where everyone is over 30, to the movie, where everyone was like 20, 25, it was like summer camp. ~ Marla Sokoloff

Labor, therefore, is a duty from which no man living is exempt, without forfeiting his right to his daily bread. ~ Thomas F. Wilson

In 1995, the Paul Keating Labor government commissioned an inquiry into the forcible removal of Aboriginal children. ~ Richard Flanagan

We black Southerners, through life, love, and labor, are the generators and architects of American music, narrative, language, capital, and morality. That belongs to us. Take away all those stolen West African girls and boys forced to find an oral culture to express, resist, and signify in the South, and we have no rich American idiom. ~ Kiese Laymon

For he who can foresee with his mind is by nature intended to be lord and master; and he who can work only with his body is by nature a slave.

The slave is to the master what the body is to the mind. ~ Will Durant

... in this place everything is forbidden, not for hidden reasons, but because the camp has been created for that purpose. ~ Primo Levi

We would labor earnestly to raise a believer in salvation by free will into a believer in salvation by grace, for we long to see all religious teaching built upon the solid rock of truth and not upon the sand of imagination. At the same time, our grand object is not the revision of opinions, but the regeneration of natures. We should bring men to Christ, not to our own particular views of Christianity. ~ Charles Spurgeon

At this very moment I'm behind on a compilation that Slave Labor is doing for Free Comic Book Day. ~ Jhonen Vasquez

There was never a revival of religion without a revival of his opposition. As soon as Ezra and Nehemiah begin to labor, Sanballat and Tobiah are stirred up to hinder them. What then? We are not alarmed because Satan hindereth us, for it is a proof that we are on the Lord's side, and are doing the Lord's work, and in his strength we shall win the victory, and triumph over our adversary. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

To this must be added that the hiring of labor and the conduct of trade are concentrated in the hands of comparatively few; so that a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself. ~ Pope Leo XIII

He has definitely cornered the market on enigma. I hope Stella goes for the deeply layered type. ~ Tera Lynn Childs

God plants the talent and it grows, sustained by a spirit-given strength to endure, even in the midst of darkness. It thrives in the valleys of life and ignores the peaks. It blooms like a flower when cradled by the warmth of the sun. It remains in a hidden stairwell in a concentration camp. It grows, fed in secret, in the heart of every artist. ~ Kristy Cambron

Who sent you?" O'Ryan asked. "What was your purpose here?"
"To ... to tell you ... " The words didn't sound nearly as furious coming out of my mouth as they did in my head. The camp controller leaned forward, eyes narrowing into slits. "To go ... fuck yourself. ~ Alexandra Bracken

Tania, I was spellbound by you from the first moment I saw you. There I was, living my dissolute life, and war had just started. My entire base was in disarray, people were running around, closing accounts, taking money out, grabbing food out of stores, buying up the entire Gostiny Dvor, volunteering for the army, sending their kids to camp - " He broke off. "And in the middle of my chaos, there was you!" Alexander whispered passionately. "You were sitting alone on this bench, impossibly young, breathtakingly blonde and lovely, and you were eating ice cream with such abandon, such pleasure, such mystical delight that I could not believe my eyes. As if there were nothing else in the world on that summer Sunday. ~ Paullina Simons

I cannot imagine anything nobler or more national than that for, say, one hour in the day we should all do the labor the poor must do, and thus identify ourselves with them and through them, with all mankind. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Everything is sold to skill and labor; and where nature furnishes the materials, they are still rude and unfinished, till industry, ever active and intelligent, refines them from their brute state, and fits them for human use and convenience. ~ David Hume

My designs and labors and aspirations are my only friends. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I spent all of my childhood at a performance art camp. Putting on plays, it was more like commedia dell'arte. It wasn't career-oriented in any way. It was more fun and therapeutic, so I never really thought of it as something I would end up doing. I was more convinced I was going to be a painter. ~ Troy Garity

In a political fight, when you've got nothing in favour of your side, start a row in the opposition camp. ~ Huey Long

Listen to the cry of a woman in labor at the hour of giving birth - look at the dying man's struggle at his last extremity, and then tell me whether something that begins and ends thus could be intended for enjoyment. ~ Soren Kierkegaard

Feeling sure that I would learn something and at the same time get rid of a severe bronchial cough that followed an attack of the grippe and had troubled me for three months. I intended to camp on the glacier every night, and did so, and my throat grew better every day until it was well, for no lowland microbe could stand such a trip. ~ John Muir

I go to various boot camps 4-5 times a week, and I try to get some Pilates in there to thin and tone. ~ Rachelle Lefevre

We are an increasingly depressed and anxious people - and not for nothing. Arguably, all these modern conveniences have been adopted to save us time. But time for what? Having created a system that tends to our every need without causing us undue exertion or labor, we can now fill these hours with ... ? ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

A low standard of prayer means a low standard of character and a low standard of service. Those alone labor effectively among men who impetuously fling themselves upward towards God. ~ Charles Brent

Of course: because it was in one of the camps that he went blind. They had performed some failed experiment on his eyes in the camp.
'No, not summer camp,' Franny had to tell Lilly, who had always been afraid of being sent to summer camp, and was unsurprised to hear that they tortured the campers. ~ John Irving

The labor movement must be destroyed. ~ Karl Rove

Long hours, hard labor, or burning the midnight oil will not produce a Milton, a Shakespeare, or a Beethoven. People accomplish great things through quiet moments, imagining that the invisible things from the foundation of time are clearly visible. You can imagine ~ Joseph Murphy

The fertility of the slave mothers meant that Virginia planters, including Washington, could "grow" their own labor force. One of Washington's distant cousins wrote to his manager in 1759, "the Breeding wenches most particularly, you must instruct the overseers to be kind and indulgent to." Thomas Jefferson's calculation of the economics of plantation slavery was chillingly blunt: "a woman who brings a child every two years [is] more profitable than the best man of the farm. ~ Henry Wiencek

The NRA was one of the items that we pointed to when we added money to the labor, health and Education appropriations bill by reducing the size of the tax cut. ~ Dave Obey

A lot of productivity is capturing ideas. I use a wiki - it's more valuable than e-mail for running a company - and I have a page for every person with whom I interact frequently. ~ Garrett Camp

First of all, computer animation is certainly a tremendous and viable medium today. But the warmth and personality derived from 2-D animation, in my opinion, cannot be surpassed. Certain stories lend themselves well to 3-D animation and I won't labor this with naming them, but in my bones, I still respond more emotionally to the artists feel in 2-D. You feel the 'actor' in the animator more personally ... it's hard to explain. ~ Richard Sherman

Viktor Frankl said the Concentration camp survivalist said no matter how much mental or physical abuse had been given nobody could cause him to think about anything he didn't want to think about ~ Bob Proctor

Those of us directed towards the right were lined up in threes with much shooting and beating. I was in the first row, at the platform's edge. Suddenly, we see a group of older women and women with children nearing the road, under the platform. In the first row I see my mother supported on both sides by two friends. She too becomes aware of me. And out of the throat of this reticent, soft-spoken woman who I don't remember ever raising her voice, breaks out a terrible, desperate, piercingly loud, howling shout: 'GYURIKA!!! ~ Azriel Feuerstein

disorganized. The progress of civilization has meant the reduction of employment, not its increase. It is because we have become increasingly wealthy as a nation that we have been able virtually to eliminate child labor, to remove the necessity of work for many of the aged and to make it unnecessary for millions of women to take jobs. A much smaller proportion of the American population needs to work than that, say, of China or of Russia. The real question is not how many millions of jobs there will be in America ten years from now, but how much shall we produce, and what, in consequence, will be our standard of living? The problem of distribution, on which all the stress is being put today, is after all more easily solved the more there is to distribute. We ~ Henry Hazlitt

The Labor Department's Hall of Honor recognizes men and women - like Cesar Chavez, Helen Keller and the Workers of the Memphis Sanitation Strike - who have made invaluable contributions to the welfare of American workers. ~ Thomas Perez

Certain it is that work, worry, labor and trouble, form the lot of almost all men their whole life long. But if all wishes were fulfilled as soon as they arose, how would men occupy their lives? what would they do with their time? If the world were a paradise of luxury and ease, a land flowing with milk and honey, where every Jack obtained his Jill at once and without any difficulty, men would either die of boredom or hang themselves; or there would be wars, massacres, and murders; so that in the end mankind would inflict more suffering on itself than it has now to accept at the hands of Nature. In ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

Tell me, if you can, of anything that's finer than an evening in camp with a rare old friend and a dog after one's heart. ~ Nash Buckingham

You're a slave in your own country, White Man. Each year you get to keep less of the fruits of your labor; each year it gets more difficult to carry the burden the aliens have placed upon you; each year the cheap labor of aliens makes your future less secure; each year you retreat a few steps more into the world of slavery. ~ George Lincoln Rockwell

Reap your harvest. (Benefits) You have been sowing seeds on good soil. (Working Hard) Your garden is overflowing abundantly.(Successful) Now is the time for you to fill your basket with the fruits of your labor. (Savings). Prepare your soil for new seeds. (Investments) ~ Amaka Imani Nkosazana

As always when men have too much to say to one another, they found no words. But the inexpressible thing that was taking place outside was uttered in Krämer's rough heartiness and Runki's clumsy tenderness, and the noise and the shots around the camp gave it its meaning.
Krämer closed his eyes. ~ Bruno Apitz

No matter how hard a man may labor, some woman is always in the background of his mind. She is the one reward of virtue. ~ Gertrude Atherton

But all profit that is out of proportion to the labor expended is dishonest. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Lord, teach me to be generous;
Teach me to serve you as you deserve;
To give and not to count the cost;
To fight and not to heed the wounds;
To toil, and not to seek for rest;
To labor, and not to ask for reward -
except to know that I am doing your will. ~ Ignatius Of Loyola

Without global human rights, labor and environmental movements, companies would still be hiring 12-year-olds as a matter of course and poisoning our groundwater without batting an eyelid. ~ Rebecca MacKinnon