“You can't hold a man down without staying down with him.”
“You can't let God down because you are not the one holding him up”
“We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own. The Igbo, always practical, put it concretely in their proverb Onye ji onye n'ani ji onwe ya: "He who will hold another down in the mud must stay in the mud to keep him down.”
“As long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold him down, so it means you cannot soar as you otherwise might.”
“You can't deny laughter; when it comes, it plops down in your favorite chair and stays as long as it wants.”
“You can't walk on water holding all that weight, it just makes you sink right down. Let it go.”