Political Quotes

[Pathless]

"The opposite of war isn't peace ... it's creation."

--from Rent by Jonathan Larson

[Pathless]

"The vast majority of human beings dislike and even dread all notions with which they are not familiar. Hence it comes about that at their first appearance innovators have always been derided as fools and madmen."

--Aldous Huxley
English author and poet (1894-1963)



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"If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them."

--Henry David Thoreau
American author, poet and philosopher (1817-1862)


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"No race can prosper till it learns there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem."

--Booker T. Washington
American educator; foremost black educator of his time (1856-1915)


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"My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular."

--Adlai Stevenson
American politician; presidential candidate and ambassador to the United Nations (1900-1965)



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"Seven blunders of the world that lead to violence: wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, politics without principle."

--Mohandas Gandhi
Indian mahatma, non-violent activist (1869-1948)


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"It is a cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps."

--Martin Luther King, Jr.
American civil rights leader and Baptist minister (1929-1968)



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"Freedom is not something that anybody can be given; freedom is something people take and people are as free as they want to be."

--James Baldwin
American author (1924-1987)


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"No man has a right in America to treat any other man tolerantly, for tolerance is the assumption of superiority."

--Wendell Willkie
American politician; presidential candidate; special international representative for President Roosevelt (1892-1944)


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"I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions."

--Lillian Hellman
American playwright and memoirist (1905-1984)


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"No person is your friend who demands your silence or denies your right to grow."

--Alice Walker
American writer (1944-)


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"You don't have a pronoun for me yet."

--Holly Boswell
American Transgender activist and author


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"To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting."

--e.e. cummings
American poet (1894-1962)

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source

[Pathless]

No matter what happens now, be hopeful as you share your thoughts. If you can overcome your fear of dreaming out loud, you may be quite wonderfully surprised with the response that you receive.

--from a daily internet horoscope for Gemini, for today

[Pathless]

The Anarchists are right in everything; in the negation of the existing order, and in the assertion that, without Authority, there could not be worse violence than that of Authority under existing conditions. They are mistaken only in thinking that Anarchy can be instituted by a revolution. But it will be instituted only by there being more and more people who do not require the protection of governmental power ... There can be only one permanent revolution - a moral one: the regeneration of the inner man.

--Leo Tolstoy

[Pathless]

"I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence..."

--Frederick Douglas

[Pathless]

Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.

--Albert Einstein

[Ciel]

Fear is not the natural state of civilised people.

Aung San Suu Kyi

- c -

[Pathless]

Thanks, Ciel. I hadn't heard of her until now.

Here is another quote of hers that I just found:

"It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those subject to it."

[wil]

She's a big force behind the Burma uprising....Nobel Prize Winner...elected by her people...under house arrest...

A revolution which aims merely at changing official policies and institutions with a view to an improvement in material conditions has little chance of genuine success. Without a revolution of the spirit, the forces which produced the iniquities of the old order would continue to be operative, posing a constant threat to the process of reform and regeneration.
Aung San Suu Kyi

[flowperson]

Yes...perhaps the greatest ongoing injustice against any single individual in the recent past has been her "house arrest and detainment" by her military masters for the past decade or so. She wasn't even allowed to follow her husband, a British national, to England to be with him before he died of cancer some years ago.

Just an utter disgrace that the powerful of the world didn't come to her verbal defense until just the past few days, and not until holy people are now being openly abused and are dying in the streets of Myanmar/Burma... and that only because they decided to enter into peaceful protests. I am so ashamed for the so-called human race.

flow....

[Pathless]

"Wherever you find injustice, the proper form of politeness is attack."

--T-Bone Slim

[Pathless]

"By what standard of morality can the violence used by a slave to break his chains be considered the same as the violence of a slave master.... Violence aimed at the recovery of human dignity and at equality cannot be judged by the same yardstick as violence aimed at maintenance of discrimination and oppression."

--Walter Rodney, Grounding with My Brothers (1969)

[Pathless]

"You can't have capitalism without racism."

"Revolution is bloody, revolution is hostile, revolution knows no compromise, revolution overturns and destroys everything that get in its way."

"We are humbling ourselves, sitting-in, and begging-in, trying to unite with the slavemaster!"

--Malcolm X

[Pathless]

"I believe there will ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those who do the oppressing. I believe there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice, and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the system of exploitation. I believe that there will be that kind of clash, but I don't think it will be based on the color of the skin."

--Malcolm X

[Pathless]