"Justice, justice, you shall pursue"
Deuteronomy 16:20
"The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understands the minds of other men and women"
Learned Hand
“So let us regard this as settled: what is morally wrong can never be advantageous,
even when it enables you to make some gain that you believe to be to your advantage. The mere act of
believing that some wrongful course of action constitutes an advantage is pernicious.”
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.)
"Nothing from nothing ever yet was born."
Lucretius, On the Nature of Things
"What we have to learn to do we learn by doing"
Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea II (c 325 BC)
"The military...has more money than anyone else, and when its vast funds
are added to those of the industries it deals with, it seems to have about
all the money there is."
Richard Rovere, writing in the New Yorker,
quoted by William Fulbright in The Pentagon Propaganda Machine
"Be obscure clearly."
E.B. White (1899-1985)
"Only one man ever understood me; and he did not understand me either."
Hegel [while lying on his death bed]
"I believe . . . that all the measures of the Government are directed
to the purpose of making the rich richer and the poor poorer."
William Henry Harrison, U.S. president, Oct. 10, 1840
"The fruits of the toil of millions are boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes for a few."
Populist Party platform, 1892
"In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful
for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican."
H. L. Mencken
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
Martin Luther King (1929-68)
Letter from Birmingham
Jail, 16 April 1963
"What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to
put it on?"
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
"Thousands have lived without love, not one without water."
W.H. Auden
"Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship."
Harry S Truman (1884-1972)
"Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river."
Nikita Khrushchev
"A truth told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent."
William Blake (1757-1827)
"We live entangled in webs of endless deceit, we live in a highly
indoctrinated society where elementary truths are easily buried."
Noam Chomsky
"Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud, hatch out."
Robert Graves, I, Claudius, 1934
"Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power
to make you commit atrocities."
Voltaire
"No free people can lose their liberties while they are jealous of liberty. But the liberties of the freest people are in danger when they set up symbols of liberty as fetishes, worshipping the symbol instead of the principle it represents."
Wendell Phillips
"Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives. A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy or perhaps both."
James Madison
Fourth President of the United States
"If you can't lie, you'll never go anywhere"
Richard M. Nixon
quoted in Vietnam by Stanley Karnow
"As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to
kindle a light in the darkness of mere being."
Carl Jung (1875-1961)
Erinnerungen, Traume, Gedanken
We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes.
I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me
in those eyes - something known only to her and the mountain. I was young then,
and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because there were fewer wolves meant
more deer, that no wolves would mean a hunters' paradise. But after seeing the
green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.
Aldo Leopold
"If the ends don't justify the means, what does?"
Robert Moses, "the autocratic New York builder who never let public opinion get in the way of his bulldozing"
"Perfection of means and confusion of ends seem to characterize our
age."
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking... the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.
Albert Einstein
"There must be more to life than having everything."
Maurice Sendak
"A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never
overcome them."
Carl Jung
"Never explain -- your friends do not need it and your enemies will
not believe you anyway. "
Elbert Hubbard (1859-1915) The Motto Book (1907)
"True and False are attributes of speech, not of things. And where
speech is not, there is neither Truth nor Falsehood."
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)
Leviathan (1651)
"When an actor comes to me and wants to discuss his character, I say,
'It's in the script.' If he says, 'But what's my motivation?, ' I say,
'Your salary.' "
Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980)
"I've always wanted to be somebody, but now I see I should have been more
specific."
Jane Wagner
"If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a
better moustrap than his neighbor, though he builds his house in the woods
the world will make a beaten path to his door."
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
"Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue."
La Rochefoucald
"Humility, like darkness, reveals the heavenly lights."
Thoreau
"Humility is to make a right estimate of one's self."
Spurgeon
"Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do."
Bertrand Russell
"Jesus was a Jew, yes, but only on his mother's side."
Stanley Ralph Ross
"Remember, no one can make you feel inferior
without your consent."
Eleanor Roosevelt
"...Then anyone who leaves behind him a written manual, and likewise
anyone who receives it, in the belief that such writing will be clear and
certain, must be exceedingly simple-minded..."
Plato, Phaedrus
"I refuse to be intimidated by reality any
more. After all, what is reality anyway? Nothin'
but a collective hunch. . . I made some studies,
and reality is the leading cause of stress among
those in touch with it."
Jane Wagner
"I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act;
but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act."
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936)
"The community which does not protect its humblest and most hated member
in the free utterance of his opinions, no matter how false or hateful,
is only a gang of slaves. If there is anything in the universe that can't
stand discussion, let it crack."
Wendell Phillips (1811-1884),
American abolitionist, speech, 1863
"I was walking across a bridge one day, and i saw a man standing on
the edge, about to jump off. So I ran over and said "stop! don't do it!"
"Why shouldn't I?" he said. I said, "Well, there's so much to live for!"
He said, "Like what?" I said, "Well...are you religious or atheist?" He
said, "Religious." I said, "Me too! Are you christian or buddhist?" He
said, "Christian." I said, "Me too! Are you catholic or protestant?" He
said, "Protestant." I said, "Me too! Are you episcopalian or baptist?"
He said, "Baptist!" I said, "Wow! Me too! Are you baptist church of god
or baptist church of the lord?" He said, "Baptist church of god!" I said,
"Me too! Are you original baptist church of god, or are you reformed baptist
church of god?" He said, "Reformed baptist church of god!" I said, "Me
too! Are you reformed baptist church of god, reformation of 1879, or reformed
baptist church of god, reformation of 1915?" He said, "Reformed baptist
church of god, reformation of 1915!" I said, "Die, heretic scum", and pushed
him off."
Emo Phillips
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from
a religious conviction"
Pascal, Pensees (1670)
"My reason taught me that I could not have made one of my own qualities-
they were forced upon me by Nature; that my language, religion, and habits
were forced upon me by Society; and that I was entirely the child of Nature
and Society; that Nature gave the qualities and Society directed them.
Thus was I forced, through seeing the error of their foundation, to abandon
all belief in every religion which had been taught by man."
Robert Owen (1771-1858)
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher
esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
Nietzsche The Dawn (1881)
"Mystical explanations are considered deep. The truth is that they are
not even superficial."
Friedrich Nietzsche
"The belief that the world as it ought to be is, really exists, is a
belief of the unproductive who do not desire to create a world as it ought
to be."
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power
"Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself."
Elie Wiesel
"You see, we are losing the war because we can salute too well."
Katczinsky in
Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front (1928)
" 'There are no atheists in foxholes' isn't an argument against atheism,
it's an argument against foxholes."
James Morrow
"Only a great cynic would be an optimist these
days."
Milan Kundera
"Metaphysics is almost always an attempt to prove the incredible by
an appeal to the unintelligible."
H.L. Mencken, "Prejudices"
"That's what show business is for -- to prove
that it's not what you are that counts, it's what
they think you are."
Andy Warhol
"I don't want to achieve immortality through my
work ... I want to achieve it through not dying."
Woody Allen
"Better sleep with a sober cannibal that a drunken Christian."
Herman Melville
Q. Well, what do you make, General, of the principle of the people's right to know...?
A. I don't believe in that as a general principle.
Ambassador Maxwell D. Taylor,
interviewed on the CBS morning news, June 17, 1971
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike."
Delo McKown
"I feel most ministers who claim they've heard God's voice are eating
too much pizza before they go to bed at night, and it's really an intestinal
disorder, not a revelation."
Jerry Falwell
"My experience tells me that, instead of bothering about how the whole
world may live in the right manner, we should think how we ourselves may
do so. We do not even know whether the world lives in the right manner
or in a wrong manner. If, however, we live in the right manner, we shall
feel that others also do the same, or shall discover a way of persuading
them to do so."
Mahatma Gandhi
"When a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice,
I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and the purity of
its heart. I have generally found the gravest and most useful citizens
are not the easiest provoked to swell the noise, though they may
be punctual at the polls."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
"One of the great attractions of patriotism --
it fulfills our worst wishes. In the person of our nation we are able,
vicariously, to bully and cheat. Bully and cheat, what's more, with a feeling
that we are profoundly virtuous."
Aldous Huxley
"Non co-operation with evil is as much a duty as co-operation with good."
Mahatma Gandhi
"Real Swaraj will come, not by the acquisition of authority by a few,
but by the acquisition of the capacity by all to resist authority when
it is abused."
Mahatma Gandhi
"The reward of a thing well done is to have done it."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Behind every great fortune there lies a great crime."
Honore de Balzac
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary
act."
George Orwell
"He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned
my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for
him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization
should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality,
deplorable love-of-country stance, how violently I hate all this, how despicable
and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part
of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak
of war is nothing but an act of murder."
Albert Einstein
"War is a cooperative form of theft."
Genghis Khan
"The lion and the lamb shall lie down together,
but the lamb won't get much sleep."
Woody Allen
"Let all the world learn to give mortal man no greater power than they
are content they shall use, for use it they will."
John Cotton
"We are constantly invited to be what we are."
Henry David Thoreau
"In philosophy, if you're not moving at a
snail's pace, you're not moving at all."
Dame Iris Murdoch
"There is only one supreme, overriding issue confronting the American
public today -- one critical issue that affects, and is affected by, everything
else we do as a nation or as individuals. Whether we call that issue by
the name of national security, or foreign policy, or the quest for peace,
the fact remains that in this nuclear age no other public matter touches
all of our lives so directly and so decisively."
John F. Kennedy
"...no state may use or encourage the use of coercive measures of an
economic or political character in order to force the sovereign will of
another state and obtain from it advantages of any kind."
Charter of
the Organization of American States (OAS)
"Lately, the language of government, always revealing, grows more and
more fierce and commanding (due to so many lost wars? so much money wasted?),
and military metaphors abound as czars lead all-out wars on drugs. Yet,
at the risk of causing both offense and embarrassment among even the not-so-faithful,
I feel obliged to say that I do not accept the authority of any state --
much less one founded as was ours upon the free fulfillment of each citizen
-- to forbid me, or anyone, the use of drugs, cigarettes, alcohol, sex
with a consenting partner or, if one is a woman, the right to an abortion.
I take these rights to be absolute and should the few persist in their
efforts to dominate the private lives of the many, I recommend force as
a means of changing their minds."
Gore Vidal -- The Nation August, 1989
"I am a red man. If the Great Spirit had desired me to be a white man he
would have made me so in the first place. He put in your heart certain wishes
and plans, in my heart he put other and different desires. Each man is good in
his sight. It is not necessary for Eagles to be Crows. We are poor..but we are
free. No white man controls our footsteps. If we must die...we die defending
our rights."
Sitting Bull, Hunkpapa Sioux
"Whatever the advantage of a highly organized system of mechanical production,
based on non-human sources of power -- and, as everyone recognized, there
are many advantages -- the system itself tends to grow more rigid, more
unadaptable, more dehumanized in proportion to the increase in its automation
and in its extrusion of the worker from the process of production."
Lewis Mumford
"I should be rightly condemned for a madman if I should dispute with madmen."
Boethius
"The hypothesis that man is not free is essential to the application
of scientific method to the study of human behavior. The free inner man
who is held responsible for the behavior of the external biological organism
is only a prescientific substitute for the kinds of causes which are discovered
in a scientific analysis. All these causes lie outside the individual."
B. F. Skinner, Science and Human Behavior
"We can choose to use our growing knowledge to enslave people in ways
never dreamed of before, depersonalizing them, controlling them by means
so carefully selected that they will perhaps never be aware of their loss
of personhood. We can choose to utilize our scientific knowledge to make
men necessarily happy, well-behaved, and productive, as Dr. Skinner suggests...
If we choose to utilize our scientific knowledge to free men, then it will
demand that we live openly and frankly with the great paradox of the behavioral
sciences. We will recognize that behavior, when examined scientifically,
is surely best understood as determined by prior causation. This is the
great fact of science.
But responsible personal choice, which is the most
essential element in being a person, which is the core of experience in
psychotherapy, which exists prior to any scientific endeavor, is an equally
prominent fact in our lives."
Carl Rogers
"To have just one value is to be a machine."
Charles Reich, The Greening of America, 1970
"Logic is the art of going wrong with confidence."
WH Auden
"All philosophy is 'critique of language' . . .
Philosophy is not a theory but an activity . . .
Everything that can be said can be said clearly .
. . In order to draw a limit to thinking, we
should have to be able to think both sides of
this limit."
Ludwig Wittgenstein
"Philosopy is a battle against the bewitchment
of our intelligence by means of language."
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
[speaking of the Promethean individual] "Every time he attempts a fresh
effort of foresight he risks offense to the established chain of command
in society. He is more easily forgiven if he restricts his powers to the
task of predicting the behavior of physical matter. If he extends this
to the science of man, he sets up an automatic malaise in the machine of
society, and provokes active distrust and antagonism from those who enjoy
operating it.... Working in actual history, the Promethean intellect can
never be repaid in kind for its services, for if it were, the services
would be recognized in the category of the familiar; and its objectives,
to be familiar, would have to be short range. They would therefore lose
that touch of imaginative science which makes them Promethean."
Eric
Havelock, Prometheus (essay, Univ. of Wahington Press, 1968)
"Death squads are an extremely effective tool, however odious, in combating
terrorism and revolutionary challenges."
Neil Livingstone, consultant
who worked with Oliver North at the National Security Council, in reviewing
US policy in El Salvador in the early 1980's. Quoted in 3/28/93 Washington
Post Article by Jefferson Morley
"...ask moreover, when they prate
Of evil men past hope,
"Don't each contrive,
Despite the evil you abuse, to live?
-- Keeping, each losel, through a maze of lies,
His own conceit of truth? to which he hies
By obscure windings, tortuous, if you will,
But to himself not inaccessible;
He sees truth, and his lies are for the crowd
Who cannot see; some fancied right allowed
His vilest wrong....
Robert Browning "Sordello" (III. 787-95)
"There is no greater indictment of judges than
the fact that honest men are afraid to go into court, while
criminals swagger out its revolving doors."
Thomas Sowell
"For every thousand hacking at the leaves of evil, there is one striking
at the root."
Henry David Thoreau
"A Criminal is a person with predatory instincts without sufficient
capital to form a corporation."
Clarence Darrow
"If there is no struggle, there is no progress.... Power concedes nothing
without demand. It never did and it never will."
Frederick Douglass
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral,
begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil,
it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot
murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you murder the
hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate... .
Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness
to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness;
only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: Only love can do that."
Martin Luther King, Jr
"But what if I fail of my purpose here? It is but to keep the nerves
at strain, To dry one's eyes and laugh at a fall, And baffled, get up and
begin again, -- So the chace takes up one's live, that's all."
Robert Browning
"And it shall go hard but I contrive
To listen the while, and laugh in my tomb
At idleness which aspires to strive."
Robert Browning
"The certain prospect of death could sweeten every life with a precious
and fragrant drop of levity--and now you strange apothecary souls have
turned it into an ill-tasting drop of poison that makes the whole of life
repulsive."
Nietzsche, 75 Aphorisms
"Someone has somewhere commented on the fact that millions long for immortality
who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon."
Susan Ertz (1894-1985) Anger in the Sky (1943)
"To fear the worst oft cures the worst."
William Shakespeare
"When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything begins to look
like a nail."
Abraham Maslow
"Even if you learn to speak correct English, who are you going to speak
it to?"
Clarence Darrow
"The ancient who desired to illustrate illustrious virtue throughtout
the empire, first ordered well their own state. Wishing to order well their
own state, they first regulated their families. Wishing to regulate their
families, they first cultivated their own persons. Wishing to cultivate
their persons, they first rectified their heart. Wishing to rectify their
hearts, they first sought to be sincere in their thoughts. Wishing to be
sincere in their thoughts, they extended their knowledge to the utmost;
and this extension of knowledge lay in the investigation of things. Things
being investigated, knowledge became complete. Their knowledge being complete,
their thoughts were sincere. Their thoughts being sincere, their hearts
were then rectified. Their heart being rectified, their persons were cultivated.
Their persons being cultivated, their familes were regulated. Their family
being regulated, their states were rightly governed. Their states being
rightly governed, their whole empire was made tranquil and happy. From
the emperor down to the mass of the people, all must consider the cultivation
of the person, the root of everything besides."
Confucius
"...the more a subject is understood, the more briefly it may be explained."
Thomas Jefferson, [American revolutionary leader, 1816]
"History has shown that the people always win because the people create history."
Krishna Bahadur Mahara [Nepalese revolutionary leader, 2002]
"When men have come to the edge of a precipice, it is the lover of life
who has the spirit to leap backwards, and only the pessimist who continues
to believe in progress."
G.K. Chesterton 11/8/24
"Angels fly because they take themselves so lightly"
G.K. Chesterton
"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly:
what is essential is invisible to the eye."
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"There is one God looking down on us all. We are all the children of one God.
The sun, the darkness, the winds are all listening to what we have to say."
Geronimo
"If we took as much trouble to be what we should be as we take to deceive
others by disguising what we are, we could appear as we really are without
having the trouble of disguising ourselves."
Sable
"There are particular moments in public affairs when the people, stimulated by some irregular passion, or some illicit advantage, or misled by the artful misrepresentations of interested men, may call for measures which they themselves will afterwards be most ready to lament and condemn. In these critical moments, how salutary will be the interference of some temperate and respectable body of citizens, in order to check the misguided career and to suspend the blow meditated by the people against themselves, until reason, justice and truth can regain their authority over the public mind"
James Madison. Federalist No. 63.
"The American people will support this operation until body bags come home."
Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael Dugan, in interview that led to his dismissal, 1990
"Eternal nothingness is okay if you're dressed for it."
Woody Allen
"Life begins on the other side of despair."
Jean-Paul Sartre
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed people can change
the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has."
Margaret Mead
"If you ever reach total enlightenment while you're drinking a
beer, I bet it makes beer shoot out of your nose"
Jack Handey (Al Franken)
"Business!" cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. Mankind was my
business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy,
forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but
a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!"
The ghost of Jacob Marley to Scrooge "A Christmas Carol" By Charles Dickens
When the ax entered the forest, the trees said, "The handle is one of us!"
Turkish proverb
"Small rooms or dwellings set the mind in the right path, large ones
cause it to go astray."
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
"I am not sure what it means when one says that he is a conservative
in fiscal affairs and a liberal in human affairs. I assume what it means
is that you will strongly recommend the building of a great many schools
to accommodate the needs of our children, but not provide the money."
Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965), at a Chicago press conference, 1954
"War, like any other racket, pays high dividends to the very few. .
. . The cost of operations is always transferred to the people who do not
profit."
General Smedley Butler (1881-1940)
"Liberals feel unworthy of their possessions. Conservatives feel they
deserve everything they've stolen."
Mort Sahl
"To strike freedom of the mind with the fist of patriotism is an old
and ugly subtlety."
Adlai Stevenson
"Every government is run by liars and nothing they say should be believed."
I. F. Stone
"We are much beholden to Machiavelli and others,
that write what men do, and not what they ought to do."
Francis Bacon
"I think, then, that the species of oppression by which democratic nations
are menaced is unlike anything that ever before existed."
Alexis de Tocqueville
"We who are liberal and progressive know that the poor are our equals
in every sense except that of being equal to us."
Lionel Trilling
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear
is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our
darkness, that frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant,
gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?
"Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened
about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.
As we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission
to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fears, our presence automatically
liberates others."
Nelson Mandela, 1994 Inaugural Speech
"Find out just what people will quietly submit to, and you have
found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them,
and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows. The
limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
Frederick Douglass, African-American slave, and later abolitionist
"I swear that I will support Caesar Augustus, his children and descendants,
throughout my life, in word, deed and thought...that in whatsoever concerns them
I will spare neither body nor soul nor life nor children...that whatsoever I see
or hear of anything being said, planned or done against them I will report it...
and whomsoever they regard as enemies I will attack and pursue with arms and the sword and by sea."
-- Oath of allegiance by citizens of Paphlagonia to the Caesarian house.
"The beast represents the military and political power of the Roman Emperors. Babylon is the city of Rome in all her prosperity gained by economic exploitation of the Empire….The beast and the harlot are intimately related. The harlot rides on the beast (17:3), because the prosperity of the city of Rome at the Empire's expense and her corrupting influence over the Empire rests on the power achieved and maintained by the imperial armies."
-- Richard Bauckham, The Theology of the Book of Revelation
"I will tell you that in my time, I never saw anything
come out of fighting that was worth the fight."
-- US General Anthony Zinni, October 10, 2002
"We cannot build peaceful relationships by killing
each other's children."
-- Jimmy Carter,
Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech, Dec. 10, 2002
"The gospel of monarchical republicanism is 'The King can do no wrong.'
We have adopted it with all its servility, with an important change in the wording,
'Our country, right or wrong!' We thrown away the most valuable asset we had
-- the individual's right to oppose both flag and country when he
(just he himself) believed them to be wrong.
We have thrown it away; and with it all that was really respectable about that
grotesque and laughable word; patriotism."
-- Mark Twain
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
How Piercefully Grows the Hazy Yon!
How Myrtle Detailed Tho.
For Spring Hath Sprung the Cyclotron!
How High Browse Tho, Brown Cow?
Churchy La Femme (Walt Kelly), 1950
