Reply #24: Here's a collection of quotations that especially resonate for this [View All]

[Nothing Without Hope]

I posted them in UnderstandingLife's excellent thread which you linked to above, but since this thread is also about hope and overcoming powerful and corrupt opponents, I'll list them again here. I like to savor each one; it's like each shows a different piece of what we need to be. I hope you enjoy them too.

"The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppose." -- Frederick Douglass

"You have to make more noise than anybody else, you have to make yourself more obtrusive than anybody else, you have to fill all the papers more than anybody else, in fact you have to be there all the time and see that they do not snow you under, if you are really going to get your reform realized." -- Emmeline Pankhurst

"There is one thing you have got to learn about our movement. Three people are better than no people." -- Fannie Lou Hamer

"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." "During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell

"I am in earnest - I will not equivocate - I will not excuse - I will not retreat a single inch - and I will be heard." --William Lloyd Garrison

"You can't wring your hands and roll up your sleeves at the same time." -- Pat Schroeder

In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit. –Albert Schweitzer, philosopher, physician, and musician (1875-1965)

"To those who have called me a coward I say that they are wrong, and that without knowing it, they are also right. They are wrong when they think that I left the war for fear of being killed. I admit that fear was there, but there was also the fear of killing innocent people, the fear of putting myself in a position where to survive means to kill, there was the fear of losing my soul in the process of saving my body, the fear of losing myself to my daughter, to the people who love me, to the man I used to be, the man I wanted to be. I was afraid of waking up one morning to realize my humanity had abandoned me." -- Sgt. Camilo Mejia, who served one year in prison for refusing to return to fight in Iraq. He was released from prison Feb. 15, 2005.

"Those who insist on the dignity of their office show they have not deserved it." --Baltasar Gracian, philosopher and writer (1601-1658)

"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers." --Thomas Pynchon, writer (1937- )

"The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth becomes the greatest enemy of the State." ?--Dr. Joseph M. Goebbels

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." --President Theodore Roosevelt

"The antidote to exhaustion is wholeheartedness." --Brother David Stendahl-Rast

"Nothing so completely baffles one who is full of trick and duplicity himself, than straightforward and simple integrity in another." -–Charles Caleb Colton, author and clergyman (1780-1832)

"In war, there are no unwounded soldiers." --Jose Narosky, writer

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." -- Margaret Mead

"Either the world was not so huge and frightening a place as she'd once been led to believe, or else...she was not so small and helpless as she'd once been encouraged to imagine herself. If power was an illusion, wasn't weakness necessarily one also?" -–Lois McMaster Bujold (Civil Campaign, epilogue)

"There are no enlightened persons, just enlightened actions." --Suzuki Roshi

"Every civilizing step in history has been ridiculed as 'sentimental', 'impractical', or 'womanish', etc., by those whose fun, profit or convenience was at stake." --Joan Gilbert (1931- )

"We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee." -- Marian Wright Edelman

"When the water starts boiling it is foolish to turn off the heat." -- Nelson Mandela

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching. It unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. The money powers prays upon the nation in times of peace and conspires against it in times of adversity. It denounces, as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes. Corporations have been enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in the hands of a few, and the Republic is destroyed." --Abraham Lincoln (1864)(I'm not certain that this source is correct.)

"A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government." --Edward Abbey

"You Must be the Change you Wish to see in the world" --Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

"You desire to know the art of living, my friend? It is contained in one phrase: make use of suffering." --Henri Frederic Amiel, philosopher and writer (1821-1881)