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Cybertelecom
Federal Internet Law & Policy
An Educational Project
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Notes :: Quotes :: Politics and Justice and other stuff |
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Cybertelecom News regularly leads with technology related quotations. This is the collection from which those quotations are pulled. I have been doing this for over a decade and most of these quotes I have obtained from multiple sources. Occassionally I note where one of the sources comes from.
Animals
No animal should ever jump up on the dining-room furniture unless absolutely certain that he can hold his own in the conversation." -Fran Lebowitz
"If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went."-Will Rogers
"Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden , where doing nothing was not boring--it was peace." - Milan Kundera
"A dog teaches a boy fidelity, perseverance, and to turn around three times before lying down." -Robert Benchley
Outside a dog, a book is man's best friend; and inside a dog, it's too dark to read. - Grocho Marx
"We give dogs time we can spare, space we can spare and love we can spare. And in return, dogs give us their all. It's the best deal man has ever made."-M. Facklam
"If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons." -James Thurber
"I wonder if other dogs think poodles are members of a weird religious cult."-Rita Rudner
"Dogs need to sniff the ground; it's how they keep abreast of current events. The ground is a giant dog newspaper, containing all kinds of late-breaking dog news items, which, if they are especially urgent, are often continued in the next yard." -Dave Barry
"Anybody who doesn't know what soap tastes like never washed a dog." -Franklin P. Jones
"If your dog is fat, you aren't getting enough exercise." -Unknown
"Ever consider what they must think of us? I mean, here we come back from a grocery store with the most amazing haul -- chicken, pork, half a cow. They must think we're the greatest hunters on earth!" -Anne Tyler
Future
The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to an idealised past. - Robertson Davies
I don't have to write about the future. For most people, the present is enough like the future to be pretty scary. - William Gibson
He who controls the past commands the future. He who commands the future conquers the past. - George Orwell
I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past. - Thomas Jefferson
The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is. -- CS Lewis
Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future. - Paul Boese
Humility
Humility makes great men twice honorable - Benjamin Franklin
"The need for a rational consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Inspirational
Aim at Heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you will get neither. - CS Lewis.
The only real failure in life is not to be true to the best one knows. -Buddha
"It's kind of fun to do the impossible." - Walt Disney
Imagination is more important than knowledge. --- Albert Einstein
We are all of us in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. - Oscar Wilde
"Dinosaurs were highly successful and lasted a long time. They never went away. They became smaller, faster, and more agile, and now we call them birds." Mark Halper in Forbes ASAP, June 2, 1997. Source: Isen
To hope is to risk frustration. Make up your mind to risk frustration. -Thomas Merton
Your work is to discover your work, and then, with all of your heart, to give yourself to it. - Dhammapada
Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment. -Buddha
"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not." --Dr. Seuss, from The Lorax
The webs of a spider, when joined together, can stop a lion. - Ethiopian Proverb
Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great. - Mark Twain
"In the end, it's extra effort that separates a winner from second place. But winning takes a lot more than that, too. It starts with complete command of the fundamentals. Then it takes desire, determination, discipline, and self-sacrifice. And finally, it takes a great deal of love, fairness and respect for your fellow man. Put all of these together, and even if you don't win, how can you lose?" - Jesse Owen
"Don't Let the Bastards Get You Down." Gen. Joseph Stilwell
Never Never Never Quit! - Churchill.
The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. -- Eleanor Roosevelt
Things do come to those who wait, but only things left over from those that hustle. - Abraham Lincoln
Justice
"When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses, for art establishes the basic human truths which must serve as the touchstone of our judgment." John F. Kennedy, 1963
The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood. --Martin Luther King, Jr.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. You can't separate peace from freedom because none can be at peace unless they have their freedom. - Malcolm X, 1965
"When you fly, you are inspected quite thoroughly - where as the plane itself is, perhaps, occasionally vacuumed. You see, with this Administration, if a passenger blows up a plane, it is a failure in the war on terror. But if the plane just blows up itself, m'eh it's the market self regulating." - John Stewart, April 2008
Our task is not to fix the blame for the past, but to fix the course for the future. - JFK
How soon we forget history . . . Government is not reason. Government is not eloquence. It is force. And, like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. - George Washington
Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness. - George Washington
"When the power of love becomes stronger than the love of power, we will have peace." - Jimi Hendrix
"Somebody has to do something, and it's just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us." - Jerry Garcia
To be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others. - Nelson Mandela
The danger to political dissent is acute where the Government attempts to act under so vague a concept as the power to protect 'domestic security.' Given the difficulty of defining the domestic security interest, the danger of abuse in acting to protect that interest becomes apparent." - US Supreme Court quote in ACLU brief blacked out by USDOJ
"It is not the function of our Government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the Government from falling into error." - U.S. Supreme Court in American Communications Association v. Douds, 339 U.S. 382,442
"I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of society but the people themselves, and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion." - Thomas Jefferson
Every civilization carries the seeds of its own destruction, and the same cycle shows in them all. The Republic is born, flourishes, decays into plutocracy, and is captured by the shoemaker whom the mercenaries and millionaires make into a king. The people invent their oppressors, and the oppressors serve the function for which they are invented. - Mark Twain in Eruption
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power. - Abraham Lincoln
"People seldom do what they believe in. They do what is convenient, then repent." - Bob Dylan
"Any time we deny any citizen the full exercise of his constitutional rights, we are weakening our own claim to them." -- Dwight David Eisenhower, 1963
It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small. - Neil Armstrong
"Be the change you wish to see in the world." - Mohandas Gandhi
You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do. -- Eleanor Roosevelt:
Ultimately we know deeply that the other side of every fear is a freedom. -- Marilyn Ferguson
What did the president know and when did he know it? -Sen. Howard Baker (Watergate)
Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all. - George Washington
"If we are to violate the Constitution, will the people submit to our unauthorized acts? Sir, they ought not to submit; they would deserve the chains that these measures are forging for them. The country will swarm with informers, spies, delators and all the odious reptile tribe that breed in the sunshine of a despotic power . . . [T]he hours of the most unsuspected confidence, the intimacies of friendship, or the recesses of domestic retirement afford no security. The companion whom you most trust, the friend in whom you must confide, the domestic who waits in your chamber, all are tempted to betray your imprudent or unguarded follie; to misrepresent your words; to convey them, distorted by calumny, to the secret tribunal where jealousy presides - where fear officiates as accuser and suspicion is the only evidence that is heard . . . Do not let us be told, Sir, that we excite a fervour against foreign aggression only to establish a tyranny at home; that [ . . . ] we are absurd enough to call ourselves 'free and enlightened' while we advocate principles that would have disgraced the age of Gothic barbarity and establish a code compared to which the ordeal is wise and the trial by battle is merciful and just."- Edward Livingston, opposing the Alien & Sedition bills of 1798, in Congress
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? - Juvenal AD c.60 - c.130
"Deserve it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends." Gandalf in "The Fellowship of the Ring" by J.R.R. Tolkien
"If you have an apple and I have an apple and we each exchange these apples, then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas." - George Bernard Shaw
" Nuremberg taught me that creating a world of tolerance and compassion would be a long and arduous task. And I also learned that if we did not devote ourselves to developing effective world law, the same cruel mentality that made the Holocaust possible might one day destroy the entire human race." -- Ben Ferencz, prosecutor at World War II Nuremberg Trials
Politics are usually the executive expression of human immaturity. - Vera Brittain
When we are really honest with ourselves, we must admit that our lives are all that really belong to us. So it how we use our lives that determines what kind of men we are. Only by giving of our lives do we find life.. The truest act of courage, the strongest act of manliness, is to sacrifice ourselves for others. - Cesar Chavez
Mankind's survival is dependent on man's ability to solve the problems of racial injustice, poverty, and war; the solution of these problems is in turn dependent upon man's squaring his moral progress with his scientific progress, and learning the practical art of living in harmony. - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1964).
"At a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell
"We can not have free government without elections; and if the rebellion could force us to forego, or postpone a national election it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us." - Abraham Lincoln
Communications and commerce are global; investment is mobile; technology is almost magical; and ambition for a better life is now universal. We earn our livelihood in peaceful competition with people all across the earth. Profound and powerful forces are shaking and remaking our world, and the urgent question of our time is whether we can make change our friend and not our enemy. --Bill Clinton 1st Inaugural Speech, 1993
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident." - Arthur Schopenhauer
War Is Peace,
Freedom Is Slavery,
Ignorance Is Strength
~~ Big Brother (1984)
"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have . . . The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases." - Thomas Jefferson
"If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other." - Mother Teresa
"Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day." - Theodore Roosevelt, April 19, 1906
A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular. - Adlai Ewing Stevenson
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. - George Bernard Shaw
Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter. - African proverb
It's dangerous to be right when the government is wrong. - Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire
Peace begins with a smile. - Mother Teresa
All the territorial possessions of all the political establishments in the earth--including America , of course-- consist of pilferings from other people's wash. No tribe, howsoever insignificant, and no nation, howsoever mighty occupies a foot of land that was not stolen. - Mark Twain
The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty, and all forms of human life. - John F. Kennedy
"What good fortune for governments that the people do not think." - Adolph Hitler
"To tell the truth is revolutionary." - Antonio Gramsci
We can do no great things; only small things with great love." -- Mother Teresa
"You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence." C.A. Beard
"When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist." - Dom Helder Camara
As Mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality. - George Washington
It is time for us to reaffirm and to strengthen our ethical and spiritual and political beliefs. There must be no lowering of these standards, no acceptance of mediocrity in any aspect of our private or public lives. The best way for our leaders to restore their credibility is to be credible, and in order for us to be trusted we must be trustworthy! . . . Our government can and must represent the best and highest ideals of those of use who voluntarily submit to its authority. - Jimmy Carter, Why Not the Best, 1975
For in the final analysis, our most basic common link, is that we all inhabit this small planet, we all breathe the same air, we all cherish our children's futures, and we are all mortal. - John F. Kennedy, June 10, 1963
All people are a single nation. - The Qu'ran
The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. The trite subjects of human efforts, possessions, outward success, luxury have always seemed to me contemptible. - Albert Einstein
Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value. Albert Einstein
In the execution of such a plan, nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable, when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence, frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. The nation, prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the government, contrary to the best calculations of policy. The government sometimes participates in the national propensity, and adopts through passion what reason would reject; at other times it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of nations, has been the victim. - George Washington, Farewell Address
"We must see the great distinction between a reform movement and a revolutionary movement. We are called upon to raise certain basic questions about the whole society . . . . What America must be told today is that she must be born again. The whole structure of American life must be changed." - Martin Luther King Jr.
These are times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. - Thomas Paine 1776
"Goodness is stronger than evil;
Love is stronger than hate;
Light is stronger than darkness;
Victory is ours through him who loves us." -Archbishop Desmond Tutu
Although the world is very full of suffering, it is also full of overcoming it. -Helen Keller
Man can will nothing unless he has first understood that he must count on no one but himself; that he is alone, abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aim than the one he sets himself, with no other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this earth. - Jean Paul Sartre; 1905-1980
"Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience . . . Therefore [individual citizens] have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring" -Nuremberg War Crime Tribunal, 1950
"Recall the face of the poorest and most helpless person you have seen and ask yourself if the next step you contemplate is going to be of any use to that person." -Mohandas Gandhi
We shall hew out of a mountain of despair, a stone of hope. -Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Poverty is the worst form of violence." - Gandhi
Freedom / Liberty
Freedom is the right to question and change the established way of doing things. It is the understanding that allows us to recognize shortcomings and seek solutions. It is the right to put forth an idea, scoffed at by the experts, and watch it catch fire among the people. It is the right to dream-to follow your dream or to stick to your conscience, even if you're the only one in a sea of doubters. Freedom is the recognition that no single person, no single authority or government has a monopoly on the truth, but that every individual life is infinitely precious. - Ronald Reagan, 1988
"If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein." - Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson , West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943)
"It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad." - James Madison
The history of American freedom is, in no small measure, the history of procedure. - US Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter
"Only the educated are free." - Epictetus
There ought to be limits to freedom - George W. Bush
But freedom is not enough. You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: Now you are free to go where you want, and do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please. You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, "you are free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates. - Lyndon Johnson
The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any. - Alice Walker
The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion. - Edmund Burke
"Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of it's waters . . . .power concedes nothing without a demand . . . it never did, it never will. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows or both . . . The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress." - Frederick Douglass
" Liberty is the air that we Americans breathe. Our government is based on the belief that a people can be both strong and free, that civilized men need no restraint but that imposed by themselves against the abuse of freedom." - Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."- U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis (1856-1941)
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania , 1759
Remembrance
Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak Whispers the o're-fraught heart, and bids it break. --William Shakespeare The Tragedy of Macbeth, IV, iii
Good friends we have had, oh good friends we've lost along the way
In this bright future you can't forget your past
So dry your tears I say
No woman, no cry
No woman, no cry
Little darlin' don't shed no tears
No woman, no cry
-- Bob Marley
Anger / Hatred
Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. -Buddha
Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule. -Buddha
Better than a thousand hollow words, is one word that brings peace. -Buddha
"Anger is never without a reason but seldom a good one." - Benjamin Franklin
Retaliation is counter-poison and poison breeds more poison. The nectar of Love alone can destroy the poison of hate. - Mahatma Gandhi
"Before you embark on a journey of revenge, first dig two graves." Confusious
Patriotism
"Guard against the postures of pretended patriotism"--George Washington
Tyranny
'No political truth is certainly of greater intrinsic value, or is stamped with the authority of more enlightened patrons of liberty, than that . . . the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands . . . may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.'" James Madison The Federalist Papers, No. 47
Indifference / Action
"The accomplice to the crime of corruption is frequently our own indifference." - Bess Myerson
To "do peace, you must get up off your apathy." -Yolanda King
Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them. - Frederick Douglass
"The citizen who thinks he sees that the commonwealth's political clothes are worn out, and yet holds his peace, and does not agitate for a new suit is disloyal; he is a traitor. That he may be the only one who thinks he sees this decay does not excuse him; it is his duty to agitate anyway." -Mark Twain
"The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality." - Dante
"If you see injustice and say nothing, you have taken the side of the oppressor." -Desmond Tutu
"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has his foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality." - Archbishop Desmond Tutu
"When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it." ---Eleanor Roosevelt
"First they arrested the Communists -- but I was not a Communist, so I did nothing. Then they came for the Social Democrats, but I was not a Social Democrat, so I did nothing. Then they arrested the trade unionists -- and I did nothing because I was not one. And then they came for the Jews and the Catholics, but I was neither a Jew nor a Catholic and I did nothing. At last they came and arrested me -- and there was no one left to do anything about it." -Nazi Prison Survivor: Rev. Martin Niemoller
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. - Plato
War / Peace
"There is no beauty in victory. Whoever calls it so delights in slaughter. Whoever delights in slaughter is not fit to rule."--Book of Tao
"All war is deception." - Sun-tzu
War is not nice. -Barbara Bush
"I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than are governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it."--Dwight D. Eisenhower
Over grown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty. - George Washington
But in modern war you will die like a dog for no good reason. --Ernest Hemingway
The past is prophetic in that it asserts loudly that wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows. - Martin Luther King Jr.
I have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded. I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed. I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war. - Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"No one is so foolish as to prefer to peace, war, in which, instead of sons burying their fathers, fathers bury their sons." ---Croesus, King of Lydia , in Herodotus' The Persian Wars
"I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." J. Robert Oppenheimer, inventor of the atom bomb, quoting the Bhagavad Gita
Great is the disgrace of an unnecessary war - John Adams
My first wish is to see this plague of mankind, war, banished from the earth. - George Washington
"Going in and occupying Iraq , thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land." - George H.W. Bush (Bush senior) and Brent Scowcroft in their 1998 book, A World Transformed.
When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader. - Plato
"Naturally, the common people don't want war, but after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country." - Hermann Goering. Hitler's Reich-Marshall at the Nuremberg Trials after WWII.
"You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out." Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, Letter to Mayor Calhoun of Atlanta and others September 12, 1864
"There is many a boy here who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell. You can bear this warning voice to generations to come." - Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman
"There is nothing that war has ever achieved we could not better achieve without it." - Havelock Ellis
"If you want to make peace, you don't talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies." -Moshe Dayan
What a cruel thing is war: to separate and destroy families and friends, and mar the purest joys and happiness God has granted us in this world; to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors, and to devastate the fair face of this beautiful world - Robert E Lee
Ideas more than once have prevailed against naked power. Guns and aircraft alone do not make a state powerful. Unless force is backed up by the will of the great body of people it loses its meaning. - Dwight D Eisenhower
"The question of whether we were misled into the war in Iraq isn't a liberal or conservative or Republican or Democratic question, it's an American one. Protecting the democracy that we ask our sons and daughters to die for is our responsibility and our trust. Demanding accountability from our leaders is our job as citizens. It's the American way. So may the truth win out." - Bruce Springsteen
"If in the first act you introduce a gun, by the third act you have to use it." - Anton Chekhov, Russian playwright
In a world gone mad it's hard to think right
So much violence hate and spite
Murder going on all day and night
Due time we fight the non-violent fight
- Beastie Boys, In a World Gone Mad
Peace, in the sense of the absence of war, is of little value to someone who is dying of hunger or cold. It will not remove the pain of torture inflicted on a prisoner of conscience.. Peace can only last where human rights are respected, where the people are fed, and where individuals and nations are free. -The Dalai Lama (1989).
"The problem of defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without."--Dwight D. Eisenhower
""It is a tragic mix-up when the United States spends $500,000 for every soldier killed and only $53 annually on the victims of poverty."-- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
"If everybody in the world says that they want peace how can we still have nuclear bombs? Somebody in the world must be lying."--Joan G, age 10, Please Save My World
"Whoever advises a ruler according to Tao opposes conquest by war. Policies of war tend to rebound."-- Book of Tao
"Whenever a great army is formed, hunger and evil follow."--Book Of Tao
"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, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be 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
"But peace does not rest in the charters and covenants alone. It lies in the hearts and minds of all people. So let us not rest all our hopes on parchment and on paper, let us strive to build peace, a desire for peace, a willingness to work for peace in the hearts and minds of all of our people. I believe that we can. I believe the problems of human destiny are not beyond the reach of human beings." -- John F. Kennedy
"There never was a good war or a bad peace." -- Benjamin Franklin
"I think that people want peace so much that one of these days government had better get out of their way and let them have it." -- Dwight Eisenhower (34th President of the United States )
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed." Dwight D Eisenhower
I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. --Albert Einstein
If we fix it so's you can't make money on war, We'll all forget what we're killing folks for. - Woody Guthrie, "Stetson Kennedy"
"War is a judgment that overtakes societies when they have been living upon ideas that conflict too violently with the laws governing the universe . . . . Never think that wars are irrational catastrophes: they happen when wrong ways of thinking and living bring about intolerable situations." -Dorothy Sayers, in Creed or Chaos, (London: Methuen and Co., 1947)
"This is the most information intensive war you can imagine . . . . We're going to lie about things." - Military officer involved in planning the response to the World Trade Center attack. ( Washington Post, 9/24/01)
WAR! - Huuuh - What is it good for? Absolutely nothing. --Edwin Starr
We need a common enemy to unite us. -- Condoleeza Rice, March 2000
There is an Arabic proverb which says that "Peace comes from understanding, not agreement." Agreements are more easily broken than made; but understanding never. It is urgent, therefore, and in the interest of peace, that there be better understanding among nations. As people we are one, seeking the same goal. As nations, we lose each other down the different paths we choose to fulfill our national objectives. that is why we must understand each other better. - King Hussein of Jordan , 1962
" . . . the ruler who has a care of the constitution should invent terrors, and bring distant dangers near, in order that the citizens may be on their guard . . . " Aristotle - _Politics_ - Book Five
What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy? - Mahatma Gandhi, "Non-Violence in Peace and War"
Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events." - Sir Winston Churchill
"Very few people chose war. They chose selfishness and the result was war. Each of us, individually and nationally, must choose: total love, or total war." ---David Dellinger
"I hope that mankind will at length, as they call themselves reasonable creatures, have reason and sense enough to settle their differences without cutting throats; for in my opinion there never was a good war, or a bad peace." -Benjamin Franklin
"I do not want the peace which passeth understanding, I want the understanding which bringeth peace." ---Helen Keller
"We cannot have peace if we are only concerned with peace. War is not an accident. It is the logical outcome of a certain way of life. If we want to attack war, we have to attack the way of life." -A.J. Muste
"We must be prepared to make heroic sacrifices for the cause of peace that we make ungrudgingly for the cause of war. There is no task that is more important or closer to my heart." -Albert Einstein
"More praise of peace is easy but ineffective. What is needed is active participation in the fight against war and everything that leads to it."--Albert Einstein
Non Violence
"The drop of rain maketh a hole in the stone, not by violence, but by oft falling." -Hugh Latimer
"Wars are a poor choice for carving out peaceful tomorrows." -Martin Luther King, Jr.
"People try nonviolence for a week, and when it doesn't work they go back to violence, which hasn't worked for centuries." - Professor Theodore Roszak
An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind. - Gandhi
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. - Isaac Asimov, Salvor Hardin in "Foundation"
"Unless we teach our children peace, someone else will teach them violence." Colman McCarthy
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction . . . .The chain reaction of evil -- hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars -- must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation. -Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
"Violence may murder the murderer, but it doesn't murder murder. Violence may murder the liar, but it doesn't murder lies; it doesn't establish truth . . . . Violence may go to the point of murdering the hater, but it doesn't murder hate. It may increase hate. It is always a descending spiral leading nowhere. This is the ultimate weakness of violence: It multiplies evil and violence in the universe. It doesn't solve any problems." -Martin Luther King Jr.
"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 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."--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
"One is called to live nonviolently, even if the change one works for seems impossible. It may or may not be possible to turn the US around through nonviolent revolution. But one thing favors such an attempt: the total inability of violence to change anything for the better" -Daniel Berrigan
"Science of war leads one to dictatorship pure and simple. Science of non-violence can alone lead to pure democracy."--Mahatma Gandhi
Nonviolence, when it becomes active, travels with extraordinary velocity, and then it becomes a miracle. -Gandhi
One day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we seek, but that it is a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means. --Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
"If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner." ---Nelson Mandela
Those who make peaceful change impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. - John F. Kennedy
I see neither bravery nor sacrifice in destroying life or property, for offense or defense. - Mahatma Gandhi
To answer brutality with brutality is to admit one's moral and intellectual bankruptcy. - Mahatma Gandhi
"The choice today is no longer between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence."--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Democracy
In a democracy, the people get the government they deserve. - Hunter S Thompson
Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve. - George Bernard Shaw
Freedom is when the people can speak, democracy is when the government listens. - Alastair Farrugia
We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both. - Louis D. Brandeis
Elections belong to the people. It is their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters. --Abraham Lincoln
Democracy is not something you believe in or a place to hang your hat, but it's something you do. You participate. If you stop doing it, democracy crumbles. - Abbie Hoffman
Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those others that have been. - Winston Churchill
If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself. - James Madison, Federalist No. 51, 1788.
I hold it that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms are in the physical. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions, as not to discourage them too much. It is medicine necessary for the sound health of government. Thomas Jefferson
"Democracy cannot exist when [people] prefer ideas and opinions that are fabricated for them. The actions and statements of the citizen must not be mere automatic "reactions" - mere mechanical salutes, gesticulations signifying passive conformity with the dictates of those in power." - Thomas Merton, in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander
Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote! - Benjamin Franklin
"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to the point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any controlling private power." - President Franklin D. Roosevelt
Our safety, our liberty, depends upon preserving the Constitution of the United States as our fathers made it inviolate. The people of the United States are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution. - Abraham Lincoln
If liberty and equality are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost. - Aristotle
In a democracy dissent is an act of faith. Like medicine, the test of its value is not in its taste, but in its effects. - J. W. Fulbright
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard. - H. L. Mencken
Mankind, when left to themselves, are unfit for their own government. - George Washington
Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary. - Reinhold Niebuhr
Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers. - Aristotle
A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won't cross the street to vote in a national election. - Bill Vaughan
Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few. -George Bernard Shaw
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter. - Winston Churchill
Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates. - Gore Vidal
The spirit of democracy cannot be established in the midst of terrorism, whether governmental or popular. - Mahatma Gandhi
"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
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