"hatred bounces" ~ e.e. cummings
"Let your life speak." ~ John Woolman
"We are the hero of our own story." ~ Mary McCarthy
"If you won't follow, they can't lead." ~ anonymous
"Nothing happens unless first a dream." ~ Carl Sandburg
"Choose to be optimistic. It feels better." ~ The Dalai Lama
"Truth never damages a cause that is just." ~ Gandhi
"Belief without action is the ruin of the soul." ~ Edward Abbey
"The time is always right to do what is right." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Drop by drop, I squeeze the slave from myself." ~ Anton Chekhov
"For the sake of making a living we forget to live." ~ Margaret Fuller
"You were wild once...don't let them tame you." ~ Isadora Duncan
"It is better to die on your feet, than to live on your knees" ~ Emiliano Zapata
"To talk about change is not enough, change must happen." ~ Aung San Suu Kyi
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious." ~ Albert Einstein
"Today's mighty oak is just yesterday's nut that held its ground." ~ anonymous
"Whatever you think you can do or believe you can do, begin it." ~ Goethe
"Activism pays the rent on being alive and being here on the planet." ~ Alice Walker
"The degree to which you resist is the degree to which you are free." ~ Utah Phillips
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." ~ George Orwell
"Ultimately we know deeply that the other side of fear is a freedom." ~ Marilyn Ferguson
"Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind." ~ John F. Kennedy
"They can cut all the flowers, but they cannot stop the coming of the spring." ~ Pablo Neruda
"When the best leader's work is done, the people say, 'We did it ourselves!'" ~ Lao Tsu
"Society is like a stew. If you don't keep it stirred up, you get a lot of scum on top." ~ Edward Abbey
"The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed." ~ Steve Biko
"Every aspect of our lives is, in a sense, a vote for the kind of world we want to live in." ~ Frances Moore Lappé
"We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them." ~ Albert Einstein
"Look closely at the present you are constructing. It should look like the future you dream of." ~ Alice Walker
"No one frees themself, No one can free another, But only together in community can we be freed." ~ Pablo Friere
"The most minute transformation is like a pebble dropped into a still lake. The ripples spread out endlessly." ~ Immanuel
"Politics isn't about left versus right; it's about top versus bottom." ~ Jim Hightower
"The stakes are too high for government to be a spectator sport." ~ Barbara Jordan
"We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office." ~ Aesop, Greek fabulist
"The most serious threat to democracy is the notion that it has already been achieved." ~ unknown
"For 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
"You never change anything by fighting the existing. To change something, build a new model and make the existing obsolete." ~ Buckminster Fuller
"If we don't fight hard enough for the things we stand for, at some point we have to recognize that we don't really stand for them." ~ Paul Wellstone
"We have got to understand that they dream our dreams and we dream theirs. We have got to understand that they are us. We are them." ~ Rachel Corrie, age 10
“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 that way of life.” ~ A.J. Muste
"In the long run, one can not satisfactorily say no to war, violence, and injustice without simultaneously saying yes to life, love, and laughter." ~ Dave Dellinger, peace activist
"We are going to have to create a new language of prayer and this new language has to come out of something which transcends all our traditions, and comes out of the immediacy of love." ~ Thomas Merton
"May we look upon our treasures, the furniture in our houses, and our garments, and try whether the seeds of war have nourishment in these our possessions." ~ John Woolman, 1793
"Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality. For one very rich man, there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the rich supposes the indigence of the many." ~ Adam Smith
"When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him: "Whose?"" ~ Don Marquis
"There is only one thing that the ruling interests have ever wanted and that's everything." ~ Michael Parenti
"If we did a better job of managing our resources more sustainably, conflicts over them would be reduced. Protecting the global environment is directly related to securing peace." ~ Wangari Maathai
"The essence of the problem is about consumption, recognizing that a society that consumes one-third of the world's resources is unsustainable. This level of consumption requires constant intervention into other people's lands. That's what's going on." ~ Winona LaDuke
"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 any controlling private power." ~ Franklin Roosevelt
"The mass media does not reveal reality; it masks it. It doesn't help bring about change; it helps avoid change. It doesn't encourage democratic participation; it induces passivity, resignation and selfishness. It doesn't generate creativity; it creates consumers." ~ Eduardo Galeano
"So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men." ~ Voltaire
"If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time....But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together." ~ Lila Watson, Aboriginal educator and activist
"We must disenthrall* ourselves, and then we shall save our country." ~ President Abraham Lincoln, Annual Message to Congress,
December 1, 1862
(*To free from a controlling force or influence.)
"Until he extends the circle of compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace." ~ Albert Schweitzer
"The greatness of a nation and it's moral progress can be judged by the way it's animals are treated." ~ Mohandas Gandhi
"The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made
for humans
any more than black people were made for whites or women for men."
~ Alice Walker
"Only human beings have come to a point where they no longer know why they exist. They have forgotten the secret knowledge of their bodies, their senses, their dreams." ~ Lame Deer
"We will be known by the tracks we leave behind." ~ Dakota proverb
"To become human, one must make room in oneself for the wonders of the Universe." ~ South American Indian saying
"Years ago I recognized my kinship with all living things, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on the earth. I said then and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free." ~ Eugene V. Debs
"The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling - their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability. Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them. Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing." ~ Arundhati Roy at the 2003 World Social Forum
"Much protest is naive; it expects quick, visible improvement and gives up when such improvement does not come. Protestors who hold out longer have perhaps understood that success is not the proper goal. If protest depended on success, there would be little protest of any durability or significance. History simply affords too little evidence that anyone's individual protest is of any use. Protest that endures, I think, is moved by a hope far more modest than that of public success: namely, the hope of preserving qualities in one's own heart and spirit that would be destroyed by acquiescence." ~ Wendell Berry - farmer, poet, novelist
"Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening. Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand." ~ Simone Weil
"True compassion does not come from wanting to help out those less fortunate than ourselves but from realizing our kinship with all beings." ~ Pema Chödron, 'Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living'
"How will this new voice make itself heard in these lands and across the country? How will this hidden wind blow, this wind which now blows only in the mountains and canyons without yet descending to the valleys where money rules and lies govern? This wind will come from the mountains. It is already being born under the trees and is conspiring for a new world, so new that it is barely an intuition in the collective heart that inspires it." ~ Subcommandante Marcos
"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.
"Nothing that I can do will change the structure of the universe. But maybe, by raising my voice I can help the greatest of all causes - goodwill among men and peace on earth." ~ Albert Einstein
"When a cause comes along and you know in your bones that it is just, yet refuse to defend it--at that moment you begin to die. And I have never seen so many corpses walking around talking about justice." ~ Mumia Abu-Jamal
"It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters in the end." ~ Ursula K. LeGuin
"Of all the teachings we receive, this one is most important: Nothing belongs to you of what there is, of what you take, you must share." ~ Chief Dan George
"When we see land as community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect." ~ Aldo Leopold
"Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much" ~ Helen Keller
"Three helping one another will do as much as six working singly." ~ Spanish proverb
"At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us." ~ Albert Schweitzer
"Leave safety behind. Put your body on the line. Stand before the people you fear and speak your mind - even if your voice shakes. When you least expect it, someone may actually listen to what you have to say. Well-aimed slingshots can topple giants. And do your homework." ~ Maggie Kuhn
"Any man or institution that tries to rob me of my dignity will lose." ~ Nelson Mandela
"Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved through understanding" ~ Albert Einstein
"True peace is not the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice." ~ anonymous
"If you want Peace work for Justice." ~ anonymous
"One of the greatest problems of history is that the concepts of love and power are usually contrasted as polar opposites. Love is identified with a resignation of power and power with a denial of love....What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive and that love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love." ~ Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
"The soul of our country needs to be awakened . . .When leaders act contrary to conscience, we must act contrary to leaders." ~ Veterans Fast for Life
"I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually." ~ James A. Baldwin
"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." ~ Theodore
Roosevelt, 26th US President (1858-1919)
"...re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book,
dismiss whatever insults your own soul..." ~ Walt Whitman
"The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do." ~ Samuel P. Huntington
"It is those who do terrible things under our Nation's flag who drag it through the dirt. It is the people who want to pick it up and wash it off by correcting injustices who are the true patriots." ~ Pete Seeger, patriot and folksinger
"I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a method of settling internatinal disputes." ~ Gen. Douglas MacArthur
"Power should not be concentrated in the hands of so few, and powerlessness in the hands of so many." ~ Maggie Kuhn
"To be silent in the face of injustice is to be an accomplice to evil. I will not be silent." ~ Lori Berenson
"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment to improve the world." ~ Anne Frank
"It's the action, not the fruit of the action that's important. You have
to do the right thing...
You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing,
there will be no result." ~ Gandhi
"The whole problem with the world is that the fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves and wiser people so full of doubts." ~ Bertrand Russell
"Some day, when everyone understands that nearly all of us truly want the same kind of world, it will take surprisingly little time or effort to have it." ~ Donella H. Meadows
"I may be crucified for my beliefs. If I am, you can say, "He died to make men free." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
"It's not the repression by the bad people that hurts, it's the silence of the good." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
"I believe that the horrifying deterioration in the ethical conduct of people today stems from the mechanization and dehumanization of our lives. A disastrous by-product of the development of the scientific and technical mentality. We are guilty. Man grows cold faster than the planet he inhabits." ~ Albert Einstein
"Most of us spend too much time on the last twenty-four hours and too little on the last six thousand years." ~ Will Durant
"The stingy are always poor." ~ French proverb
"The best things in life are not things." ~ anonymous
"If you want to feel rich, just count all of the things you have that money can't buy." ~ anonymous
"Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realize we cannot eat money." ~ Cree Indian saying
"We must assert our humanity and place people before profits." ~ Howard Zinn
"We are seeking an explanation for this 'progress' that goes against life. We are demanding that this kind of progress stop, that oil exploitation in the heart of the Earth is halted, that the deliberate bleeding of the Earth stop." ~ statement of the U'wa people of Colombia
"You can't mine coal without machine guns."
~ Richard B. Mellon,
Congressional testimony quoted in Time, June 14, 1937
"The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas... And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies to flourish is called the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps." ~ Thomas Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree
"A supranational government of the intellectual elite and world bankers is preferable to the right of peoples to self-determination." ~ David Rockefeller
"What I find demoralizing is that there is no organization on earth that is doing more for the poor than we do." ~ James D. Wolfenson, World Bank President
"The wars of the next century will be about water." ~ Ismail Serageldin, World Bank Vice President
"Whenever people say 'We musn't be sentimental,' you can take it they are about to do something cruel. And if they add 'We must be realistic,' they mean they are going to make money out of it." ~ Brigid Brophy
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education" ~ Albert Einstein
"We are presently taught in schools to endure boredom and to take orders - because that's what capitalism needs from most of us." ~ Michael Albert
"The Intuitive Mind is a sacred gift, the Rational mind, a loyal servant. Our society has honored the servant and forgotten the gift." ~ Albert Einstein
"I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think." ~ Socrates
"Do not try to satisfy your vanity by teaching a great many things. Awaken people's curiosity. It is enough to open their minds; do not overload them. If there is some good flammable stuff, it will catch fire." ~ Anatole France (The Earth Speaks -1983)
"Tell me, I'll forget; Show me I'll remember; Involve me, I'll understand." ~ Dr. Ernst Wynder
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" ~ Albert Einstein
"Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuits of happiness and just be happy." ~ Guillaume Apollinaire
"The fragrance always remains in the hand that gives the rose." ~ Heda Bejar
"No person was ever honored for what he received. Honor has been the reward for what he gave." ~ Calvin Coolidge
"Look deep into nature and then you will understand everything better." ~ Albert Einstein
"In The End
We will conserve only what we love
We will love only what we understand
and we will understand only what we are taught"
~ Baba Dioum (Senegal)
"Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons. It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth." ~ Walt Whitman, Song of the Open Road
"Knowing the name of something is not the same as knowing something." ~ anonymous
"Living in a world without insight into the hidden laws of nature is like not knowing the language of the country in which one is born." ~ Hazat Inayat Khan
"Beginning today treat everyone you meet as if she or he will be dead by midnight. Extend to them all the care, kindness, and understanding you can muster, and do so with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again." ~ Og Mandino
"There is no tree whose branches are foolish enough to fight amongst themselves." ~ Native American Wisdom
"He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, 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
“Much protest is naive; it expects quick, visible improvement and gives up when such improvement does not come. Protestors who hold out longer have perhaps understood that success is not the proper goal. If protest depended on success, there would be little protest of any durability or significance. History simply affords too little evidence that anyone’s individual protest is of any use. Protest that endures, I think, is moved by a hope far more modest than that of public success: namely, the hope of preserving qualities in one’s own heart and spirit that would be destroyed by acquiescence.” ~ Wendell Berry
"First they ignore you
Then they laugh at you
Then they fight you
Then you win." ~ Gandhi
"We need to return to learning about the land by being on the land, or better, by being in the thick of it. That is the best way we can stay in touch with the fates of its creatures, its indigenous cultures, its earthbound wisdom. That is the best way we can be in touch with ourselves." ~ Gary Paul Nabhan; The Geography of Childhood; Why Children Need Wild Places
"The plain fact is that the planet does not need more 'successful' people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every shape and form. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane. And these needs have little to do with success as our culture has defined it." ~ David Orr (1990), In Context No.27: "What is Education For?"
"We cannot speak of humans and nature, because humans are in nature, wholly a part of it." ~ Robert Redfield
"Man's heart away from nature, becomes hard; [the Lakota] knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans too." ~ Luther Standing Bear (c. 1868-1939)
"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle." ~ Albert Einstein
"There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature
-
the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter."
~ Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder
"Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life." ~ Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder
"Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts." ~ Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder
"One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise." ~ Aldo Leopold, Round River, 1953
"Work like you don't need money,
Love like you've never been hurt,
And dance like no one's watching." ~ anonymous
"Those who cannot hear the music think the dancers mad." ~ anonymous
"There is one outstandingly important fact regarding Spaceship Earth, and that is that no instruction book came with it." ~ Buckminster Fuller
"There is only one creative energy which is the power of Spirit in all of us. Use that creative energy to create goodness and beauty wherever you go and everyone will be blessed." ~ Norma Hawkins
"Life becomes useful when you confront a difficulty; it provides a kind of value for your life to have the kind of responsibility to confront it and overcome it. Whereas if you do not feel such difficulties, there's no such responsibility, no role for you to play in your life. That challenge allows you to practice your ability. Basically, the purpose of life is to serve other people. From that point of view, a difficulty is really a great opportunity. I have often said that our generation of Tibetans is seeing the saddest part in all of Tibetan history. So from that angle it is . . . a great honor, a great privilege . . . to face these times, to confront them." ~ the 14th Dalai Lama
"There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands. You seek problems because you need their gifts." ~ Richard Bach
"Satisfaction of one's curiosity is one of the greatest sources of happiness in life." ~ Linus Pauling
"Joy is an inner note that you sound as you move through the day." ~ Immanuel
"You are unique, and if that's not fulfilled, something has been lost." ~ Martha Graham
"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes." ~ Marcel Proust
"Friends are angels who lift us to our feet when our wings have trouble remembering how to fly." ~ anonymous
"Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
"When we appreciate and honor the beauty of life, we will make every effort
to dwell deeply in the present moment and protect all life." ~ Thich
Nhat Hanh
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that
you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away
from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
~ Mark Twain
"Men often become what they believe themselves to be. If I believe I cannot do something, it makes me incapable of doing it. But when I believe I can, then I acquire the ability to do it even if I didn't have it in the beginning." ~ Mohandas Gandhi