“It is easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them.” ——Alfred Adler
“A man generally has two reasons for doing a thing. One that sounds good, and a real one.” ——Pierpoint Morgan
“The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.” ——Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881), Russian novelist
“Protest that endures 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
“To sin is a human business, to justify sins is a devilish business.” ——Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy (1828-1910), Russian author
“A time comes when silence is betrayal.” ——Rev. Martin Luther King
“A human being is part of a whole, called by us the ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” ——Albert Einstein
“If we work in marble, it will perish; if we work upon brass, time will efface it; if we rear temples, they will crumble into dust; but if we work upon immortal minds and instill into them just principles, we are then engraving upon tablets which no time will efface, but will brighten and brighten to all eternity.” ——Daniel Webster
“People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.” ——James Baldwin (1924-1987), fiction writer, essayist, social critic
“Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true.” ——Demosthenes
“Think truly, and thy thoughts shall the world’s famine feed.
Speak truly, and each word of thine shall be a fruitful seed.
Live truly, and thy life shall be a great and noble creed.” ——Horatius Bonar, D.D.
“Those who have the privilege to know, have the duty to act.” ——Albert Einstein
“I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do. What I can do, I should do. And what I should do, by the grace of God, I will do.” ——Edward Everett Hale
“This is what you shall do: love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone who asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown.” ——Walt Whitman (1819-1892), American poet, Preface to the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass
“A society that is in its higher circles and middle levels widely believed to be a network of smart rackets does not produce men with an inner moral sense; a society that is merely expedient does not produce men of conscience. A society that narrows the meaning of ‘success’ to the big money and in its terms condemns failure as the chief vice, raising money to the plane of absolute value, will produce the sharp operator and the shady deal. Blessed are the cynical, for only they have what it takes to succeed.” ——C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite
“In the general course of human nature, a power over man’s substance amounts to a power over his will.” ——Alexander Hamilton
“We cloak ourselves in cold indifference to the unnecessary suffering of others — even when we cause it.” ——James Carroll
“Vulgar and inactive minds confound familiarity with knowledge and conceive themselves informed of the whole nature of things when they are shown their form or told their use; but the speculatist, who is not content with superficial views, harasses himself with fruitless curiosity, and still, as he inquires more, perceives only that he knows less.” ——Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
“Zealotry of either kind — the puritan’s need to regiment others or the victim’s passion for blaming everyone except himself — tends to produce a depressing civic stupidity. Each trait has about it the immobility of addiction. Victims become addicted to being victims: they derive identity, innocence and a kind of devious power from sheer, defaulting helplessness. On the other side, the candlesnuffers of behavioral and political correctness enact their paradox, accomplishing intolerance in the name of tolerance, regimentation in the name of betterment.” ——Lance Morrow (1939- ), essayist, professor
“Our job this day is to become part of the answer to the world’s immense and protracted suffering rather than continuing our ancient task of being part of the difficulty.” ——Hugh Prather, author, minister
“When we finally know we are dying, and all other sentient beings are dying with us, we start to have a burning, almost heartbreaking sense of the fragility and preciousness of each moment and each being, and from this can grow a deep, clear, limitless compassion for all beings.” ——Sogyal Rinpoche
“I have always held firmly to the thought that each one of us can do a little to bring some portion of misery to an end.” ——Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965), humanitarian, theologian, philosopher, physician, Nobel Peace Prize 1952
“How poor we are when we consider our own pain more worthy than the suffering of others.” ——Author Unknown
“Good men will never lack good laws nor allow bad ones.” ——William Penn, 1681
“The civility of no race can be perfect whilst another race is degraded. It is a doctrine alike of the oldest and of the newest philosophy, that man is one, and that you cannot injure any member, without a sympathetic injury to all the members.” ——Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1844
“A great nation is like a great man: When he makes a mistake, he realizes it. Having realized it, he admits it. Having admitted it, he corrects it. He considers those who point out his faults as his most benevolent teachers. He thinks of his enemy as the shadow that he himself casts. If a nation is centered in the Tao, if it nourishes its own people and doesn’t meddle in the affairs of others, it will be a light to all nations in the world.” ——Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 61
“If you assume that there’s no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, there are opportunities to change things, there’s a chance for you to contribute to making a better world. That’s your choice.” ——Noam Chomsky, The Chronicles of Dissent
“I would rather lose in a cause that will some day win, than win in a cause that will some day lose.” ——Woodrow Wilson
“The problems of this world are so gigantic that some are paralyzed by their own uncertainty. Courage and wisdom are needed to reach out above this sense of helplessness. Desire for vengeance against deeds of hatred offers no solution. An eye for an eye makes the world blind. If we wish to choose the other path, we will have to search for ways to break the spiral of animosity. To fight evil one must also recognize one’s own responsibility. The values for which we stand must be expressed in the way we think of, and how we deal with, our fellow humans.” ——HM Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, Christmas Message 2001
“You can’t hold a man down without staying down with him.” ——Booker T. Washington (1856-1915), author
“We, as individuals, are fast losing our reputation for honest dealing. Our nation is losing its character. The loss of a firm national character, or the degradation of a nation’s honour, is the inevitable prelude to her destruction.” ——William Wells Brown
“The injury we do and the one we suffer are not weighed in the same scales.” ——Aesop, Fables
“I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.” ——Abraham Lincoln
“Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress had been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.” ——Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
“It’s not enough to have lived. We should be determined to live for something. May I suggest that it be creating joy for others, sharing what we have for the betterment of personkind, bringing hope to the lost and love to the lonely.” ——Leo Buscaglia (1924-1998), author and university professor
“How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these.” ——George Washington Carver
“To care for anyone else enough to make their problems one’s own, is ever the beginning of one’s real ethical development.” ——Felix Adler
“True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.” ——Martin Luther King Jr.
“The most absolute authority is that which penetrates into a man’s innermost being and concerns itself no less with his will than with his actions.” ——Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), political philosopher, educationist and essayist, The Social Contract, 1762
“You can’t awaken a person who is pretending to be asleep.” ——Chinese Proverb
“He who dares not offend cannot be honest.” ——Thomas Paine
“Integrity has no need of rules.” ——Albert Camus
“You are only what you are when no one is looking.” ——Robert C. Edwards
“It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.” ——Samuel Johnson
“It is hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head.” ——Sally Kempton
“In the last analysis we must be judged by what we do and not by what we believe. We are as we behave — with a very small margin of credit for our unmanifested vision of how we might behave if we could take the trouble.” ——Geoffrey L. Rudd, The British Vegetarian, September/October 1962
“It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.” ——Edmund Burke (1729-1797), Second Speech on Conciliation, 1775
“I’m convinced that if we are to get on the right side for the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin to shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people; the giant triplets of racism, militarism, and economic exploitation are incapable of being conquered.” ——Martin Luther King Jr.
“When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law.” ——Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850), French economist, statesman, and author, The Law, 1850
“If you had only known the man you were trying to kill, you would have risked your life to save his.” ——Harry Pope, WW2, Pacific USS LSM 41, 1944 — Occupied Japan, 1950
“Write on my gravestone: ‘Infidel, Traitor.’ — infidel to every church that compromises with wrong; traitor to every government that oppresses the people.” ——Wendell Phillips
“Live so the Preacher Won’t Have to Lie At Your Funeral.” ——Author Unknown
“A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying that he is wiser today than yesterday.” ——Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), Irish Cleric, Essayist, Author, Satirist
“When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe; he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.” ——Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, 1793
“Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world’s estimation.” ——Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906), reformer and suffragist
“Character is what one is; reputation is what one is thought to be by others.” ——Author Unknown
“The measure of a man’s character can be gauged by how he handles success and power. While there are trials peculiar to adversity, there are temptations perilous in prosperity. Some amount of failure and adversity is the lot of every man… How a man uses his position of influence says as much, if not more, about his character, than how he responds to struggles and setbacks. If he overcomes the trials of adversity he must face the even greater trials of success… We confuse the shadow for the substance when we imagine that fame and power are traits of a great leader. Fame has been given to fools, and power to tyrants. Rather, the real test of greatness is not whether a man possesses fame or power, but how he employs them.” ——David J. Vaughn, Give Me Liberty: The Uncompromising Statesmanship of Patrick Henry
“There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all argument, and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance. This principle is, contempt prior to examination.” ——Rev. William H. Poole