"Violence is not merely killing another. It is violence when we use a sharp word, when we make a gesture to brush away a person, when we obey because there is fear. So violence isn't merely organized butchery in the name of God, in the name of society or country. Violence is much more subtle, much deeper, and we are inquiring into the very depths of violence."
- Jiddu Krishnamurti
"To go against the dominant thinking of your friends, of most of the people you see every day, is perhaps the most difficult act of heroism you can perform."
- Theodore H. White
"Historically, the most terrible things - war, genocide, and slavery - have resulted not from disobedience, but from obedience."
- Howard Zinn
"Where there is power, there is resistance."
- Foucault
"You've got to rattle your cage door. You've got to let them know that you're in there, and that you want out. Make noise. Cause trouble. You may not win right away, but you'll sure have a lot more fun."
- Florynce Kennedy
"To touch the soul of another human being is to walk on holy ground."
- Stephen Covey
"The art of listening needs its highest development in listening to oneself; our most important task is to develop an ear that can really hear what we're saying."
- Sydney J. Harris
"We have to create culture, don't watch TV, don't read magazines, don't even listen to NPR. Create your own roadshow. The nexus of space and time where you are now is the most immediate sector of your universe, and if you're worrying about Michael Jackson or Bill Clinton or somebody else, then you are disempowered, you're giving it all away to icons, icons which are maintained by an electronic media so that you want to dress like X or have lips like Y. This is shit-brained, this kind of thinking. That is all cultural diversion, and what is real is you and your friends and your associations, your highs, your orgasms, your hopes, your plans, your fears. And we are told 'no', we're unimportant, we're peripheral. 'Get a degree, get a job, get a this, get a that.' And then you're a player, you don't want to even play in that game. You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that's being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world."
- Terence McKenna
"Those who have the privilege to know, have the duty to act."
- Albert Einstein
"There is an ancient Indian saying: "We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children." If we use this ethic as a moral compass, then our rendezvous with reality can also become a rendezvous with opportunity."
- Pat Schroeder
"People living deeply have no fear of death."
- Anais Nin
"The syntactical nature of reality, the real secret of magic, is that the world is made of words. And if you know the words that the world is made of, you can make of it whatever you wish."
- Terence McKenna
"You are an explorer, and you represent our species, and the greatest good you can do is to bring back a new idea, because our world is endangered by the absence of good ideas. Our world is in crisis because of the absence of consciousness."
- Terence McKenna
"Knowledge is power. Information is power. The secreting or hoarding of knowledge or information may be an act of tyranny camouflaged as humility."
- Robin Morgan
"Justice is never given; it is exacted and the struggle must be continuous for freedom is never a final fact, but a continuing evolving process to higher and higher levels of human, social, economic, political and religious relationship."
- A. Philip Randolph
"The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment."
- Robert M. Hutchins
"When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives."
- Robert A. Heinlein
"Choosing not to act on an angry impulse and to feel the pain that lies beneath it is a very courageous thing to do."
- Gary Zukav
"The purpose of life is to discover your gift. The meaning of life is to give your gift away."
- David Viscott
"If the truth can be told so as to be understood, it will be believed."
- Terence McKenna
"If you want to enjoy the rainbow, be prepared to endure the storm."
- Warren Wendel Wiersbe
"If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility."
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness, and in human responsibility."
- Vaclav Havel
"When technology surpasses a civilization's spiritual wisdom, it is almost inevitable that its destruction will ensue."
- Anonymous
"I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, "Where's the self-help section?" She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose."
- George Carlin
"Happiness comes when your work and words are of benefit to yourself and others."
- Buddha
"Revenge has no more quenching effect on emotions than salt water has on thirst."
- Walter Weckler
"The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention.... A loving silence often has far more power to heal and to connect than the most well-intentioned words."
- Rachel Naomi Remen
"The food you eat can either be the safest and most powerful form of medicine or the slowest form of poison."
- Anne Wigmore
"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a 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 D. Roosevelt
"When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty."
- Thomas Jefferson
"In our deepest moments of struggle, frustration, fear, and confusion, we are being called upon to reach in and touch our hearts. Then, we will know what to do, what to say, how to be. What is right is always in our deepest heart of hearts. It is from the deepest part of our hearts that we are capable of reaching out and touching another human being."
- Roberta Sage Hamilton
"The capacity to give one's attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing; it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle. Nearly all those who think they have the capacity do not possess it."
- Simone Weil
"Fundamentalism is rigorously and systematically used to indoctrinate and subjugate young minds. It is a contraceptive designed to prevent intellectual fertilization."
- Stephen Jay Gould
"I know that my unity with all people cannot be destroyed by national boundaries and government orders."
- Leo Tolstoy
"Thoughts produce actions - look at what you're thinking."
- Sir Laurence Olivier
"A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history."
- Mohandas Gandhi
"It is not the answer that enlightens but the question."
- Eugene Ionesco
"How can you have a war on terrorism when war itself is terrorism?"
- Howard Zinn
"I, for one, hope that youth will again revolt and again demoralize the dead weight of conformity that now lies upon us."
- Howard Mumford Jones
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders and millions have been killed because of this obedience. Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves and the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem.
- Howard Zinn
"I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented."
- Elie Wiesel
"He who controls others may be powerful, but he who has mastered himself is mightier still."
- Lao Tzu
"The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations."
- David Friedman
"Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd."
- Bertrand Russell
"None of the quick fixes to the world's problems are going to work, unless we change the dream of greed and scarcity that the world is dreaming."
- John Perkins
"Happiness comes when you believe in what you are doing, know what you are doing, and love what you are doing."
- Brian Tracy
"The greater the crime perpetrated by the leadership, the less likely it is that the people will ever believe their leaders to be capable of perpetrating such an event."
- Adolf Hitler
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
- Martin Luther King Jr
"Good does not become better by being exaggerated, but worse; And a small evil becomes a big one through being disregarded and repressed."
- Carl Jung
"One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious."
- Carl Jung
"Sticks in a bundle are unbreakable."
- Kenyan Proverb
"The love we give away is the only love we keep."
- Elbert Hubbard
"True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost."
- Arthur Ashe
"When we put down ideas of what life should be like, we are free to wholeheartedly say yes to our life as it is."
- Tara Brach
"I would not waste my life in friction when it could be turned into momentum."
- Frances Willard
"The source of the government’s authority is “the consent of the governed.” This means that the government is not the ruler, but the servant or agent of the citizens; it means that the government as such has no rights except the rights delegated to it by the citizens for a specific purpose."
- Ayn Rand
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws."
- Ayn Rand
"Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs."
- Leo Tolstoy
"It isn't until you begin to fight in your own cause that you become really committed to winning, and a genuine ally of other people struggling for their freedom."
- Robin Morgan
"I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being."
- Hafiz of Persia
"Freedom is a personal and lonely battle; and one faces down fears of today so that those of tomorrow might be engaged."
- Alice Walker
"Dreams are renewable. No matter what our age or condition, there are still untapped possibilities within us and new beauty waiting to be born."
- Dale Turner
"Our attitude in the face of life's challenges determines our suffering or our freedom."
- Tara Brach
"The emotion of fear often works overtime. Even when there is no immediate threat, our body may remain tight and on guard, our mind narrowed to focus on what might go wrong. When this happens, fear is no longer functioning to secure our survival. We are caught in the trance of fear and our moment-to-moment experience becomes bound in reactivity. We spend our time and energy defending our life rather than living it fully."
- Tara Brach
"90% of the population does nothing called thinking. In fact in English, they have to use the term critical thinking because we have gone so far from thinking we have to hold it up with critical thinking. When is thinking not critical?"
- Patch Adams
"The sleep of reason produces monsters."
- Goya
"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
"Those who can make you believe in absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
- Voltaire
"At least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols."
- Aldous Huxley
"Dreams are renewable. No matter what our age or condition, there are still untapped possibilities within us and new beauty waiting to be born."
- Dale Turner
"There's something contagious about demanding freedom."
- Robin Morgan
"Purpose is the place where your deep gladness meets the world's needs."
- Frederick Buechner
"When we find ourselves devoid of passion and purpose, the first thing we need to do is stop. But that's not easy. The rest of the world is zooming by at full speed. Left alone with ourselves, without a project to occupy us, we can become nervous and self-critical about what we should be doing and feeling. This can be so uncomfortable that we look for any distraction rather than allowing ourselves the space to be as we are."
- Dawna Markova
"The biggest mistake is believing there is one right way to listen, to talk, to have a conversation - or a relationship."
- Deborah Tannen
"Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom."
- Hannah Arendt
"Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom."
- Viktor Frankl
"Genuine politics - even politics worthy of the name - the only politics I am willing to devote myself to - is simply a matter of serving those around us: serving the community and serving those who will come after us. Its deepest roots are moral because it is a responsibility expressed through action, to and for the whole."
- Vaclav Havel
"When psychopaths are the policy makers in government and the CEOs of big business, the way they think and reason - their 'morality' - becomes the common culture and 'morality' of the population over which they preside. When this happens, the mind of the population is infected in the way a pathogen infects a physical body. The only way to protect ourselves against this pathological thinking is to inoculate ourselves against it, and that is done by learning as much as possible about the nature of psychopathy and its influence on us. Essentially, this particular 'disease' thrives in an environment where its very existence is denied, and this denial is planned and deliberate"
- Laura Knight-Jadczyk
"There are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day."
- David Foster Wallace
"Guilt should be a momentary pang to spur one into corrective action. Anything longer is wasted, and worse, selfish."
- Mark Belletini
"Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't."
- Erica Jong
"People spend a lifetime searching for happiness; looking for peace. They chase idle dreams, addictions, religions, even other people, hoping to fill the emptiness that plagues them. The irony is the only place they ever needed to search was within."
- Ramona L. Anderson
"The spirit of liberty is not merely, as multitudes imagine, a jealousy of our own particular rights, but a respect for the rights of others, and an unwillingness that any man, whether high or low, should be wronged and trampled under foot."
- William Ellery Channing
"Moral cowardice that keeps us from speaking our minds is as dangerous to this country as irresponsible talk. The right way is not always the popular and easy way. Standing for right when it is unpopular is a true test of moral character."
- Margaret Chase Smith
"Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can't ride you unless your back is bent."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Never walk away from failure. On the contrary, study it carefully and imaginatively for its hidden assets."
- Michael Korda
"When it gets down to having to use violence, then you are playing the system's game. The establishment will irritate you, pull your beard and flick your face to make you fight. Because once they've got you violent, then they know how to handle you. The only thing they don't know how to handle is non-violence and humor."
- John Lennon
"We only feel dehumanized when we get trapped in the derogatory images of other people or thoughts of wrongness about ourselves."
- Marshall Rosenberg
"I don't like that man. I must get to know him better."
- Abraham Lincoln
"Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he has been born - the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to the accumulated records of other people's experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it bedevils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things."
- Aldous Huxley
"Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence."
- Henri-Frederic Amiel
"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country."
- Abraham Lincoln
"Knowledge is power. Information is power. The secreting or hoarding of knowledge or information may be an act of tyranny camouflaged as humility."
- Robin Morgan
"For every man who lives without freedom, the rest of us must face the guilt."
- Lillian Hellman
"The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire."
- Marshall Ferdinand Foch
"The purpose of religion is to keep the poor from killing the rich."
- Napoleon Bonaparte
"You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom."
- Malcom X
"Find the seed at the bottom of your heart and bring forth a flower."
- Shigenori Kameoka
"95% of our energy is spent protecting, defending and maintaining our self-image. It is only an image, sheer imagination."
- Assagioli
"Stand for something or you will fall for anything. Today's mighty oak is yesterday's nut that held its ground."
- Rosa Parks
"When you control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his actions."
- Carter G. Woodson
"You've always had the power right there in your shoes, you just had to learn it for yourself."
- Frank L. Baum (The Wizard of Oz)
"A barking dog is often more useful than a sleeping lion."
- Washington Irving
"The greatest menace to freedom is an inert people."
- Louis D. Brandeis
"Today I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves."
- Harriet Tubman
"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, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathy with despised and persecuted ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences."
- Susan B. Anthony
"To love our neighbor as ourselves is such a truth for regulating human society, that by that alone one might determine all the cases in social morality."
- John Locke
"Freedom lies in bold action."
- Robert Frost
"The disappearance of a sense of responsibility is the most far-reaching consequence of submission to authority."
- Stanley Milgram
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
"True civilization is where every man gives to every other man every right he claims for himself."
- Robert G. Ingersoll
"Live truth instead of expressing it."
- Elbert Hubbard
"You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process, is its own reward."
- Amelia Earhart
"Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world."
- Paulo Freire
"I know of absolutely no, and I mean absolutely no means of prevention that would save so many lives as simply to stop fluoridation of our water supply. In point in fact, fluoride causes more cancer death, and causes it faster than any other chemical."
- Dr Dean Burk - Ph D, 34 Years at the National Cancer Institute.
"A life lived with integrity, even if it lacks the trappings of fame and fortune, is a shining star in whose light others may follow in the years to come."
- Denis Waitley
"War is a way of shattering to pieces, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable and too intelligent."
- George Orwell
"It is no dishonor to be in a minority in the cause of liberty and virtue."
- Sam Adams
"Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am."
- Parker J. Palmer
"The art of listening needs its highest development in listening to oneself; our most important task is to develop an ear that can really hear what we're saying."
- Sydney J. Harris
"We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness."
- Thich Nhat Hanh
"Ask me not what I have, but what I am."
- Heinrich Heine
"Without dreams, there can be no courage. And without courage, there can be no action."
- Wim Wenders
"Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around."
- Leo Buscaglia
"I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved."
- William Jennings Bryan
"The government, which was designed for the people, has got into the hands of the bosses and their employers, the special interests. An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy."
- Woodrow Wilson
"The most important political office is that of the private citizen."
- Louis D. Brandeis
"Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things."
- Peter F. Drucker
"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root."
- Henry David Thoreau
"We are in a race between cooperation and catastrophe, and the threat is outrunning our response."
- Sam Nunn
"To be ignorant of one's ignorance is the malady of the ignorant."
- Amos Bronson Alcott
"It's only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth, and that we have no way of knowing when our own time is up, that we will begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it was the only one we had."
- Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
"Failure is a detour, not a dead-end street."
- Zig Ziglar
"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage."
- Anais Nin
"Live your life each day as you would climb a mountain. An occasional glance towards the summit keeps the goal in mind, but many beautiful scenes are to be observed from each new vantage point."
- Harold B. Melchart
"Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works."
- Carl Sagan
"There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew."
- Marshall McLuhan
"When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall - think of it, always." - Gandhi
