Gabi Clayton's favorite quotes: N-Z

other people's words - my favorite quotes: A-J \|\| K-M \|\| N-Z
Rob Nash	I get sick of listening to straight people complain about, "Well, hey, we don't have a heterosexual-pride day, why do you need a gay-pride day?" I remember when I was a kid I'd always ask my mom: "Why don't we have a Kid's Day? We have a Mother's Day and a Father's Day, but why don't we have a Kid's Day?" My mom would always say, "Every day is Kid's Day." To all those heterosexuals that bitch about gay pride, I say the same thing: Every day is heterosexual-pride day! Can't you people enjoy your banquet and not piss on those of us enjoying our crumbs over here in the corner?
Jawaharlal Nehru	People avoid action. Often because they are afraid of the consequences, for action means risk and danger. Danger seems terrible from a distance; it is not so bad if you have a close look at it.
Henri Nouwen	When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.
Reinhold Niebuhr	Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.
Pastor Martin Niemoller	First they came for the Jews. I was silent. I was not a Jew. Then they came for the Communists. I was silent. I was not a Communist. Then they came for the trade unionists. I was silent. I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for me. There was no one left to speak for me.
Friedrich Nietzsche	The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
Anias Nin	And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
Anais Nin	Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.
Anias Nin	We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.
Kwame Nkrumah	Thought without practice is empty, action without thought is blind.
Henri Nouwen Out of Solitude	When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief or bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.
Patricia Novotny 3/8/05 opening statement on for the Washington State Supreme Court Marriage Equality Hearing	May it please the court – I am Patricia Novotny – on behalf of the Northwest Women’s Law Center, Lambda Legal, and the ACLU – representing the 38 individuals present in court today who wish to marry their beloved partners. We are here to ask merely that Washington fulfill the promise of liberty and equality made to all its citizens. In your assessment of our challenge, I ask the court to look forward, not merely backwards. And to remember that both liberty and equality were and are radical and experimental ideas. That WE as a people embraced democracy not because a study showed us how well it works, but because of our faith in these principles and our trust in the future they would help us to build. There have been efforts in this case to exploit fear – fear of change, fear of difference. I ask you to consider fear of failure: fear of failing our own promise and destiny. That promise requires vindication of our clients’ right to marry.
Senator Barack Obama in his Race Against Time World AIDS Day Speech at the Global Summit on AIDS and the Church, December 1, 2006	... faith is not just something you have, it's something you do.
Dean Ornish Love and Survival: The Scientific Basis for the Healing Power of Intimacy	Love and intimacy are the root of what makes us sick and what makes us well, what causes sadness and what brings happiness, what makes us suffer and what leads to healing. People who feel lonely and isolated have a 300-500 percent greater risk of premature death and physical illness.
Sir Laurence Olivier	I believe that in a great city, or even in a small city or a village, a great theater is the outward and visible sign of an inward and probable culture.
George Orwell in 1984	War is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength.
George Orwell	Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.
George Orwell	During times of universal deceit telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
George Orwell	If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
George Orwell	War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.
George Orwell	Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
George Orwell	In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.
George Orwell	Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.
Parker J. Palmer Let Your Life Speak	By surviving passages of doubt and depression on the vocational journey, I have become clear about at least one thing: self-care is never a selfish act -- it is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer to others. Anytime we can listen to true self and give it the care it requires, we do so not only for ourselves but for the many others whose lives we touch.
Rosa Parks on refusing to move to the back of the bus, 1985 television interview	All I was doing was trying to get home from work.
Rosa Parks	People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that is not true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of the day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.
Kenneth Patchen Irkalla’s White Caves	What have we done that we are blessèd? What have we damned that we are blinded?
Kenneth Patchen	I think people need a little joy and humor as well as commitment in their lives
Pope John Paul II	Opting for peace does not mean a passive acquiescence to evil or compromise of principle. It demands an active struggle against hatred, oppression and disunity, but not by using methods of violence. Building peace requires creative and courageous action.
Leonard Peltier	Silence screams. Silence is a message, just as doing nothing is an act.
Pericles	What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.
Brad Pitt "My List" 10/06 Esquire magazine	Angie (Angelina Jolie) and I will consider tying the knot when everyone else in the country who wants to be married is legally able.
Plato	We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when adults are afraid of the light.
Preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights	Recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.
Deb Price “Quest for equal rights is arduous,” Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, Aug. 10, 2006	The durability of prejudice is no reason to go slow in pushing for full equality. Speak up for fairness, and trust that the nation will catch up.
Michael Pollan America's Eating Disorder	That, in the simplest terms, is the root of the obesity epidemic for the poor -- because the obesity epidemic is really a class-based problem. It's not an epidemic, really. The biggest prediction of obesity is income.
Marcel Proust	The real voyage of discovery lies not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
Yitzhak Rabin	Peace is not made with friends. Peace is made with enemies.
Eddie Ratliff Roanoke7	We are healing but we must not forget those left behind in the rubble of misunderstanding, hate, and intolerance.
Vanessa Redgrave	You can't be striving to please. You have to strive to get to the heart of the matter.
Ambrose Redmoon	Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.
Sgt. Reedy 11/26/04 in Why even Bother	So you see I write these editorials for a lot of reasons. Mostly I write them to stir the embers of hope. I write them so that people read them today and act tomorrow. Change takes place one heart at a time. A revolution starts with a single word or action. Perhaps it will not be my words that create the change, but if my words stir the embers of hope in the hearts of those who read them. If my words create the desire to alter the social evils of our society that tell us there is nothing wrong with a queer child killing him or herself, or that there is nothing wrong with a street drunk being killed over a bottle of cheap whiskey, or that there is nothing wrong with child exploitation then I shall pound away on these keys until the final day of my life.
Rebecca Rice	Depression is oppression driven inward. We have to put it back out in the world where it belongs, and transform it through art and collective action.
Eddie Rickenbacker	Courage is doing what you're afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you're scared.
Adrienne Rich	When someone with the authority of a teacher, say, describes the world and you are not in it, there is a moment of psychic disequilibrium, as if you looked into a mirror and saw nothing. Yet you know you exist and others like you, that this is a game with mirrors. It takes some strength of soul--and not just individual strength, but collective understanding--to resist this void, this nonbeing, into which are thrust, and to stand up, demanding to be seen and heard.
Rainer Maria Rilke Letters to a Young Poet (I had read this quote many times but I read the whole letter and saw it in context for the first time recently. It's online here and worth reading. Not what I expected.)	You are so young, so before all beginning, and I want to beg you, as much as I can. dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.
Bernice Johnson Reagon one of the founders of Sweet Honey in the Rock	If you're in a coalition and you're comfortable, you know it's not a broad enough coalition.
Rebecca Riots from the song "Cemetery"	I like walking in the cemetery it's so beautiful there in the fall the changing leaves fall from the trees like they do from us all I appreciate the company of the dead I went and read the page where Don Juan said keep death upon your shoulder it will remind you to love
Rebecca Riots from the song "Gentle Rebellion"	Its not about keeping silent When you know there's something wrong No one wants to start a confrontation But it doesnt help to simply walk away You might not be heard; that's a chance that you take Somethings got to give or else its going to break
Luis J. Rodriguez http://www.luisjrodriguez.com	It is not enough to prepare our children for the world; we also must prepare the world for our children.
Luis J. Rodriguez	Art is the heart's explosion on the world. Music. Dance. Poetry. Art on cars, on the walls, on our skins. There is probably no more powerful force for change in this uncertain and crisis-ridden world than young people and their art. It is the consciousness of the world breaking away from the strangle grip of an archaic social order.
Fred Rogers (a.k.a., "Mister Rogers") 1928-2003	At the center of the Universe is a loving heart that continues to beat and that wants the best for every person. Anything that we can do to help foster the intellect and spirit and emotional growth of our fellow human beings, that is our job. Those of us who have this particular vision must continue against all odds. Life is for service.
Will Rogers	I don't care how little your country is, you got a right to run it like you want to. When the big nations quit meddling then the world will have peace.
Rodgers and Hammerstein in the musical South Pacific	You've got to be taught to hate and fear, You've got to be taught from year to year, It's got to be drummed In your dear little ear, You've got to be carefully taught. You've got to be taught to be afraid Of people whose eyes are oddly made, And people whose skin is a different shade, You've got to be carefully taught. You've got to be taught before it's too late, Before you are six or seven or eight, To hate all the people your relatives hate, You've got to be carefully taught!
Eleanor Roosevelt	Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world.
Eleanor Roosevelt	Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent.
Theodore Roosevelt 1918, following Woodrow Wilson's sweeping crackdown against dissent after the American entry into WWI	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.
Gabriel Rotello in Transgendered Like Me	Once we stop thinking of ourselves as oppressed by what we do in bed and start thinking of ourselves as oppressed because we occupy a space between genders, the sexual differences between us will fade into unimportance, and our common humanity will emerge into the light. If that’s not a higher form of liberation. I don’t know what is.
Rumi	Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.
Bertrand Russell	Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.
Bertrand Russell	The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people are so full of doubts.
Bertrand Russell	Most men would rather die than think. Many do.
Bayard Rustin	We need, in every community, a group of angelic troublemakers. Our power is in our ability to make things unworkable.
Bayard Rustin	Bigotry's birthplace is the sinister back room of the mind where plots and schemes are hatched for the persecution and oppression of other human beings.
Bayard Rustin Senator James Eastland - senator for Mississippi	When I say I love Eastland, it sounds preposterous -- a man who brutalizes people. But you love him or you wouldn't be here. You're going to Mississippi to create social change -- and you love Eastland in your desire to create conditions which will redeem his children. Loving your enemy is manifest in putting your arms not around the man but around the social situation, to take power from those who misuse it -- at which point they can become human too.
Bayard Rustin	When an individual is protesting society's refusal to acknowledge his dignity as a human being, his very act of protest confers dignity on him.
Marla Ruzicka founder of Campaign for Innocent Victims In Conflict, killed in Iraq on 4/16/05	Here we are young and we gotta just live life bold and make the most of it.
Don Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra	One man scorned and covered with scars still strove with his last ounce of courage to reach the unreachable stars; and the world will be better for this.
Saint Augustine	Charity is no substitute for justice withheld.
Carl Sandburg	Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.
Jean-Paul Sartre	When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die.
Mario Savio speech for Free Speech Movement on 12/02/64 in Berkeley, CA	There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part, you can’t even tacitly take part. And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.
Mario Savio	You can't disobey the rules every time you disapprove. However, when you're considering something that constitutes an extreme abridgement of your rights, conscience is the court of last resort.
John Schaar futurist	The future is not a result of choices among alternative paths offered by the present, but a place that is created-created first in the mind and will, created next in activity. The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making them, changes both the maker and the destination.
Steve Schalchlin http://bonusroundblog.blogspot.com from his song "Connected"	Someday if I lose this fight to carry on please send me someplace gently out to sea. Then listen as I whisper softly in your ear. Connected to each other. We will always be connected each other.
Steve Schalchlin http://bonusroundblog.blogspot.com	There is room for privacy in everyone's life. Each of us have things that we don't wish to share with the world. But for the most part, for one's identity, the closet itself is evil, in my experience. Nothing destroys the human spirit more than the shame of having to live a lie.
Steve Schalchlin The Emergent Sea Vol. 4 Book 6 of Living In The Bonus Round http://bonusroundblog.blogspot.com	If you strike him, he will then have to strike you. Right now, look at the world. Everyone is striking back at everyone else. You have to stop the abuse with this generation. And it's an act of will on your part because your default button is to be like your father. He unfortunately taught you fatherhood.
Steve Schalchlin	Tolerance has to be a two way street or it's not tolerance.
Steve Schalchlin September 25, 2006 Some Random Photos from Norwich	One of the purposes of "Big Voice" is to let people see what a real gay marriage looks like, warts and all. We're just people, folks. You can lay down your weapons now. We promise we won't invade your homes the way you're invading ours.
Anna Schlecht after hate graffiti was painted in an Olympia, Washington neighborhood on April 10, 2007 See articles here and here..	Perhaps the greatest impact was on the neighborhood children who saw both the ugliness of the graffiti as well as the beauty of an affirming community response. While the criminal justice system will deal with the juvenile(s) who committed this graffiti, it is up to the community to help repair the social fabric that is torn when hate speech or other hate activity occurs. Graffiti can be erased, the fear that it causes takes more time to heal. Our presence and our compassion are essential to rebuilding faith that our community honors and celebrates diversity.
Alexander Schmemann Celebration of Faith, Sermons Vol 2: The Church Year	Again and again we come to recognize that the most essential, joyful mystery of Christianity is the mystery of the person, of what makes each human being valuable to God, of what we can and must love in him or her. It is precisely this mystery which the world and its ruling ideologies have repudiated. To them, a human being is defined by externals: class, race nationality, utilitarian value, what he or she gives to the country or, on the contrary, their mistakes and crimes. Our people vs. strangers, allies vs. enemies, us vs. them... Yet it seems that everyone is talking about liberation for human society, happiness for the world, prescriptions for humanity, the struggle for a bright, happy and liberated life. But in reality, all are united against someone else and everything is motivated by fear, suspicion and hatred. And it will be this way until people understand that to love humanity in general, to serve humanity in general, is not only a deception; it is also impossible if this love is not rooted in love for the person, for each person, a love which goes beyond any of our earthy, 'human, all too human' standards and categories which we use to classify and evaluate people.
Florida Scott-Maxwell	Life does not accommodate you, it shatters you. It is meant to, and it couldn't do it better. Every seed destroys its container or else there would be no fruition.
Ry Schwark	Welcome out of the closet to life. It is a war zone, a furnace, an overgrown secret garden, a thunderstorm, a snowy morning, a bloody scalpel, and moonlit laughter. No one escapes unbloodied, except those who don't play, and they are the saddest of all, by far.
Pete Seeger	Do you know the difference between education and experience? Education is when you read the fine print, experience is what you get when you don't.
Pete Seeger	Any darn fool can make something complex; it takes a genius to make something simple.
Pete Seeger	Technology will save us if it doesn't wipe us out first.
Pete Seeger	I like to say I'm more conservative than Goldwater. He just wanted to turn the clock back to when there was no income tax. I want to turn the clock back to when people lived in small villages and took care of each other.
Dr. Seuss	Be who you are and say what you feel, cause those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.
George Bernard Shaw	Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.
George Bernard Shaw	Such poverty as we have today in our great cities degrades the poor, and infects with its degradation the whole neighborhood in which they live. And whatever can degrade a neighborhood can degrade a country and a continent and finally the whole civilized world, which is only a large neighborhood... The old notion that people can "Keep themselves to themselves" and not be touched by what is happening to their neighbors or even to people who live a hundred miles off, is a most dangerous mistake, The saying that we are members of one another is not a mere pious formula to be repeated in church without any meaning; it is a literal truth, for though the rich end of town can avoid living with the poor end, it cannot avoid dying with it when the plague comes.
George Bernard Shaw	You see things as they are and ask, 'Why?' I dream things as they never were and ask, 'Why not?'
George Bernard Shaw	This is the true joy in life - being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me, it is a sort of splendid torch, which I have got a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it to future generations.
George Bernard Shaw	I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the community, and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. Life is no 'brief candle' to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for a moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on the future generations.
George Bernard Shaw	This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no 'brief candle' to me. It is sort of a splendid torch which I have a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it over to future generations.
Alan Sherman	A 'normal' person is the sort of person that might be designed by a committee. You know, each person puts in a pretty color and it comes out gray.
Judy Shepard	If Matthew were alive today, I know he would tell you to register and to vote, reminding you that “if you don't vote, you can't bitch” about those who were elected or the actions they take as your representatives. He would beg you to let your voice be heard and to use your precious right to vote.
Lillian Smith	No journey carries one far unless, as it extends into the world around us, it goes an equal distance into the world within.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn	If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?
Alfred Souza	For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin, real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.
John Shelby Spong Retired Episcopal Bishop, Diocese of Newark, NJ	When the dust settles and the pages of history are written, it will not be the angry defenders of intolerance who have made the difference. That reward will go to those who dared to step outside the safety of their privacy in order to expose and rout the prevailing prejudices.
Gloria Steinem	The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn.
Gloria Steinem	One day our descendants will think it incredible that we paid so much attention to things like the amount of melanin in our skin or the shape of our eyes or our gender instead of the unique identities of each of us as complex human beings.
Cat Stevens	From the moment I could talk I was ordered to listen.
Adlai Stevenson	One can either curse the darkness or light a candle to find the way out.
Ralph W. Stockman	The test of courage comes when we are in the minority; the test of tolerance comes when we are in the majority.
Tom Stoppard	Every exit is an entry somewhere else.
Sufi teaching	You think because you understand one, you must understand two, because one and one makes two. But you must also understand and.
Andrew Sullivan editor of The New Republic, in POZ magazine	I gave a talk to the Human Rights Campaign Fund in Washington two years ago. It was just after we lost the military issue and there were 800 people in the Washington Hilton in black tie and I said, "I just want to ask all of you who are out to your employers to put your hands up, and all of you who are out to your parents to put your hands up." And there was a scattering of hands, and I said, "Will all the rest of you please leave now and come back when you've done that because I don't know what the fuck you're doing here at a dinner for gay rights when you haven't done the first thing that's necessary.
Penn Jillette The larger, louder half of comedy-magic team Penn & Teller.	Technology adds nothing to art. Two thousand years ago, I could tell you a story, and at any point during the story I could stop, and ask, Now do you want the hero to be kidnapped, or not? But that would, of course, have ruined the story. Part of the experience of being entertained is sitting back and plugging into someone else's vision.
Steve Tesich	No birth certificate is issued when friendship is born. There is nothing tangible. There is just a feeling that your life is different and that your capacity to love and care has miraculously been enlarged without any effort on your part. It's like having a tiny apartment and somebody moves in with you. But instead of becoming cramped and crowded, the space expands, and you discover rooms you never knew you had until your friend moved in with you.
the thin red line	You live inside me now. I'll carry you with me wherever I go.
Ngugi wa Thiong'o Kenyan writer of Gikuyu descent	Peace is impossible in a world dominated by imperialism. Peace is impossible in a world guided by the ideology and practice of racism. Hence the struggle for peace in the world must be a concerted struggle against racism and imperialism.
Henry David Thoreau	If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
Henry David Thoreau	It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.
Henry David Thoreau	Things do not change, we do.
Henry David Thoreau	Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed – a, to me, equally mysterious origin for it. Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders.
Henry David Thoreau	Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.
Leo Tolstoy	When will justice come? When those who are not injured are as indignant as those who are.
Leo Tolstoy	Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
Harry S. Truman 33rd president of the U.S.	Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu	Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu	It's not just about having a seat at the table, it's about setting the menu.
Traveling Jewish Theater "Coming from a Great Distance"	Listen, stories move in circles. They don't go in straight lines. So it helps if you listen in circles because there are stories inside and stories between stories and finding your way through them is as easy and as hard as finding your way home. And part of the finding is the getting lost. And when you're lost, you really start to open up and listen.
A Turtle Creek Chorale member in After Goodbye: an AIDS Story, PBS	When you come to the edge of all that you have known, there will be two possibilities awaiting you: There will be something solid to stand on or you will be taught how to fly.
Mark Twain	Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of joy you must have somebody to divide it with.
Mark Twain	Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear.
Mark Twain	It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.
Mark Twain	Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
Mark Twain	You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
Mark Twain	The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them.
Mark Twain	There has been only one Christian. They caught and crucified him--early.
Mark Twain	Our Country, right or wrong... Have you not perceived that that phrase is an insult to the nation?
Mark Twain	The worst loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself.
Mark Twain	Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out... and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel.... And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for the universal brotherhood of man - with his mouth.
Mark Twain	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.
Towards a Quaker View of Sex, 1964	One should no more deplore homosexuality than left-handedness.
Lao Tzu	...the Master acts without doing anything and teaches without saying anything. Things arise and she lets them come; things disappear and she lets them go. She has but doesn't possess, acts but doesn't expect. When her work is done, she forgets it. That is why it lasts forever.
Lao Tzu	A leader is best when people barely know he exists. Not so good when people obey and acclaim him. Worse when they despise him. Fail to honor people, they fail to honor you. But of a good leader who talks little when his work is done, his aim fulfilled the people say 'we did this ourselves'.
Samuel Ullman	Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.
Samuel Ullman	Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind; it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the will, quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life.
Paul Varnell openly gay columnist	Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said that homosexuality 'is a lifestyle I don't agree with.' This is a trope you hear from the religious right a good deal, and it seems to have entered the conservative mainstream, rolling easily off the tongue. But it is a very odd thing to say. No one (speaking rationally) says, 'I don't agree with the Pacific Ocean' or 'I don't agree with the Grand Canyon.' Facts are not things you agree or disagree with. You can agree or disagree with viewpoints, thoughts or ideas, but homosexuality is not a viewpoint or an idea. It is a thing, an attribute, a nature, a fact.
Brenda Ueland	Why should we all use our creative power? Because there is nothing that makes people so generous, joyful, lively, bold and compassionate, so indifferent to fighting and the accumulation of objects and money.
Brenda Ueland	... inspiration does not come like a bolt, nor is it kinetic, energetic striving, but it comes into us slowly and quietly and all the time, though we must regularly and every day give it a little chance to start flowing, prime it with a little solitude and idleness.
Brenda Ueland	Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. When we really listen to people there is an alternating current, and this recharges us so that we never get tired of each other. We are constantly being re-created.
Voltaire	God is a comedian playing to an audience that's afraid to laugh.
Steve von Till	... breathe in, breathe deep. A lifetime is too long to sleep.
Kurt Vonnegut	If you really want to hurt your parents and you don't have nerve enough to be homosexual, the least you can do is go into the Arts
Kurt Vonnegut in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater	Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you've got to be kind.
Kurt Vonnegut. in Timequake	Still and all, why bother? Here's my answer. Many people need desperately to receive this message: I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.
Kurt Vonnegut in Mother Night	We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.
Alice Walker	I'm not sure a bad person can write a good book. If art doesn't make us better, then what on earth is it for?
Alice Walker	No person is your friend (or kin) who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow and be perceived as fully blossomed as you were intended. Or who belittles in any fashion the gifts you labor so to bring into the world.
Eli Wallace	Having the critics praise you is like having the hangman say you've got a pretty neck.
Booker T. Washington	You can't hold a man down without staying down with him.
Senator Paul Wellstone	Never separate the life you live from the words you speak.
Senator Paul Wellstone	A politics that is not sensitive to the concerns and circumstances of people's lives, a politics that does not speak to and include people, is an intellectually arrogant politics that deserves to fail.
Senator Paul Wellstone	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.
Senator Paul Wellstone	The future will not belong to those who sit on the sidelines. The future will not belong to the cynics. The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
Senator Paul Wellstone	Sometimes, the only realists are the dreamers.
Dr. Cornel West	To be human, at the most profound level, is to encounter honestly the inescapable circumstances that constrain us, yet muster the courage to struggle compassionately for our own unique individualities and for more democratic and free societies. To be modern is to have the courage to use one's critical intelligence to question and challenge the prevailing authorities, powers, and hierarchies of the world, also to live dangerously and courageously in the face of relentless self-criticism, and inescapable fallibilism.
Jessamyn West	We want the facts to fit the preconceptions. When they don't, it is easier to ignore the facts than to change the preconceptions.
Jessamyn West	I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is; I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.
Morris L. West The Shoes Of The Fisherman	It costs so much to be a full human being that there are very few who have the enlightenment or the courage to pay the price... One has to abandon altogether the search for security, and reach out to the risk of living with both arms. One has to embrace the world like a lover. One has to accept pain as a condition of existence. One has to count doubt and darkness as the cost of knowing. One needs a will stubborn in conflict, but apt always to total acceptance of every consequence of living and dying.
Edith Wharton	There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.
Marissa Whitley Miss Teen USA 2002, who is biracial	Prejudice is a definitely a learned behavior. You aren't born hating a black person or an obese person or a gay person … Growing into myself, I realized that different is good, and different sets you apart.
Elie Wiesel in his Nobel Prize speech on 10/10/86	We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must - at that moment - become the center of the universe.
Elie Wiesel in his Nobel Prize speech on 10/10/86	There is so much to be done, there is so much that can be done. One person - a Raoul Wallenberg, an Albert Schweitzer, Martin Luther King, Jr. - one person of integrity, can make a difference, a difference of life and death.
Riki Wilchins Executive Director, GenderPAC, "Homophobia's Gender Roots," The Advocate, March 19, 2002	Willie Houston, a 38-year-old African-American bus driver, was shot dead in Nashville while celebrating his engagement. His killer allegedly became enraged at seeing him holding the arm of a blind friend with one arm and his fiancée's purse with the other while she used the rest room. Because his death wasn't about his sexual orientation, gender identity, or even race, it largely fell off the public's radar screen.... From classrooms to boardrooms, from reservations to city streets, transcending common gender stereotypes can still get you, your loved ones, or your children harassed, assaulted, or even killed right here at home.... Because if you scratch homophobia, you always find gender: the prejudice that men who love men are unmanly and women who love women are necessarily unfeminine.
Oscar Wilde	The stage is not merely the meeting place of all the arts, but is also the return of art to life.
Kathy Williams	Childhood is that state which ends the moment a puddle is first viewed as an obstacle instead of an opportunity.
Miller Williams	Have compassion for everyone you meet, even if they don't want it. What seems conceit, bad manners, or cynicism is always a sign of things no ears have heard and no eyes have seen. You do not know what wars are going on down there where the spirit meets the bone.
Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire, 1947	What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it's curved like a road through mountains.
Marianne Williamson	Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our greatest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, "Who am I to be brilliant, talented, fabulous?" Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us, it's in ALL of us. As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
Jeannette Winterson Written on the Body	"You'll get over it..." It's the clichés that cause the trouble. To lose someone you love is to alter your life for ever. You don't get over it because 'it' is the person you loved. The pain stops, there are new people, but the gap never closes. How could it? The particularness of someone who mattered enough to grieve over is not made anodyne by death. This hole in my heart is the shape of you and no-one else can fit it. Why would I want them to? I've thought a lot about death recently, the finality of it, the argument ending in mid-air. One of us hadn't finished, why did the other one go? And why without warning? Even death after long illness is without warning. The moment you had prepared for so carefully took you by storm. The troops broke through the window and snatched the body and the body is gone. The day before the Wednesday last, this time a year ago, you were here and now you're not. Why not? Death reduces us to the baffled logic of a child. If yesterday why not today? And where are you? Fragile creatures of a small blue planet, surrounded by light years of silent space. Do the dead find peace beyond the rattle of the world? What peace is there for us whose best love cannot return them even for a day? I raise my head to the door and think I will see you in the frame. I know it is your voice in the corridor but when I run outside the corridor is empty. There is nothing I can do that will make any difference. The last word is yours. The fluttering in the stomach goes away and the dull waking pain. Sometimes I think of you and I feel giddy. Memory makes me lightheaded, drunk on champagne. All the things we did. And if anyone had said this was the price I would have agreed to pay it. That surprises me; that with the hurt and the mess comes a shaft of recognition. It was worth it. Love is worth it.
Jeannette Winterson Written on the Body	THINGS HAD CHANGED, what an arsehole comment, I had changed things. Things don't change, they're not like the seasons moving on a diurnal round. People change things. There are victims of change, but not victims of things.
Jeannette Winterson Written on the Body	I thought how easy it is to destroy the past and how difficult to forget it.
Malcolm X	You can’t separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.
Irvin Yalom Existential Psychotherapy	Death, freedom, and isolation must be grappled with directly. Yet when it comes to meaninglessness, the effective therapist must help patients to look away from the question: to embrace the solution of engagement rather than to plunge in and through the problem of meaninglessness. The question of meaning in life is as the Buddha taught, not edifying. One must immerse oneself in the river of life and let the question drift away.
William Butler Yeats Nobel Prize winning poet	Teaching is not filling up a pail, it is lighting a fire.
Andrew Young The Case for Conscientious Objection	If we agree that war is only justified when the people and participants know exactly why they are killing, then we must also agree that there is no such thing as a just war. A thorough look at history proves that governments never tell their people exactly why they must kill; the rhetoric never matches the record. I believe, and I think most people do as well, that forcing one man to take another's life without telling him the whole story is unjust.
Dan Zandra	Live your life so that your children can tell their children that you not only stand for something wonderful--you acted upon it.
Frank Zappa	The illusion of freedom in America will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way, and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theatre.
Eve Zibart	Prejudice rarely survives experience.
Howard Zinn	You do things again and again, and nothing happens. You have to do things, do things, do things,. You have to light that match, light that match, light that match, not knowing how often it's going to sputter and go out and at what point it's going to take hold. Things take a long time. It requires patience, but not a passive patience -- the patience of activism.
Howard Zinn	We need to decide that we will not go to war, whatever reason is conjured up by the politicians or the media, because war in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children.
Howard Zinn	If I had found that the FBI didn't have a file on me, it would have been tremendously embarrassing and I wouldn't have been able to face my friends.
Howard Zinn	If the gods had intended for people to vote, they would have given us candidates.
Howard Zinn	There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.
Howard Zinn	If those in charge of our society - politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television - can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves.
Howard Zinn Just and Unjust War in his book Declarations of Independence	It seems that however moral is the cause that initiates a war (in the minds of the public, in the mouths of the politicians), it is in the nature of war to corrupt that morality until the rule becomes "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth," and soon it is not a matter of equivalence, but indiscriminate revenge.
Howard Zinn Just and Unjust War in his book Declarations of Independence	It remains to be seen how many people in our time will make that journey from war to nonviolent action against war. It is the great challenge or our time: How to achieve justice, with struggle, but without war.
written on the tomb of an Anglican Bishop (1100 A.D.) in the Crypts of Westminster Abbey	When I was young and free and my imagination had no limits, I dreamed of changing the world. As I grew older and wiser, I discovered the world would not change, so I shortened my sights somewhat and decided to change only my country. But it too seemed immovable. As I grew into my twilight years, in one last desperate attempt, I settled for changing only my family, those closest to me, but alas they would have none of it. And now as I lay on my deathbed, I suddenly realize: If I had only changed myself first, then by example I might have changed my family. From their inspiration and encouragement, I wou