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2304 Quotations
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Protest is, in some ways, the source code for democracy.
By Rick Stengel
[fullquote]
A revolution is impossible until a revolution is inevitable
By Leon Trotsky
[fullquote]
The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.
By Steve Biko
[fullquote]
The voice of the people is more powerful than the voice of the media.
By Herman Cain
[fullquote]
A hero is a sandwich.
By Barack Obama
[fullquote]
Long-term sustainable change happens if people discover their own power. The key is moving the centre of gravity in the decision-making, moving it closer to people in the community, in the field, and so forth -- and away from a centrally directed, top-down approach. For the first time in human history, technology is enabling people to really maintain those rich connections with much larger numbers of people than ever.
By Pierre Omidyar
[fullquote]
Capitalism as we know it, which essentially started around the time of the industrial revolution, has certainly created economic growth in the world, and brought many wonderful benefits, but all this has come at a cost that is not reflected on the balance sheet. The focus on profit being king has caused significant negative, unintended consequences. For over a century and a half cheap labour, damaged lives, a destroyed planet and polluted seas were all irrelevant when set against the need for profit. But this is changing.
By Richard Branson
[fullquote]
The best way to reach the heart-- which is what moves people to love, to act, to join, to give, to risk, to sacrifice, to engage, to work, to have faith, to be loyal-- is with the power of stories.
By Rob Kall
[fullquote]
A lot of little things, millions of little things is what will save this world.
By Woody Guthrie
[fullquote]
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.
By Frederick Douglass
[fullquote]
.. they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
By Frederick Douglass
[fullquote]
...the medium is the moron. The people on the receiving end of television chatter are not as stupid as television itself.
By David Swanson
[fullquote]
I hear all this, you know, "Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever,'" she said. "No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody.
"You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.
"Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.
By Elizabeth Warren
[fullquote]
The opposite of courage is not cowardice, it's conformity. Even a dead fish can go with the flow.
By Jim Hightower
[fullquote]
Courage is contagious.
By Julian Assange
[fullquote]
An apology can go a long way.
We all lose it or make mistakes.
it takes a grown up to own up.
By Rob Kall
[fullquote]
History is written by those who have hanged heroes.
By Randall Wallace
[fullquote]
...the truth goes down better in a democracy when it's marinated in humor.
By Bill Moyers
[fullquote]
May the bridges I burn light the way.
By Marko Rakar
[fullquote]
God is just what happens when humanity is connected.
We all owe every moment of our lives to each other. We are all connected.
By Jim Gilliam
[fullquote]
My readers know more than I do...
By Dan Gillmor
[fullquote]
The news is about what people want to keep hidden. Everything else is publicity. People don't want to keep their opinions hidden, but they want to keep the facts hidden. And it takes a lot of money, a lot of time and a lot of effort to go and explore the facts and bring them out.
By Bill Moyers
[fullquote]
Inept policy invites people to think about conspiracy theories because we don't get all the evidence, and that's where we are now.
By Ron Paul
[fullquote]
..."free, instant, worldwide connectivity" is the future.
By Bill Moyers
[fullquote]
You first get people to speak in the language of violence... before you get them to carry out acts of violence. There is nothing benign about the language or the celebration of the gun culture... Because in a societal breakdown that step towards the actual employment of violence is very small.
By Chris Hedges
[fullquote]
What will make you successful is your stories, nothing else. Make them strong and you can do anything.
By Donald Maass
[fullquote]
The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.
By Milan Kundera
[fullquote]
If there is going to be change," he said, "real change, it will have to work its way from the bottom up, from the people themselves.
By Howard Zinn
[fullquote]
There is a crack in everything and that is how the light gets in.
By Leonard Cohen
[fullquote]
"Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter
By African Proverb
[fullquote]
The enemy is the bureaucracy, not necessarily the current occupant of the White House.
By Darrell Issa
[fullquote]
The rich are always going to say that, you know, just give us more money and we'll go out and spend more and then it will all trickle down to the rest of you. But that has not worked the last 10 years, and I hope the American public is catching on...
By Warren Buffet
[fullquote]
The only trait that survives decapitation is vanity.
By Gero Miesenboeck
[fullquote]
...one of the major reasons for government secrecy is to protect the government from its own population.
By Noam Chomsky
[fullquote]
Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now.
Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the
work, but neither are you free to abandon it.
By Talmud
[fullquote]
Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism.
By Huey Long
[fullquote]
Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now.
Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the
work, but neither are you free to abandon it.
By Talmud
[fullquote]
A loving person lives in a loving world...A hostile person lives in a hostile world...The world thus tends to be your mirror.
By Ken Keyes Jr.
[fullquote]
You say we're on the brink of destruction and you're right. But it's only on the brink that people find the will to change. Only at the precipice do we evolve. This is our moment.
By David Scarpa
[fullquote]
When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down "happy.' They told me I didn't understand the assignment, and I told them they didn't understand life.
By John Lennon
[fullquote]
In a free society we're supposed to know the truth. In a society where truth becomes treason, then we're in big trouble. And now, people who are revealing the truth are getting into trouble for it.
By Ron Paul
[fullquote]
...one of the major reasons for government secrecy is to protect the government from its own population.
By Noam Chomsky
[fullquote]
the best way to sell a lie is to wrap it in some truth and a story
By Rob Kall
[fullquote]
Learn well, Jake Sully, and we will see if your insanity can be cured.
By James Cameron
[fullquote]
Budgets are moral documents.
By Patrick Murphy
[fullquote]
A human face to a human face--talking, neighbor to neighbor--is the most powerful grassroots tool that this campaign has or any other campaign has.
By Raul Grijalva
[fullquote]
What's the point of being popular if you can't do what you want?
By Glee
[fullquote]
News is about stories. It's about finding all the disparate facts and then, finding their coherence.
By Rachel Maddow
[fullquote]
It is the good fortune of many to live distant from the scene of sorrow... The evil is not sufficiently brought to their doors to make them feel the precariousness with which all American property is possessed.
By Thomas Paine
[fullquote]
Remember, the Ark was built by amateurs. The Titanic was built by professionals
By Marian Wright-Edelman
[fullquote]
Sorry I pushed you away. That's what I do when I'm afraid.
By House
[fullquote]
It is not always easy to be on the side of the voices who are not making as much noise, but it is still right to speak out.
By Rob Kall
[fullquote]
Success requires:
1) Written goals, and plans expressed in continuous action.
2) The ability to take action despite the voices in your head
By Steven Barnes
[fullquote]
Today as ever, people have to rally to the cause of peace and peace needs champions on every street corner and around every kitchen table.
By Hillary Clinton
[fullquote]
We tend to forget that happiness doesn't come as a result of getting something we don't have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have.
By Frederick Koenig
[fullquote]
And the time came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
By Anais Nin
[fullquote]
Hope is actually toxic if you hold it long enough without resolution.
By Bill Moyers
[fullquote]
Democracy only works if we claim it as our own
By Bill Moyers
[fullquote]
If you're looking to find the key to the Universe, I have some
bad news and some good news~
The bad news is: there is no key to the Universe.
The good news is: it has been left unlocked.
By Swami Beyondananda
[fullquote]
We have bigger houses but smaller families,
more conveniences, but less time.
We have more degrees, but less sense
more knowledge, but less judgement
more experts, but more problems
more medicines, but less healthiness.
We've been all the way to the moon and back
but have trouble crossing the street to meet the neighbor.
We built more computers to hold more information
to produce more copies than ever"
but have less communication.
We have become long on quantity but short on quality.
These are fast times of fast foods but slow digestion.
Tall man but short character.
Steep profits but shallow relationships.
It is a time where there is much in the window
but nothing in the room.
By Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso)
[fullquote]
You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to... foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.
By Martin Luther King
[fullquote]
The first rule of effective communication is stating the positive in your own terms, not quoting the other side's language with a negation.
By George Lakoff
[fullquote]
Actually time itself is neutral... Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts of men, willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation.
By Martin Luther King
[fullquote]
More than ever before, my friends, men of all races and nations are today challenged to be neighborly... No longer can we afford the luxury of passing by on the other side. Such folly was once called moral failure; today it will lead to universal suicide...
By Martin Luther King
[fullquote]
The arc of history is long and it bends towards justice.
By Martin Luther King
[fullquote]
There are two types of laws: just and unjust... An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law...
By Martin Luther King
[fullquote]
We had won a partial victory in Albany, and a partial victory to us was not an end but a beginning.
By Martin Luther King
[fullquote]
Not only will we have to repent for the sins of bad people; but we also will have to repent for the appalling silence of good people
By Martin Luther King
[fullquote]
There are no classes in life for beginners; right away you are always asked to deal with what is most difficult.
By Rainer Maria Rilke
[fullquote]
There are so many things about which some old man ought to tell one while one is little; for when one is grown one would know them as a matter of course.
By Rainer Maria Rilke
[fullquote]
There is here no measuring with time, no year matters, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means, not reckoning and counting, but ripening like the tree which does not force its sap and stands confident in the storms of spring without the fear that after them may come no summer. It does come. But it comes only to the patient, who are there as though eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly still and wide. I learn it daily, learn it with pain to which I am grateful: PATIENCE is everything.
By Rainer Maria Rilke
[fullquote]
There is nothing quixotic or romantic in wanting to change the world. It is possible. It is the age-old vocation of all humanity. I can't think of a better life than one dedicated to passion, to dreams, to the stubbornness that defies chaos and disillusionment. Our world, filled with possibilities, is and will be the result of the efforts offered up by us, its inhabitants. Just as life was a consequence of trial and error, the social organizations that bring us the full realization of our potential as a species will issure from the ebb and flow of struggles we jointly undertake across the globe.
The future is a construct that is shaped in the present, and that is why to be responsible in the present is the only way of taking serious responsibility for the future. What is important is not the fulfillment of all one's dreams, but the stubborn determiniation to continue dreaming. We will have grandchildren, and they will have children too. The world will continue, and whether we know it or not, we are deciding its course every day.
By Gioconda Belli
[fullquote]
There may be good, but there are no pleasant marriages.
By Rainer Maria Rilke
[fullquote]
Things are not all so comprehensible and expressible as one would mostly have us believe; most events are inexpressible, take place in a realm which no word has ever entered, and more inexpressible than all else are works of art, mysterious existences, the life of which, while ours passes away, endures.
By Rainer Maria Rilke
[fullquote]
This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love: the more they give, the more they possess.
By Rainer Maria Rilke
[fullquote]
Truly to sing, that is a different breath.
By Rainer Maria Rilke
[fullquote]
What is required of us is that we love the difficult and learn to deal with it. In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us.
By Rainer Maria Rilke
[fullquote]
What locks itself in sameness has congealed.
Is it safer to be gray and numb?
What turns hard becomes rigid
and is easily shattered.
By Rainer Maria Rilke
[fullquote]
With time, the Revolution's stance grew more and more rigid. Powerful economic groups and the extremist Left began to challenge the revolutionary reforms-- the former because their own interests were being threatened, and the latter because their extremist demands were not being met. But their criticism was not met with an open mind. It was hard to forget previous Latin American experiences, like Chile in 1973, where leniency had ended in a bloody coup. Rather than working toward an all-inclusive social pact, we decreed a new order because we felt it was the only way to remain true to the impoverished masses. Lacking a democratic tradition of our own, we took advantage of the authority we wielded. We might have considered ourselves very benevolent, but the truth was we had inherited a long legacy of authoritarianism.
By Gioconda Belli
[fullquote]
All the soarings of my mind begin in my blood.
By Rainer Maria Rilke
[fullquote]
Ever since the earthquake the country had been placed under a state of seige. Our constitutional rights were suspended. Nobody protested, mainly because we had already been living like that long before it was officially declared.
By Gioconda Belli
[fullquote]
Every happiness is the child of a separation
it did not think it could survive. And Daphne, becoming
a laurel, dares you to become the wind.
By Rainer Maria Rilke
[fullquote]
Every poet, I suppose, should fall madly in love at least once in her life, so that she may come to know the shadow side of the feminine human experience, plumb the depth of her own vulnerability and emerge the wiser.
By Gioconda Belli
[fullquote]
Everything is gestation and then bringing forth. TO let each impression and each germ of a feeling come to completion quite in itself, in the dark, in the inexpressible, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one's own understanding, and await with deep humility and patience the birth-hour of a new clarity: that alone is living the artist's life-- in understanding as in work.
By Rainer Maria Rilke
[fullquote]
Everything that happens is always beginning again, and could it not be his beginning, since beginning in itself is always so beautiful.
By Rainer Maria Rilke
[fullquote]
For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.
By Rainer Maria Rilke
[fullquote]
History is a long process, and if one can muster the patience to understand it, one can derive satisfaction from the small battles that drive it forward. A cause isn't hopeless just because its objectives aren't reached in one's lifetime.
By Gioconda Belli
[fullquote]
I have never been able to bring myself to believe that a woman can save a man's honor by sacrificing her own integrity and lying to herself.
By Gioconda Belli
[fullquote]
I have never been aware before how many faces there are. There are quantities of human beings, but there are many more faces, for each person has several.
By Rainer Maria Rilke
[fullquote]
I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protects the solitude of the other.
By Rainer Maria Rilke
[fullquote]
I know that the obsession to redeem humanity can be just as dangerous as the fanaticism I see in the faces of those who dedicate themselves to perfect bodies, pure, unadulterated food, and the quest for immortality. I try to think that each and every one of us is responsible for finding meaning and purpose in life, and that it's arrogant to think that my solution is better than the rest. On the other hand, I don't think anyone could ever convince me that the kind of pleasure that begins and ends in oneself can even remotely be compared to the exaltation and joy that comes from joining others in the effort to change the world.
By Gioconda Belli
[fullquote]
I realized that I would no longer be satisfied by passive and sensory pleasures, that for me nothing would compare to the vibrant passion of pursuing collective dreams.
By Gioconda Belli
[fullquote]
If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator is no poverty and no poor indifferent place. And even if you were in some prison the walls of which let none of the sounds of the world come to your senses-- would you not then still have your childhood, that precious, kingly possession, that treasure-house of memories? Turn your attention there. Try to bring up the sunken sensations of that far past; your personality will grow more firm, your solitude will widen and will become a dusky dwelling by which the noise of others passes far away.
By Rainer Maria Rilke
[fullquote]
In one creative thought a thousand forgotten nights of love revive and fill it with sublimity and exaltation.
By Rainer Maria Rilke
[fullquote]
It is a tremendous act of violence to begin anything. I am not able to begin. I simply skip what should be the beginning.
By Rainer Maria Rilke
[fullquote]
It is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be a reason the more for us to do it.
By Rainer Maria Rilke
[fullquote]
Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.
By Rainer Maria Rilke
[fullquote]
Life has shown me that not every commitment requires payment in blood, or the heroism of dying in the line of fire. There is a heroism inherent to peace and stability, an accessible, everyday heroism that may not challenge us with the threat of death, but which challenges us to squeeze every last possibility out of life, and to live not one, but several lives all at the same time. To accept oneself as a multiple being in time and space is part of modern life, and one of the possibilities enjoyed by those of us who live in an era in which technology can be embraced as a liberating rather than alienating force. Human aspirations are no longer constricted by geographic limitations.
By Gioconda Belli
[fullquote]
Live your questions now, and perhaps even without knowing it, you will live along some distant day into your answers.
By Rainer Maria Rilke
[fullquote]
Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.
By Rainer Maria Rilke
[fullquote]
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