government

When shall it be said in any country of the world, my poor are happy, neither ignorance or distress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want, the taxes not oppressive; the rational world is my friend because I am a friend of its happiness. When these things can be said, then may that country boast of its constitution and government .
~ Thomas Paine

the violence of war

The civility of no race can be perfect whilst another race is degraded. It is a doctrine alike of the oldest and of the newest philosophy, that man is one, and that you cannot injure any member, without a sympathetic injury to all the members.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson. 1844

I sat there in agony thinking about all that had led me to this private hell. My idealism, my patriotism, my ambition, my plans to be a good intelligence officer to help my country fight the communist scourge - what in the hell had happened? Why did we have to bomb the people we were trying to save? Why were we napalming young children? Why did the CIA, my employer for 16 years, report lies instead of the truth?

I hated my part in the charade of murder and horror. My efforts were contributing to the deaths, to the burning alive of children - especially the children. The photographs of young Vietnamese children burned by napalm destroyed me.
~ Ralph McGehee former CIA intelligence analyst
I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all members of the military profession I never had an original thought until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of the higher- ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.
~ General Smedley Butler. USMC (Ret.)

Until we go through it ourselves, until our people cower in the shelters of New York, Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles and elsewhere while the buildings collapse overhead and burst into flames, and dead bodies hurtle about and, when it is over for the day or the night, emerge in the rubble to find some of their dear ones mangled, their homes gone, their hospitals, churches, schools demolished - only after that gruesome experience will we realize what we are inflicting on the people of Indochina...
~ William Shirer author 1973

Nothing is enough for the person to whom enough is too little.
~ Max Lucado in Grace for the Moment

civilization

The civility of no race can be perfect whilst another race is degraded. It is a doctrine alike of the oldest and of the newest philosophy, that man is one, and that you cannot injure any member, without a sympathetic injury to all the members.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson. 1844

protest

There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people for a purpose which is unattainable.
~ Howard Zinn, U.S. historian

It is never right to do wrong or to requite wrong with wrong, or when we suffer evil to defend ourselves by doing evil in return.
~ Socrates, 469 - 399 BC

The voice of protest, of warning, of appeal is never more needed than when the clamor of fife and drum, echoed by the press and too often by the pulpit, is bidding all men fall in and keep step and obey in silence the tyrannous word of command. Then, more than ever, it is the duty of the good citizen not to be silent.
~ Charles Eliot Norton

He who dares not offend cannot be honest.
~ Thomas Paine

To change masters is not to be free.
~ Jose Marti y Perez

believing what is true

Believe nothing just because a so-called wise person said it. Believe nothing just because a belief is generally held. Believe nothing just because it is said in ancient books. Believe nothing just because it is said to be of divine origin. Believe nothing just because someone else believes it. Believe only what you yourself test and judge to be true.
~ Buddha - Hindu Prince Gautama Siddharta

corporations

As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless.
~ U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 21, 1864 - (letter to Col. William F. Elkins) - Ref: The Lincoln Encyclopedia, Archer H. Shaw (Macmillan, 1950, NY)

They (corporations) cannot commit treason, nor be outlawed, nor excommunicated, for they have no souls.
~ Lord Edward Coke

"criminal," n. A person with predatory instincts who has not sufficient capital to form a corporation.
~ Howard Scott

civilians killed in war

The institutions founded "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war" have failed. Since the end of World War II, some thirty million people have been killed in armed conflict. Most of them were civilians.

~ George Monbiot's "The Age of Consent"

propaganda

The state has, in order to control us, introduced division into our thinking, so that we come to distrust others and look to the state for protection! But the roots of our individualism remind us that what we are is inseparable from the source from which all others derive; that coercive practices that threaten our neighbor also threaten us.
~ Butler Shaffer

The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.
~ Aldous Huxley

Because we fear the responsibility for our actions, we have allowed ourselves to develop the mentality of slaves. Contrary to the stirring sentiments of the Declaration of Independence, we now pledge "our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor" not to one another for our mutual protection, but to the state, whose actions continue to exploit, despoil, and destroy us.
~ Butler D. Shaffer

enough & patriotism

Nothing is enough for the person to whom enough is too little.
~ Max Lucado in Grace for the Moment

Patriotism: The last refuge of a scoundrel.
~ Samuel Johnson; definition in his dictionary published in the 18th century

inequality

A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.
~ Edward R. Murrow

I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization.
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, SC Justice

This is an impressive crowd: the Have's and Have-more's. Some people call you the elites. I call you my base.
~ George W. Bush

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.
~ G. K. Chesterton

The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the U.S. Air Force F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies to flourish is called the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.
~ Thomas Friedman

Every 10 years or so, the US needs to pick up some small, crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business."
~ Michael Ledeen

the poor

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.
~ Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Second Inaugural Address, Washington, D.C., January 20, 1937.

elections

Each candidate behaved well in the hope of being judged worthy of election. However, this system was disastrous when the city had become corrupt. For then it was not the most virtuous but the most powerful who stood for election, and the weak, even if virtuous, were too frightened to run for office. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli  (Italian writer and statesman; Florentine patriot, author of 'The Prince') 

An election cannot give a country a firm sense of direction if it has two or more national parties which merely have different names but are as alike in their principles and aims as two peas in the same pod. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt  (American 32nd US President,1933-45, cousin of Theodore Roosevelt, 26th US president,1882-1945)  

If the United States of America or Britain is having elections, they don't ask for observers from Africa or from Asia. But when we have elections, they want observers. ~  Nelson Mandela  (South African Statesman; First democratically elected State President of South Africa (1994), 1993 Nobel Prize for Peace, b.1918)  

Elections are won by men and women chiefly because most people vote against somebody rather than for somebody. ~ Franklin Pierce Adams (American Journalist, Columnist and Translator, (1881-1960)  

Win or lose, we go shopping after the election. ~ Imelda Marcos

money, again

You don't put robbers to work in a bank.
~ American Proverb

The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled.
~ John Kenneth Galbraith

I hate banks. They do nothing positive for anybody except take care of themselves. They're first in with their fees and first out when there's trouble.
~ Earl Warren (American Republican Governor of California and Chief Justice, U.S. Supreme Court, 1891-1974)

The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labor.
~ Helen Keller

A hundred years from now it will not matter what my bank account was, the sort of house I lived in, or the kind of car I drove...but the world may be different because I was important in the life of a child.
~ Forest E. Witcraft

power, money & war

All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of humankind.
~ Adam Smith - The Wealth Of Nations

When troubles come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.
~ Shakespeare (1564-1616)

The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to the point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group or any controlling private power."
~ Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945), 32nd US president

Our economy is facing a moment of great challenge. ... We're in the midst of a serious financial crisis.
~ George W. Bush, September 24, 2008

No provision in our Constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprises of the civil authority.
~ Thomas Jefferson: American 3rd US President (1801-09).

seeing the truth

To preserve their [the people's] independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our selection between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude.
~ Thomas Jefferson

When I tell the truth, it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those that do. ~ William Blake

The Roots of Violence: Wealth without work, Pleasure without conscience, Knowledge without character, Commerce without morality, Science without humanity, Worship without sacrifice, Politics without principles.
~ Mahatma Gandhi: Indian leader, 1869-1948

We kill at every step, not only in wars, riots, and executions. We kill when we close our eyes to poverty, suffering, and shame. In the same way all disrespect for life, all hard-heartedness, all indifference, all contempt is nothing else than killing. With just a little witty skepticism we can kill a good deal of the future in a young person. Life is waiting everywhere, the future is flowering everywhere, but we only see a small part of it and step on much of it with our feet.
~ Hermann Hesse, German poet and novelist.

american freedom

We never see the smoke and the fire, we never smell the blood, we never see the terror in the eyes of the children, whose nightmares will now feature screaming missiles from unseen terrorists, known only as Americans.
~Martin Kelly

They tell us that we live in a great free republic; that our institutions are democratic; that we are a free and self-governing people. That is too much, even for a joke. ... Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder... And that is war in a nutshell. The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
~Eugene Victor Debs

Few of us can easily surrender our belief that society must somehow make sense. The thought that The State has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people is intolerable. And so the evidence has to be internally denied.
~Arthur Miller, playwright

For most Americans the Constitution had become a hazy document, cited like the Bible on ceremonial occasions but forgotten in the daily transactions of life.
~Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. - (1888-1965)

courage

It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
~ Robert F. Kennedy, US Attorney General 1961-64; assasinated while campaigning for the presidency

If it were proved to me that in making war, my ideal had a chance of being realized, I would still say "No" to war. For one does not create human society on mounds of corpses. ~ Louis Lecoin - French pacifist leader

 

projection

In the struggle of Good against Evil, it's always the people who get killed.
~ Eduardo Galeano
Another nation is made out to be utterly depraved and fiendish, while one's own nation stands for everything that is good and noble. Every action of the enemy is judged by one standard - every action of oneself by another. Even good deeds by the enemy are considered a sign of particular devilishness, meant to deceive us and the world, while our bad deeds are necessary and justified by our noble goals, which they serve.
~ Eric Fromm

power

People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.
~ James Baldwin Biography - Fiction Writer, Essayist, Social Critic, 1924-1987

... The greatest bulwark of capitalism is militarism.
~ Emma Goldman Biography - Anarchist, Feminist, Labor Advocate, 1869-1940

It's amazing how people can get so excited about a rocket to the moon and not give a damn about smog, oil leaks, the devastation of the environment with pesticides, hunger, disease. When the poor share some of the power that the affluent now monopolize, we will give a damn.
~ Cesar Estrada Chavez Biography - Farm Workers' Union Founder, Human Rights Activist

sacredness

The civilized have created the wretched, quite coldly and deliberately, and do not intend to change the status quo; are responsible for their slaughter and enslavement; rain down bombs on defenseless children whenever and wherever they decide that their "vital interests" are menaced, and think nothing of torturing a man to death: these people are not to be taken seriously when they speak of the "sanctity" of human life, or the "conscience" of the civilized world.
~ James Baldwin - Source: page 489 of COLLECTED ESSAYS (1998), from chapter one of "The Devil Finds Work" (orig. pub. 1976)

terror

The first time it was reported that our friends were being butchered there was a cry of horror. Then a hundred were butchered. But when a thousand were butchered and there was no end to the butchery, a blanket of silence spread. When evil doing comes like falling rain, nobody calls out 'stop!' When crimes begin to pile up they become invisible. When sufferings become unendurable, the cries are no longer heard. The cries, too, fall like rain in summer.  ~ Bertolt Brecht

 The Second Treatise of Civil Government 1690: That the aggressor, who puts himself into the state of war with another, and unjustly invades another man's right, can, by such an unjust war, never come to have a right over the conquered, will be easily agreed by all, who will not think that robbers and pirates have a right of empire over whomsoever they have force enough to master, or that men are bound by promises which unlawful force extorts from them. Should a robber break into my house, and, with a dagger at my throat, make me seal deeds to convey my estate to him, would this give him any title? Just such a title by his sword has an unjust conqueror who forces me into submission. The injury and the crime is equal, whether committed by the wearer of a crown or some petty villain. The title of the offender and the number of his followers make no difference in the offence, unless it be to aggravate it. The only difference is, great robbers punish little ones to keep them in their obedience; but the great ones are rewarded with laurels and triumphs, because they are too big for the weak hands of justice in this world, and have the power in their own possession which should punish offenders. ~ John Locke - 1632-1704 - http://www.constitution.org/jl/2ndtreat.htm

Simple logic says that we must go to the roots of terror. Only a fool can believe that the services of a suicidal terrorist can be purchased, or that they can be bred at will anywhere. ~ Ouch Borith, Permanent Representative of The Kingdom of Cambodia to The UN: 10/03/2001

Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe. ~ Frederick Douglass

truth & integrity

It is easier to find a score of men and women wise enough to discover the truth than to find one intrepid enough, in the face of opposition to stand up for it. ~ A. A. Hodge

The essence of immorality is the tendency to make an exception of myself. ~ Jane Addams

The state has, in order to control us, introduced division into our thinking, so that we come to distrust others and look to the state for protection! But the roots of our individualism remind us that what we are is inseparable from the source from which all others derive; that coercive practices that threaten our neighbor also threaten us. ~Butler Shaffer

I am done with great things and big things, great institutions and big success, and I am for those tiny invisible molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, yet which if you give them time, will rend the hardest monuments of man's pride. ~ William James

war, service & love

If they do it, it’s terrorism, if we do it, it’s fighting for freedom. ~ Anthony Quainton, U.S. Ambassador to Nicaragua, 1984 – Anthony Quainton – Source: Off the record response of the Ambassador to a group of concerned U.S. citizens when asked to explain the difference between U.S. government actions in Nicaragua and the violence it condemns as terrorism elsewhere in the world.

 The aim of military training is not just to prepare men for battle, but to make them long for it. ~ Louis Simpson

I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. Some of these young men think that war is all glory but let me say war is all hell. ~ William Tecumseh Sherman. 

The greatest spiritual practise is to transform love into service. ~ Sai Baba

evil, ignorance & war

The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn’t the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance which fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. ~ Albert Camus: The Plague, Modern Library Edition, p. 120

War creates peace like hate creates love. ~ David L. Wilson

During times of war, hatred becomes quite respectable even though it has to masquerade often under the guise of patriotism. ~ Howard Thurman

freedom, truth & courage

If “freedom” means purely and simply an uncontrolled power to make money in every possible way, regardless of consequences, then freedom becomes synonymous with ruthless, mindless and absolute exploitation… The psychological root of it is doubtless in the profound dehumanization and alienation of modern Western man, who has gradually come to mistake the artificial value of inert objects and abstractions (goods, money, property) for the power of life itself, and who is willing to place immediate profit above everything else. Money is more important, more alive than life, including the lfe and happiness of his closest and most intimate companions. This he can always justify by a legalistic ethic or a casuistical formula of some sort, but his formulas themselves betray him and eventually lose even the meaning which has been arbitrarily forced upon them.  ~Thomas Merton, re-excerpted & edited from an article that appeared in the Catholic World, December 2008; excerpted originally in the CW, June 1968

The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. One word of truth outweighs the world. ~Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918- ) Russian writer, Soviet dissident, imprisoned 8 years for critizing Stalin in a personal letter, Nobel Prize for Lit., 1970

justice

Anyone who is not angry when there is just cause for anger is immoral. Why? Because anger looks to the good of justice. And if you can live amid injustice without anger, you are immoral as well as unjust. ~ Thomas Aquinas 

I don’t know a more irreligious attitude, one more utterly bankrupt of any human content, than one which permits children to be destroyed. ~ Daniel Berrigan 

I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have: three meals a day for their bodies – education and culture for their minds – and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. ~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

american war

American strategists have calculated the proportion of civilians killed in this century’s major wars. In the First World War 5 per cent of those killed were civilians, in the Second World War 48 per cent, while in a Third World War 90-95 per cent would be civilians.
~ Colin Ward, Anarchy in Action

What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! Who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment & death itself in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment … inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose.
~ Thomas Jefferson

the aim of torture

The civilized have created the wretched, quite coldly and deliberately, and do not intend to change the status quo; are responsible for their slaughter and enslavement; rain down bombs on defenseless children whenever and wherever they decide that their ‘vital interests’ are menaced, and think nothing of torturing a man to death: these people are not to be taken seriously when they speak of the ‘sanctity’ of human life, or the ‘conscience’ of the civilized world.
~ James Baldwin

The aim of torture is to destroy a person as a human being, to destroy their identity and soul. It is more evil than murder…
~ Inge Genefke – (1938-) Danish Doctor & Human Rights Activist

Modern man likes to pretend that his thinking is wide-awake. But this wide-awake thinking has led us into the mazes of a nightmare in which the torture chambers are endlessly repeated in the mirrors of reason.
~ Octavio Paz (Mexican poet, writer, and diplomat, 1914-1998)

Torture is banned but in two-thirds of the world’s countries it is still being committed in secret. Too many governments still allow wrongful imprisonment, murder or “disappearance” to be carried out by their officials with impunity.

~ Peter Benenson – (1921-2005) – Founder of Amnesty International

honesty & freedom

thank God that at this hour I am dangerous to the war profiteers of this country who rob the people on the one hand, and rob and debase the government on the other; and then with their pockets and wallets stuffed with the filthy, bloodstained profits of war, wrap the sacred folds of the Stars and Stripes about them and [about] their blatant hypocrisy to the world.
~ Kate Richards O’Hare’s Address To the Court Proceedings on the Sentencing of Mrs. Kate Richards O’Hare by Hon Martin J. Wade, 1 P. M., Friday, Dec 14, 1917.
http://pages.slu.edu/student/alamla/Doc13.html

Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking; where it is absent, discussion is apt to become worse than useless.
~ Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoi – (1828-1910) Russian writer; Source: On Life and Essays on Religion

Free inquiry requires that we tolerate diversity of opinion and that we respect the right of individuals to express their beliefs, however unpopular they may be, without social or legal prohibition or fear of success.
~ Paul Kurtz; Source: A Secular Humanist Declaration, in On The Barricades, 1989

This is, in theory, still a free country, but our politically correct, censorious times are such that many of us tremble to give vent to perfectly acceptable views for fear of condemnation. Freedom of speech is thereby imperiled, big questions go undebated, and great lies become accepted, unequivocally as great truths.
~ Simon Heffer; Source: Daily Mail, 7 June 2000

When people who are honestly mistaken learn the truth, they will either cease being mistaken, or cease being honest! : Anonymous

militarism

A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one! ~ Alexander Hamilton

Many people today don’t want honest answers insofar as honest means unpleasant or disturbing, They want a soft answer that turneth away anxiety. ~Louis Kronenberger – (1904-1980)

For the great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities, and are often more influenced by the things that seem than by those that are.~ Niccolo Machiavelli – (1469-1527) Italian Statesman and Political Philosopher – Source: Discourses, 1513-1517

Today as never before in their history Americans are enthralled with military power. The global military supremacy that the United States presently enjoys–and is bent on perpetuating–has become central to our national identity. More than America’s matchless material abundance or even the effusions of its pop culture, the nation’s arsenal of high-tech weaponry and the soldiers who employ that arsenal have come to signify who we are and what we stand for.  ~Andrew Bacevich in The New American Militarism

america

The convention which framed the Constitution of the United States was composed of fifty-five members. A majority were lawyers-not one farmer, mechanic or laborer. Forty owned Revolutionary Scrip. Fourteen were land speculators. Twenty-four were money-lenders. Eleven were merchants. Fifteen were slave-holders. They made a Constitution to protect the rights of property and not the rights of man.  ~ Senator Richard Pettigrew – Triumphant Plutocracy (1922)

I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of war, corporations have been enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the republic is destroyed. I feel, at this moment, more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless. ~Lincoln in a letter to Col. William F. Elkins on November 21, 1864

This great and powerful force-the accumulated wealth of the United States-has taken over all the functions of Government, Congress, the issue of money, and banking and the army and navy in order to have a band of mercenaries to do their bidding and protect their stolen property. ~Senator Richard Pettigrew – Triumphant Plutocracy – Published, January 1, 1922.

It is not the fact of liberty but the way in which liberty is exercised that ultimately determines whether liberty itself survives. ~Dorothy Thompson (1894-1961) – Source: Ladies Home Journal, May 1958