peace & poverty

Peace, in the sense of the absence of war, is of little value to someone who is dying of hunger or cold. It will not remove the pain of torture inflicted on a prisoner of conscience. It does not comfort those who have lost their loved ones in floods caused by senseless deforestation in a neighboring country. Peace can only last where human rights are respected, where the people are fed, and where individuals and nations are free. ~ HH the Dalai Lama

courage

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundnce of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.
~Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Cowardice asks the question - is it safe? Expediency asks the question - is it politic? Vanity asks the question - is it popular? But conscience asks the question - is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take it because it is right.
~Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them. There is almost no kind of outrage-----torture, imprisonment without trial, assassination, the bombing of civilians .. . which does not change its moral color when it is committed by 'our' side. The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.
~George Orwell

the nationalist

  To save your world you asked this man to die; Would this man, could he see you now, ask why? ~ W. H. Auden: "Epitaph for an Unknown Soldier"  

Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them. There is almost no kind of outrage-----torture, imprisonment without trial, assassination, the bombing of civilians-----which does not change its moral color when it is committed by 'our' side. ...The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them. ~ George Orwell  

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundnce of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little. ~ Franklin Delano Roosevelt

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.