Favorite Quotes

“Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?” - Abraham Lincoln.

“Anxiety creates fear, fear leads to anger, anger breeds violence, and violence – when combined with weapons of mass destruction – becomes a deadly reality.  The greatest single antidote to violence is conversation, speaking our fears, listening to the fears of others, and in that sharing of vulnerabilities discovering a genesis of hope.”  John Sacks.  The Dignity of Difference: How to Avoid the Clash of Civilizations, 2003. Page 2.

"If 'ifs' and 'ands' were pots and pans there'd be no need for tinkers."

“The nineteenth was the first century of human sympathy, -- the age when half wonderingly we began to descry in others that transfigured spark of divinity which we call Myself; when clodhoppers and peasants, and tramps and thieves, and millionaires and -- sometimes -- Negroes, became throbbing souls whose warm pulsing life touched us so nearly that we half gasped with surprise, crying, ‘Thou too! Hast Thou seen Sorrow and the dull waters of Hopelessness? Hast Thou know Life?’ And then all helplessly we peered into those other-worlds, and wailed, ‘O World of Worlds, how shall man make you one?’" - W.E.B. DuBois  "Of Alexander Crummell"  The Souls of Black Folk.

"And the course of study will not change; its methods will grow more deft and effectual, its content richer by toil of scholar and sight of seer; but the true college will ever have one goal, -- not to earn meat, but to know the end and aim of that life which meat nourishes." - W.E.B. DuBois  "Of The Wings of Atlanta." The Souls of Black Folk.

“I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street.  I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers.  In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism.” - U.S. Marine Corps General Smedley Buttler on his roll in US intervention in the early 20^th Century.

“When Hitler attacked the Jews I was not Jew, therefore, I was not concerned.  And when Hitler attacked the Catholics, I was not a Catholic, and therefore, I was not concerned.  And when Hitler attacked the unions and the industrialists, I was not concerned.  Then Hitler attacked me and the Protestant church – and there was nobody left to be concerned.” - Martin Niemoller.  (1892-1984) Congressional Record 14 October 1968 p. 31636.

“Very similar were all the prayers which the Cossacks wrote down and concealed under their shirts, tying them to the strings of the little ikons blessed by their mothers and to the little bundles of their native earth.  But death came upon all alike, upon those who wrote down the prayers also.  Their bodies rotted on the fields of Galicia and East Prussia, in the Carpathians and Rumania, wherever the ruddy flames of war flickered and the tracks of Cossack horses were imprinted in the earth.” - Mikhail Sholokhov.  And Quiet Flows the Don. 1934.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its labourers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children." Dwight D. Eisenhower, Speech in Washington, April 16, 1953.

The former House speaker, Thomas P. O'Neill Jr., Democrat of Massachusetts, said of Mr. Reagan: "Most of the time he was an actor reading lines who didn't understand his own programs. I hate to say it about such an agreeable man, but it was sinful that Ronald Reagan ever became president."

Mr. O'Neill, who served in much of Mr. Reagan's tenure, said he had "known every president since Harry Truman and there's no question in my mind that Ronald Reagan was the worst." But, he added, "he would have made a hell of a king."  "Reagan Fought a Decade-Long Battle With Alzheimer's Disease," New York Times, May 6, 2004

"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power." (Abraham Lincoln).

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves." (Abraham Lincoln).