“True peace is brought about when man pledges to himself never to take the lives of others and abandons the idea of killing.”

Nichidatsu Fujii

(Posted on April 16, 2007)

Like the effect of advertising upon the customer, the methods of political propaganda tend to increase the feeling of insignificance of the individual voter.

Erich Fromm,
Psychoanalyst and social philosopher, 1900-1980

(Posted on March 19, 2007)

“The form of law which I propose would be as follows: In a state which is desirous of being saved from the greatest of all plagues -- not faction, but rather distraction -- there should exist among the citizens neither extreme poverty nor, again, excessive wealth, for both are productive of great evil . . .
Now the legislator should determine what is to be the limit of poverty or of wealth”.

Plato (427-347 B.C.)

(Posted on March 5, 2007)

Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph.

Haile Selassie

(Posted on Feb. 26, 2007)

“I have never had a feeling, politically, that did not spring from ... the Declaration of Independence ... that all should have an equal chance. This is the sentiment embodied in the Declaration of Independence ... I would rather be assassinated on this spot than surrender it.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), 16th US President

(Posted on Feb. 19, 2007)

There is no telling to what extremes of cruelty and ruthlessness a man will go when he is freed from the fears, hesitations, doubts and the vague stirrings of decency that go with individual judgement. When we lose our individual independence in the corporateness of a mass movement, we find a new freedom- freedom to hate, bully, lie, torture, murder and betray without shame and remorse. Herein undoubtedly lies part of the attractiveness of a mass movement.

Eric Hoffer

(Posted on Feb. 5, 2007)

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

Jane Addams

(Posted on Jan. 8, 2007)

After all it is those who have a deep and real inner life
who are best able to deal with the irritating details of outer life.

Evelyn Underhill

(Posted on Dec. 25, 2006)

“Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.”

Plato (427-347 B.C.)

(Posted on Dec. 4, 2006)

Every country, every community,
its ‘manifest destiny’

We need a type of patriotism that recognizes the virtues of those who are opposed to us. We must get away from the idea that America is to be the leader of the world in everything. She can lead in some things. The old ‘manifest destiny’ idea ought to be modified so that each nation has the manifest destiny to do the best it can - and that without cant, without the assumption of self-righteousness and with a desire to learn to the uttermost from other nations.

Francis John McConnell

(Posted on Nov. 27, 2006)

Ignorance

“Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one's government is not necessarily to secure freedom.”
Fredrich August von Hayek (1899-1992), Nobel Laureate of Economic Sciences 1974.

”Fear always springs from ignorance.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson, American, lecturer, poet, and essayist, 1803-1882

(Posted on Nov. 20, 2006)

Political history is largely an account of mass violence
and of the expenditure of vast resources
to cope with mythical fears and hopes.

Murray Edelman

(Posted on Nov. 13, 2006)

“Everything, everything in war is barbaric... But the worst barbarity of war is that it forces men collectively to commit acts against which individually they would revolt with their whole being.”

Ellen Key

(Posted on Oct. 30, 2006)

“The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge.”

Daniel J. Boorstin

(Posted on Oct. 23, 2006)

"If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich."

J.F. Kennedy

(Posted on Oct. 16, 2006)

"What experience and history teach is this -- that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it."

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), German philosopher

(Posted on Oct. 2, 2006)

The true civilization is
where every man gives to every other
every right  that he claims for himself.

Robert Ingersoll (1833 - 1899)

(Posted on Sept. 25, 2006)

The accomplice to the crime of corruption is frequently our own indifference.

Bess Myerson

(Posted on Sept. 18, 2006)

“The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity - much less dissent.”

Gore Vidal

(Posted on Sept. 11, 2006)

One often looks at a spiritual person as being religious, philosophically minded and detached from a normal way of life, whereas in reality, when treading the spiritual path, life is expected to be lived fully, recognizing through experience the purpose of all things in order to rise above all that which can limit further realization.

Hidayat Inayat - Khan

(Posted on Sept. 4, 2006)

The soul of our country needs to be awakened . . .
When leaders act contrary to conscience,
we must act contrary to leaders.

Veterans Fast for Life

(Posted on Aug. 14, 2006)

I am neither Christian, nor Jewish nor Muslim.
Doing away with duality, I saw the two worlds as one.
I seek One, I know One, I see One, and I call One.

Mowlana Jalaluddin Rumi (1207-1273) in
"Rumi, The Life and Thought"

“Either man is obsolete or war is. War is the ultimate tool of politics. Political leaders look out only for their own side. Politicians are always realistically maneuvering for the next election. They are obsolete as fundamental problem-solvers.”

R. Buckminster Fuller

(Posted on July 24, 2006)

Confucianism
Do not do to others what you would not like yourself. Then there will be no resentment against you, either in the family or in the state. Analects 12:2

Buddhism
Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful. Udana-Varga 5,1

Christianity
All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye so to them; for this is the law and the prophets. Matthew 7:1

Hinduism
This is the sum of duty: do naught onto others what you would not have them do unto you. Mahabharata 5,1517

Islam
No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself. Sunnah

Judaism
What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellowman. This is the entire Law; all the rest is commentary. Talmud, Shabbat 3id

Taoism
Regard your neighbor's gain as your gain, and your neighbor's loss as your own loss. Tai Shang Kan Yin P'ien

Zoroastrianism
That nature alone is good which refrains from doing another whatsoever is not good for itself. Dadisten-I-dinik, 94,5

(Posted on July 17, 2006)

"Do not keep silent when your own ideas and values are being attacked. ...If a dictatorship ever comes to this country, it will be by the default of those who keep silent. We are still free enough to speak. Do we have time? No one can tell."

Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It

(Posted on July 10, 2006)

“Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens.”

Plato, Ancient Greek philosopher (428/427-348/347 B.C.)

(Posted on July 3, 2006)

“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

”Corruption and hypocrisy ought not to be inevitable products of democracy, as they undoubtedly are today.”

Mahatma Gandhi

(Posted on June 26, 2006)

Anonymous

(Posted on June 19, 2006)

Men love their ideas more than their lives.
And the more preposterous the idea, the more eager they are to die for it.
And to kill for it.

Edward Abbey

(Posted on June 12, 2006)

“They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.”

Ernest Hemingway

(Posted on June 5, 2006)

Study without thought is vain: thought without study is dangerous.

Confucius

(Posted on May 29, 2006)

(Posted on May 22, 2006)

As long as people believe in absurdities, they will continue to commit atrocities.

Voltaire

(Posted on May 15, 2006)

"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, historian and author

(Posted on May 8, 2006)

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor”.

Bishop Desmond Tutu

(Posted on May 1, 2006)

“You can no more blame your circumstances for your character than you can blame the mirror for the way you look.”

Anonymous

(Posted on April 17, 2006)

"My notion of democracy is that under it the weakest shall have the same opportunities as the strongest...no country in the world today shows any but patronizing regard for the weak... Western democracy, as it functions today, is diluted fascism...true democracy cannot be worked by twenty men sitting at the center. It has to be worked from below, by the people of every village."

Gandhi

(Posted on April 10, 2006)

"The strongest passions and most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast: ambition, avarice, vanity, the honourable or venal love of fame, are all in conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace.”

James Madison
The fourth President of the United States (1809-1817)

(Posted on April 3, 2006)

Calgacus

(Calgacus (sometimes Galgacus) was the leader of the Caledonian Confederacy who fought the Roman army of Gnaeus Julius Agricola at the Battle of Mons Graupius in northern Scotland in AD 83 or 84. The only historical source that features him is Tacitus' Agricola which describes him as "the most distinguished for birth and valour among the chieftans". Tacitus wrote a speech for him in advance of the battle in which he describes the exploitation of Britain by Rome and rouses his troops to fight. It is this speech which includes Tacitus' famous phrase, "where they make a desert, they call it peace.")

(Posted on March 27, 2006)

“If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence.”

Bertrand Russell

(Posted on March 20, 2006)

Fortunately, many people would prefer to live a simple life in a good society than a life of riches and power in a horrible society.

Randy Schutt, Inciting Democracy

(Posted on March 13, 2006)

“Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so.”

Bertrand Russell

(Posted on March 6, 2006)

“Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day."

Theodore Roosevelt, April 19, 1906

(Posted on Feb. 27, 2006)

Owning yourself

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is hard business. 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."

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

(Posted on Feb. 20, 2006)

“So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.”

Voltaire

(Posted on Feb. 13, 2006)

“By far the most dangerous foe we have to fight is apathy - indifference from whatever cause, not from a lack of knowledge, but from carelessness, from absorption in other pursuits, from a contempt bred of self satisfaction.”

William Osler (Canadian Physician, 1849-1919)

(Posted on Feb. 6, 2006)

Count Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi, "Pan-european" publicist and political figure, in his book Praktischer Idealismus ("Practical Idealism"), Vienna, 1925.

(Posted on Jan. 30, 2006)

The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understands the minds of other men and women…

Learned Hand

(Posted on Jan. 16, 2006)

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

Friedrich Nietzsche

(Posted on Jan. 9, 2006)

“Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries, because you were born in it.”

George Bernard Shaw

(Posted on Jan. 2, 2006)

Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism - how passionately I hate them!

Albert Einstein

(Posted on Dec. 26, 2005)

"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds.

Samuel Adams

(Posted on Dec. 19, 2005)

"Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue.
It is through disobedience that progress had been made, through disobedience and through rebellion."

Oscar Wilde - (1854-1900)

(Posted on Dec. 12, 2005)

Thomas Jefferson, September 28, 1820

(Posted on Nov. 28, 2005)

“The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity.”

George Bernard Shaw

(Posted on Nov. 21, 2005)
 

Martin Luther King

(Posted on Nov. 14, 2005)
 

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is hard business. 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."

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

(Posted on Nov. 7, 2005)
 

"Herein lies a riddle: How can a people so gifted by God become so seduced by naked power, so greedy for money, so addicted to violence, so slavish before mediocre and treacherous leadership, so paranoid, deluded, lunatic?"

Philip Berrigan - Source: Hell, Healing and Resistance Veterans Speak

(Posted on Oct. 31, 2005)
 

“The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.”

Thomas Jefferson

(Posted on Oct. 24, 2005)
 

Felix Adler

(Posted on Oct. 17, 2005)
 

”When we finally know we are dying, and all other sentient beings are dying with us, we start to have a burning, almost heartbreaking sense of the fragility and preciousness of each moment and each being, and from this can grow a deep, clear, limitless compassion for all beings.”

Sogyal Rinpoche

(Posted on Oct. 10, 2005)
 

George Washington Carver

(Posted on Oct. 3, 2005)
 

"So let us regard this as settled: what is morally wrong can never be advantageous, even when it enables you to make some gain that you believe to be to your advantage. The mere act of believing that some wrongful course of action constitutes an advantage is pernicious."

Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.)

(Posted on Sept. 26, 2005)
 

Manu, 1200 BC

(Posted on Sept. 19, 2005)
 

The power to create illusion is vastly more significant to understand than to understand reality…

J.Krishnamurti

(Posted on Sept. 12, 2005)
 

(Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, author, Nobel laureate, 1872-1970)

(Posted on Sept. 5, 2005)
 

(Samuel P. Huntington)

(Posted on Aug. 30, 2005)
 

(Robert G. Ingersoll, 1833-1899)

(Posted on Aug. 23, 2005)
 

(Augustine)

(Posted on Aug. 21, 2005)