Given the unpleasant results that are undoubtedly in the offing from Justice Kennedy’s retirement, I don’t feel inspired to pen a soaring hymn to America. But then again, I’m not ready to declare America’s experiment in democracy over. So I’ll turn this post over to some other speakers
“Yours is not the task of making your way in the world, but the task of remaking the world which you will find before you.”—FDR
“Opposition to tyranny is obedience to God.”—Benjamin Franklin
“Unhappy the land that has no heroes.”
“No—unhappy the land that needs heroes.”—Bertold Brecht
An African had no doubts about the meaning of the word ‘freedom.’ It meant the right to public assembly, the right to physical movement, the right to make known his views, the right to elect men of his choice to public office, and the right to recall them if they failed in their promises. At a time when the Western world grew embarrassed at the sound of the word ‘freedom,’ these people knew that it meant the right to shape their own destiny as they wished.”—Richard Wright
“You know, there’s not a single solitary example on the planet, not one, of a country that is successful because the economy has triumphed over the government and choked it off and driven the tax rates to zero, driven the regulations to nonexistent and abolished all government programs, except for defense, so people in my income group never have to pay a nickel to see a cow jump over the moon. There is no example of a successful country that looks like that.”—Bill Clinton
“We have to save the people in front of us, not murder the ones we’ve never met.”—G. Willow Wilson
“Law, when it ceases to be justice, ceases even to be law.”—G.K. Chesterton
“The American Dream is not that a few of us will get to be rich, but that all of us will have a fair portion of the good things in life. Time to be with our families. The chance for our children to get an education and the opportunity to make their own way in the world. Laws that protect us, not oppress us”—Richard Trumka
“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places – and there are so many – where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory”—Howard Zinn.
“A nations of sheep will beget a government of wolves” – Edward R Murrow
“Evil, really, is the implicit in the narcissism of the illogical step that ‘because this is not mine, it is wrong.'”— commenter on slacktivist.
If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality. ~ Desmond Tutu
“There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.”—John Adams
“The powerful very often respond to a demand for respect by ignoring the content and saying ‘Shh, lower your voice!'”—Kit Whitfield
Cover images by Lou Fine — all rights remain with current holder.
