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Sbject: Quotes and Sayings:
Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 12:44:14 -0500
Liberty can not be preserved without general knowledge among
people." (August 1765) John Adams
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I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can
be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is
to bring them the real facts: Abraham Lincoln
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Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean
to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power
which knowledge gives: James Madison
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When even one American-who has done nothing wrong-is forced by
fear to shut his mind and close his mouth-then all Americans are
in peril: Harry S. Truman
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Charge Him or Release Him
"Under a government which imprisons unjustly, the true
place for a just man is also a prison." : Henry David
Thoreau
Jose Padilla : U.S. Citizen Imprisoned Without Trial or Charges
for 3 Years and 169 Days
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Four sorrows ... are certain to be visited on the United
States.
Their cumulative effect guarantees that the U.S. will cease to
resemble the country outlined in the Constitution of 1787.
First, there will be a state of perpetual war, leading to more
terrorism against Americans wherever they may be and a spreading
reliance on nuclear weapons among smaller nations as they try to
ward off the imperial juggernaut.
Second is a loss of democracy and Constitutional rights as the
presidency eclipses Congress and is itself transformed from a
co-equal 'executive branch' of government into a military junta.
Third is the replacement of truth by propaganda, disinformation,
and the glorification of war, power, and the military legions.
Lastly, there is bankruptcy, as the United States pours its
economic resources into ever more grandiose military projects
and shortchanges the education, health, and safety of its
citizens.": Chalmers Johnson, Sorrows of Empire
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"We are reluctant to admit that we owe our liberties to men
of a type that today we hate and fear -- unruly men, disturbers
of the peace, men who resent and denounce what Whitman called
'the insolence of elected persons' -- in a word, free
men.": Gerald W. Johnson - (1890-1980) Source:
American Freedom and the Press, 1958
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A common and natural result of an undue respect for law is that
you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal,
privates, powder-monkeys, and all marching in admirable order
over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against
their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep
marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart. They
have no doubt that it is a damnable business in which they are
concerned; they are all peaceably inclined. Now, what are they?
Men at all? or small movable forts and magazines, at the service
of some unscrupulous man in power?: Henry David Thoreau, On the
Duty of Civil Disobedience
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Dress it as we may, feather it, daub it with gold, huzza it, and
sing swaggering songs about it, what is war, nine times out of
ten, but murder in uniform?: Douglas Jerrold
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" Whenever a people... entrust the defence of their country
to a regular, standing army, composed of mercenaries, the power
of that country will remain under the direction of the most
wealthy citizens.": A Framer
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Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of
authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution
was made to guard the people against the dangers of good
intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well,
but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but
they mean to be masters: Noah Webster
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The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do
good is my religion: Thomas Paine
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Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is
time to pause and reflect: Mark Twain
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Suffering and joy teach us, if we allow them, how to make the
leap of empathy, which transports us into the soul and heart of
another person. ln those transparent moments we know other
people's joys and sorrows, and we care about their concerns as
if they were our own: Fritz Williams:
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But there is suffering in life, and there are defeats. No one
can avoid them. But it's better to lose some of the battles in
the struggles for your dreams than to be defeated without ever
knowing what you're fighting for: Paulo Coelho:
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I am opposed to the system of society in which we live today,
not because I lack the natural equipment to do for myself but
because I am not satisfied to make myself comfortable knowing
that there are thousands of my fellow men who suffer for the
barest necessities of life. We were taught under the old ethic
that man's business on this earth was to look out for himself.
That was the ethic of the jungle; the ethic of the wild beast.
Take care of yourself, no matter what may become of your fellow
man. Thousands of years ago the question was asked; ''Am I my
brother's keeper?'' That question has never yet been answered in
a way that is satisfactory to civilized society.
Yes, I am my brother's keeper. I am under a moral
obligation to him that is inspired, not by any maudlin
sentimentality but by the higher duty I owe myself. What would
you think me if I were capable of seating myself at a table and
gorging myself with food and saw about me the children of my
fellow beings starving to death: Eugene V. Debs: 1908 speech
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"Maybe the greatest sin is neither of these two ancient
ones [the lust for power and hubris]; the greatest sin may be
the new twentieth-century sin of indifference:":
Peter Drucker [from Adventures of a Bystander, John Wiley and
Sons 1994
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"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
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When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to
prevent human misery rather than avenge it? : Eleanor Roosevelt
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During times of war, hatred becomes quite respectable, even
though it has to masquerade often under the guise of patriotism:
Howard Thurman
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Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce
ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the
herd. Bertrand Russell
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"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)
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"I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the
society but the people themselves; and if we think them not
enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome
discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to
inform their discretion." Thomas Jefferson, September 28,
1820
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I'm convinced that if we are to get on the right side fo the
world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical
revolution of values. We must rapidly begin to shift from a
thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When
machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are
considered more important than people; the giant triplets of
racism, militarism, and economic exploitation are incapable of
being conquered: Martin Luther King
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Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought!
Strike against manufacturing shrapnel and gas bombs and all
other tools of murder! Strike against preparedness that means
death and misery to millions of human beings! Be not dumb,
obedient slaves in an army of destruction! Be heroes in an army
of construction!: Helen Keller. - Source: Told to an audience at
Carnegie Hall one year before the United States entered World
War I. From 'Declarations of Independence' by Howard Zinn page
75
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"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)
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It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will
legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power
to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition,
subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young,
and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics:
-Robert A. Heinlein
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Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak
minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and
call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question
with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be
one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of
blindfolded fear: -Thomas Jefferson
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Charge Him or Release Him
"I do esteem individual liberty above everything. What is a
nation for, but to secure the maximum liberty to every
individual?" : D. H. Lawrence
(1885-1938) Source: Letter, 12 July 1916
Jose Padilla : U.S. Citizen Imprisoned Without Trial or Charges
for 3 Years and 178 Days
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"If large numbers of people believe in freedom of speech,
there will be freedom of speech even if the law forbids it. But
if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be
persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them." ; George
Orwell [Eric Arthur Blair] (1903-1950) British author
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The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do
evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.... :
Albert Einstein
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“Not the faults of others, nor what others have done or left
undone, but one's own deeds, done and left undone, should one
consider.”: 50th Stanza from the Dhammapada (The Path of
Wisdom)
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Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever
he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow
him to do so, whenever he may choose to say he deems it
necessary for such a purpose -- and you allow him to make war at
pleasure. If today, he should choose to say he thinks it
necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading
us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, 'I see no
probability of the British invading us' but he will say to you,
'Be silent; I see it, if you don't.'" : Abraham Lincoln.
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Throughout the history of the United States, war has been the
primary impetus behind the growth and development of the central
state. It has been the lever by which presidents and other
national officials have bolstered the power of the state in the
face of tenacious popular resistance: Bruce D. Porter
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"To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they
misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it
peace." - Tacitus
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“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.)
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“A man who has in mind an apparent advantage and promptly
proceeds to dissociate this from the question of what is right
shows himself to be mistaken and immoral. Such a standpoint is
the parent of assassinations, poisonings, forged wills, thefts,
malversations of public money, and the ruinous exploitation of
provincials and Roman citizens alike. Another result is
passionate desire — desire for excessive wealth, for
unendurable tyranny, and ultimately for the despotic seizure of
free states. These desires are the most horrible and repulsive
things imaginable. The perverted intelligences of men who are
animated by such feelings are competent to understand the
material rewards, but not the penalties. I do not mean penalties
established by law, for these they often escape. I mean the most
terrible of all punishments: their own degradation.”Marcus
Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.)
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"Find out just what people will quietly submit to,
and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong
which will be imposed on them, and these will continue till they
are resisted with either words or blows. The limits of tyrants
are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they
oppress." : Frederick Douglass, African-American slave, and
later abolitionist.
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"The industrial way of life leads to the industrial way of
death. From Shiloh to Dachau, from Antietam to Stalingrad, from
Hiroshima to Vietnam and Afghanistan, the great specialty of
industry and technology has been the mass production of human
corpses." -Edward Abbey
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"If the bible is universally diffused in Hindustan, what
must be the astonishment of the natives to find that we are
forbidden to rob, murder and steal; we who in fifty years, have
extended our empire...over the whole peninsula...and exemplified
in our public conduct every crime of which human nature is
capable. What matchless impudence to follow up such practice
with such precepts! If we have common prudence, let us keep the
gospel at home, and tell them that Machiavelli is our prophet,
and the god of the Manicheans our god.": The Reverend
Sydney Smith - (1771 - 1845)
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Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to
all other countries because you were born in it." : George
Bernard Shaw
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When a whole nation is roaring patriotism at the top of its
voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and
purity of its heart." : Ralph Waldo Emerson
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"I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the
society but the people themselves; and if we think them not
enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome
discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to
inform their discretion." Thomas Jefferson, September 28,
1820
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The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their
interests and his own are the same: Marie Beyle
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Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has
always come from the subjects of government. The history of
liberty is the history of resistance. The history of liberty is
a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the
increase of it: Woodrow Wilson
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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
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The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been
two hundred years.
These nations have progressed through this sequence:
>From bondage to spiritual faith;
from spiritual faith to great courage;
from courage to liberty;
from liberty to abundance;
from abundance to selfishness;
from selfishness to complacency;
from complaceny to apathy;
from apathy to dependence;
from dependency back again into bondage.
Sir Alex Fraser Tyler: (1742-1813) Scottish jurist and historian
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The War Prayer
by Mark Twain
It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was
up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire
of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the
toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and
spluttering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading
spread of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags
flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the
wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud
fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them
with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly
the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory
which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts, and which they
interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the
tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the
pastors preached devotion to flag and country, and invoked the
God of Battles beseeching His aid in our good cause in
outpourings of fervid eloquence which moved every listener. It
was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash
spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt
upon its righteousness straightway got such a stern and angry
warning that for their personal safety's sake they quickly
shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way.
Sunday morning came -- next day the battalions would leave for
the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there,
their young faces alight with martial dreams -- visions of the
stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the
flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the
enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender! Then home
from the war, bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in
golden seas of glory! With the volunteers sat their dear ones,
proud, happy, and envied by the neighbors and friends who had no
sons and brothers to send forth to the field of honor, there to
win for the flag, or, failing, die the noblest of noble deaths.
The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was
read; the first prayer was said; it was followed by an organ
burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house
rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that
tremendous invocation
*God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest!
Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy sword!*
Then came the "long" prayer. None could remember the
like of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful
language. The burden of its supplication was, that an
ever-merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over
our noble young soldiers, and aid, comfort, and encourage them
in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in the day of
battle and the hour of peril, bear them in His mighty hand, make
them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help
them to crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and
country imperishable honor and glory --
An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step
up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long
body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare,
his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders,
his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With
all eyes following him and wondering, he made his silent way;
without pausing, he ascended to the preacher's side and stood
there waiting. With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his
presence, continued with his moving prayer, and at last finished
it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal, "Bless our
arms, grant us the victory, O Lord our God, Father and Protector
of our land and flag!"
The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside --
which the startled minister did -- and took his place. During
some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn
eyes, in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he
said:
"I come from the Throne -- bearing a message from Almighty
God!" The words smote the house with a shock; if the
stranger perceived it he gave no attention. "He has heard
the prayer of His servant your shepherd, and will grant it if
such shall be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have
explained to you its import -- that is to say, its full import.
For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks
for more than he who utters it is aware of -- except he pause
and think.
"God's servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he
paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two -- one
uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him Who
heareth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder
this -- keep it in mind. If you would beseech a blessing upon
yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a
neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain
upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly
praying for a curse upon some neighbor's crop which may not need
rain and can be injured by it.
"You have heard your servant's prayer -- the uttered part
of it. I am commissioned of God to put into words the other part
of it -- that part which the pastor -- and also you in your
hearts -- fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and
unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard these words:
'Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!' That is sufficient. the
*whole* of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant
words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for
victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which
follow victory--*must* follow it, cannot help but follow it.
Upon the listening spirit of God fell also the unspoken part of
the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!
"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our
hearts, go forth to battle -- be Thou near them! With them -- in
spirit -- we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved
firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear
their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to
cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot
dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks
of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their
humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the
hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help
us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander
unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger
and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds
of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee
for the refuge of the grave and denied it -- for our sakes who
adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives,
protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water
their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood
of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him
Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge
and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with
humble and contrite hearts. Amen.
(*After a pause.*) "Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire
it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits!"
It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because
there was no sense in what he said.
Twain apparently dictated it around 1904-05; it was rejected by
his publisher, and was found after his death among his
unpublished manuscripts. It was first published in 1923 in
Albert Bigelow Paine's anthology, Europe and Elsewhere.
The story is in response to a particular war, namely the
Philippine-American War of 1899-1902, which Twain opposed. See
Jim Zwick's page "Mark Twain on the Philippines" for
more of Twain's writings on the subject.
Transcribed by Steven Orso (snorso@facstaff.wisc.edu)
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Charge Him or Release Him
Jose Padilla : U.S. Citizen Imprisoned Without Trial or Charges
for 3 Years and 186 Days
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