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Food For Thought

Everyone needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in where nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike. --John Muir

Our enemies will adequately deflate our accomplishments. We need not serve them as eager volunteers. --Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children, and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free."
--Ronald Reagan

"I've never said all tax cuts pay for themselves. I never even said Reagan's tax cuts would pay for themselves."
--Arthur Laffer

"Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible laws and connections, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am, in fact, religious."
--Albert Einstein

When I say that the conservative lacks principles, I do not mean to suggest that he lacks moral conviction. The typical conservative is indeed usually a man of very strong moral convictions. What I mean is that he has no political principles which enable him to work with people whose moral values differ from his own for a political order in which both can obey their convictions.
--F. A. Hayek, Why I Am Not a Conservative

I am not one who believes you can ever fully divorce politics from policy in a democracy. It would be like trying to do physics without math.
--Rahm Emanuel

"Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep insights can be winnowed from deep nonsense,"
--- Carl Sagan

For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information, or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment, and to pay more respect to the judgment of others.
--Benjamin Franklin

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.
-- Sir Francis Bacon

Vietnam presumably taught us that the United States could not serve as the world's policeman; it should also have taught us the dangers of trying to be the world's midwife to democracy when the birth is scheduled to take place under conditions of guerrilla war,"
-- Jeane Kirkpatrick. Commentary, 1979

Lord, take me where You want me to go; Let me meet who You want me to meet; Tell me what You want me to say, and Keep me out of Your way.
-- Father Mychal Judge, former chaplain to the New York City Fire Department, killed on September 11, 2001 in the World Trade Center disaster

There was never any more inception than there is now, Nor any more youth or age than there is now, And will never be any more perfection than there is now, Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.
-- Walt Whitman

I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views."
-- Abraham Lincoln

Seven blunders of the world that lead to violence: wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, politics without principle.
-- Mahatma Gandhi.

People cease to believe their own utterances before others doubt them.
-- Fouad Ajami

People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election.
-- Otto von Bismark

The people who benefit from the symbols... need not necessarily honor them, at least not fully; they need only honor them more than their rivals are seen to do. Most ideologies and belief systems are not savored for what they are; they are more appreciated for what they do, for their utility in taking on others who manipulate other symbols..
-- Fouad Ajami

Make no mistake, there's a jury that's out. In half the world, the verdict is not yet in. The commitment to accept the Western idea of democracy has not yet been made, and they are waiting for you to make the case ... Our best security, our only security, is in the world of ideas, and I sense a slight foreboding... Americans must understand that if the rules of law have meaning, such as hope and inspiration for the rest of the world, it must be coupled with the opportunity to improve human existence...
-- Justice Anthony Kennedy

it is the actions of men and not their sentiments that make history. Our sentiments can be flooded with love within, but our actions can produce the opposite. Perversity is always looking to consort with the best motives in human nature.
-- Norman Mailer

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.
-- Dr. Seuss

The pursuit of happiness is never-ending; happiness lies in the pursuit.
-- Saul Alinsky

To laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children, to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends, to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch…to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded!
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

We can bomb the world to pieces, but we can't bomb it into peace.
-- Michael Franti

The main thing is not to set out with grand projects. Everything starts at your doorstep. Just get deeply involved in something... You throw a stone in one place and ripples spread.
-- Robert Moses

Let them call me rebel and welcome, I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul.
-- Thomas Paine

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.
-- C.S. Lewis

When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?
-- John Maynard Keynes

You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.
-- Saul Alinsky

What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label Liberal? If by Liberal; they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer's dollar, then … we are not that kind of Liberal. But if by a Liberal they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people -- their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties -- someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a Liberal, then I'm proud to say I'm a Liberal.
- John F. Kennedy, September 14, 1960

The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice
-- Martin Luther King Jr.

Somewhere at this very moment a child is being born in America. Let it be our cause to give that child a happy home, a healthy family and a hopeful future.
Let it be our cause to see that that child has a chance to live to the fullest of her God-given capacities. Let it be our cause to see that child grow up strong and secure, braced by her challenges but never struggling alone, with family and friends and a faith that in America, no one is left out; no one is left behind.
Let it be, let it be, our cause that when this child is able, she gives something back to her children, her community and her country. Let it be our cause that we give this child a country that is coming together, not coming apart, a country of boundless hopes and endless dreams, a country once again lifts its people and inspires the world. Let that be our cause our commitment and our New Covenant.
-- Bill Clinton, 1992 DNC Acceptance Speech

America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.
-- President D. D. Eisnehower

There can be no such thing as a successful traitor, for if one succeeds, he becomes a founding father.
-- Saul Alinsky

Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties: 1. Those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes. 2. Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise depositary of the public interests. In every country these two parties exist, and in every one where they are free to think, speak, and write, they will declare themselves.
--Thomas Jefferson

We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.
--Thomas Jefferson to William Roscoe, 1820

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It is simply too painful to acknowledge--even to ourselves--that we've been so credulous.
--Carl Sagan

No army is stronger than an idea whose time has come.
--Sen. Everett Dirksen, 1964

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out -- because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out -- because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out -- because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me -- and there was no one left to speak for me.
--Pastor Martin Niemoller

It's just a fact: Democracy doesn't work without citizen activism and participation, starting at the community. Trickle down politics doesn't work much better than trickle down economics. It's also a fact that civilization happens because we don't leave things to other people. What's right and good doesn't come naturally. You have to stand up and fight for it – as if the cause depends on you, because it does. Allow yourself that conceit - to believe that the flame of democracy will never go out as long as there's one candle in your hand.
--Bill Moyers

The only people who become disillusioned are people who have illusions.
--Saul Alinsky

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
--Mark Twain

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much of life. So aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.
--Thoreau

The first object of human association [is] the full improvement of their condition.
--Thomas Jefferson: Virginia Protest, 1825

We shall not cease from exploration And at the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know it for the first time.
--T.S. Elliot

There is a debt of service due from every man to his country, proportioned to the bounties which nature and fortune have measured to him.
--Thomas Jefferson to Edward Rutledge, 1796

Take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.
--Elie Wiesel

Truth advances and error recedes step by step only; and to do our fellow-men the most good in our power, we must lead where we can, follow where we cannot, and still go with them, watching always the favorable moment for helping them to another step.
--Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Cooper, 1814

War is exciting for those who have no experience of it.
--Erasmus

If ever you find yourself environed with difficulties and perplexing circumstances out of which you are at a loss how to extricate yourself, do what is right, and be assured that that will extricate you the best out of the worst situations. Though you cannot see when you take one step what will be the next, yet follow truth, justice and plain dealing, and never fear their leading you out of the labyrinth in the easiest manner possible. The knot which you thought a Gordian one will untie itself before you. Nothing is so mistaken as the supposition that a person is to extricate himself from a difficulty by intrigue, by chicanery, by dissimulation, by trimming, by an untruth, by an injustice. This increases the difficulties tenfold; and those who pursue these methods get themselves so involved at length that they can turn no way but their infamy becomes more exposed.
--Thomas Jefferson to Peter Carr, 1785

In the end, we will not hear the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
--Martin Luther King, Jr.

In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
--George Orwell