Perspective

For me, to make someone suffer penalties because of their sexual orientation is on the same level as making people be penalized for their gender, or race.

--Desmond Tutu

Our Contest...Continues

Our contest is not only whether we ourselves shall be free, but whether there shall be left to mankind an asylum on earth for civil and religious liberty.

--Samuel Adams

Doesn't Care

Money doesn't care who owns it, and it doesn't have ears to hear appeals to mere patriotism.

--Jane Smiley

Same Folks?

I always thought it was suspicious that the Pilgrims who shared turkey and maize with the Indians looked and dressed the same as the Puritans who later drowned hapless girls, accusing them of being witches.

--George Kalbouss

These Rascals

But what talk we of these traitorly rascals, whose miseries are to be smiled at, their offences being so capital?

--William Shakespeare (The Winter's Tale)

Sense(s)

Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.

--William James

We Were Young

Here dead we lie
Because we did not choose
To live and shame the land
From which we sprung.
Life, to be sure,
Is nothing much to lose,
But young men think it is,
And we were young.

--A. E. Housman

No Words

Mystery cannot be put into words.

--Joseph Cornell

Experience Is All

The seven-year anniversary quote:

Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.

--Fred Brook

Called Cynicism

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.

--George Bernard Shaw

Predictions

If you predict doom and gloom, and you're wrong, you get blamed both for being wrong and for being a spoilsport. If you predict wonderful things, and you're wrong, you're given credit for being an optimist.

--Atrios

Two Remembering

The conversation of two people remembering, if the memory is enjoyable to both, rocks on like music or lovemaking. There is a rhythm and a predictability to it that each anticipates and relishes.

--Jessamyn West

The Brave

A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave.

--Mahatma Gandhi

Counting On You?

You know what they call a candidate who's counting on a lot of new voters? A loser.

--James Carville

Belly Laugh

One man's theology is another man's belly laugh.

--Robert A. Heinlein

State Demands

Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.

--Albert Einstein

Less

If we want to be at peace, we will have to waste less, spend less, use less, want less, need less.

--Wendell Berry

Wonderful Fact

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.

--Charles Dickens

Ineptitude

And if something comes along that is truly serious, something like a nuclear weapon going off in a major American city, or something like a major pandemic, you are going to see the ineptitude of this government in a way that will take you back to the Declaration of Independence.

--Lawrence Wilkerson (former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, October 2005)