FORWARD

Is this the end of a story that has been told? Is the book of democracy now to be closed and placed away upon the dusty shelves of time? My answer is this: All we have known of the glories of democracy--its freedom, its efficiency as a mode of living, its ability to meet the aspirations of the common man--all these are merely an introduction to the greater story of a more glorious future. We Americans of today--all of us--we are characters in this living book of democracy. But we are also its author. It falls upon us now to say whether the chapters that are to come will tell a story of retreat or a story of continued advance. I believe that the American people will say: "Forward!"
--Franklin D. Roosevelt (November 2, 1940; final campaign speech, Cleveland)

Knows

Don't worry.
The heart knows the way though there may be high-rises, interstates, checkpoints, armed soldiers, massacres, wars, and those who will despise you because they despise themselves.
--Joy Harjo

Engage

Applying the term "concentration camp" to the indefinite detention without trial of thousands of civilians in inhumane conditions--under armed guard and without adequate provisions or medical care--is not just appropriate, it's necessary. Invoking the words do not demean the memory of the Holocaust. Instead, the lessons of the Holocaust will be lost if we refuse to engage with them.
--Anna Lind-Guzik

No Limit

Morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings.
--Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

Anything

Ask not for whom the little immigrant children suffer. They suffer for you. They are your harbingers, they are thousands of Cassandras now whispering in all our ears: "A government that can do this to us, can do anything to you, too."
--@LTrotsky21

Obligation

The obligation of anyone who thinks of himself as responsible is to examine society and try to change it and to fight it--at no matter what risk. This is the only hope society has. This is the only way societies change.
--James Baldwin

Untrue

It is a hard thing to live haunted by the ghost of an untrue dream.
--W.E.B. Du Bois

Power

We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.
--George Orwell

Revise

Keep in mind that to revise means, literally, "to look at again," to re-envision. To revise a life means to see it anew, to see possibilities in it that you could not see before. Try to bring a fresh set of eyes to your life today. Keep moving.
--Maggie Smith

Fact

We may decry the color-prejudice of the South, yet it remains a heavy fact. Such curious kinks of the human mind exist and must be reckoned with soberly. They cannot be laughed away, nor always successfully stormed at, nor easily abolished by act of legislature. And yet they must not be encouraged by being let alone.
--W.E.B. Du Bois

Singing

People inspire each other in ways no one will ever understand. No one is coming up with any of this shit from scratch. We are standing on the backs of our ancestors and singing to and for each other.
--Anaïs Mitchell

Fantasy World

It's so much deeper than playing basketball for money and all that goes into the machine. We're really in a fantasy world and it takes away from you having feelings or expressing yourself as far as being a human being.
--Andre Iguodala

Team Sport

My folks raised me with the understanding that life is a team sport--and so is walking out of hell.
--Rachel Chavkin

Prisms

Myths are the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, and that's essentially how we know who we are, by retelling and reframing these stories. Part of why these stories survive is they're like prisms where different things show up in them depending on the light of the current day.
--Rachel Chavkin

Trick

A rhetorical trick is being played on us when people use the term "abortion debate." Our right to bodily autonomy is not up for debate. A religious minority's move to control the bodies of half the country's citizens isn't a debate. It's an outrageous human rights violation.
--Lauren Groff

Justice

Perhaps, he thought, it'd be better to live in a story where the righteous were rewarded and the sinners were punished, even if the criteria for righteousness and sinfulness eluded him, than to live in a reality where there was no justice at all.
--Ted Chiang

Support and Defend

I took the congressional oath of office for a third time this week, and the most important of the 71 words in that oath was my vow to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic." These words are especially critical and poignant this year as we commemorate the 10th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on our country.
--Gabrielle Giffords

Trick

A rhetorical trick is being played on us when people use the term "abortion debate." Our right to bodily autonomy is not up for debate. A religious minority's move to control the bodies of half the country's citizens isn't a debate. It's an outrageous human rights violation.
--Lauren Groff

Worthless

I think the saddest people always try their hardest to make other people happy, because they know what it's like to feel absolutely worthless and they don't want anyone else to feel like that.
--Robin Williams

No Matter

Be patient. Your future will come to you and lie down at your feet like a dog who knows and loves you no matter what you are.
--Kurt Vonnegut