Love

If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don't see.
--James Baldwin

Beacon

We must be a beacon of hope, because if you tell people there's nothing they can do, they will do worse than nothing.
--Margaret Atwood

Wicked

How long, Lord, will the wicked,
how long will the wicked be jubilant?
They pour out arrogant words;
all the evildoers are full of boasting.
They crush your people, Lord;
they oppress your inheritance.
They slay the widow and the foreigner;
they murder the fatherless.
They say, "The Lord does not see..."
--Psalm 94, excerpt

Limitations

The greatest danger that besets us does not come from believers or atheists; it comes from those who, under the guise of religion, science or reason, imagine that we can free ourselves from the limitations of human nature and perfect the human species.
--Chris Hedges

Solemn

Politics isn't entertainment, it is not a performance to be critiqued. Reporting on national politics is a public trust of solemn importance that affects hundreds of millions of people.
--Maria Bustillos (Columbia Journalism Review; July 24, 2019)

Evil

Never react to an evil in such a way as to augment it.
--Simone Weil

Ordinary

Rejoicing in ordinary things is not sentimental or trite. It actually takes guts. Each time we drop our complaints and allow everyday good fortune to inspire us, we enter the warrior's world.
--Pema Chödrön

America

I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!
--Langston Hughes

Slowly

Sometimes you can only find Heaven by slowly backing away from Hell.
--Carrie Fisher

Practices

A religion is defined not just by its holy texts but also by how believers interpret those texts--that is, by its practices. The ways in which believers act out their faith define that faith.
--Kenan Malik (January 2015)

Care

One must care about a world one will not see.
--Bertrand Russell

Fearful

A common phrase on nineteenth-century tombstones went: "It is a fearful thing to love what death can touch."
--Sallie Tisdale

Erase

Whole societies can be taught to deaden feeling, to disassociate from their marginal and minority members, just as people can and do erase the humanity of those close to them.
--Rebecca Solnit (June 2013)

The Secret

Hope posits that people are drawn to the good by the good. This is the secret of hope's power. Hope demands for others what we demand for ourselves. Hope does not separate us from them. Hope sees in our enemy our own face.
--Chris Hedges

Potent

Hope has a cost. Hope is not comfortable or easy. Hope requires personal risk. It is not about the right attitude. Hope is not about peace of mind. Hope is action. Hope is doing something. The more futile, the more useless, the more irrelevant and incomprehensible an act of rebellion is, the vaster and more potent hope becomes.
--Chris Hedges

Change

Each of us may be nothing more than a moving wave of change, but we are waves able to know that.
--Sallie Tisdale

Fight

I do not fight fascists because I will win. I fight fascists because they are fascists.
--Chris Hedges (May 2015)

American

I think that I'm particularly and uniquely and very deeply American. If we want to talk about the ideals that we stand for, all the songs and the anthem and sort of what we were founded on, I think I'm extremely American.
--Megan Rapinoe (July 3, 2019)

Paradox

The paradox of education is precisely this--that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.
--James Baldwin

The Object...

The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.
--George Orwell

Responsible

In a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.
--Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

Nowhere

Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.
--George Orwell