Survival

We would stand a better chance of survival if we accommodated ourselves to this planet and viewed it appreciatively instead of skeptically and dictatorially.
--E.B. White

Emergency

Our present emergency and a common sense of decency make it imperative that no new group of war millionaires shall come into being in this nation as a result of the struggles abroad. The American people will not relish the idea of any American citizen growing rich and fat in an emergency of blood and slaughter and human suffering.
--Franklin Delano Roosevelt (May 26, 1940)

If I can

If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.
--Emily Dickinson (If I can stop one heart from breaking)

New Dawn

What is being transfigured here is your mind,
And it is difficult and slow to become new.
The more faithfully you can endure here,
The more refined your heart will become
For your arrival in the new dawn.
--John O'Donohue

Bad

Mass death is bad for business.
--George Latimer (Westchester County Executive)

Extremist

Not being radicalized by the Trump years is an extremist position.
--A.R. Moxon

Humanity

My last point is practice humanity. We don't talk about practicing humanity, but now if ever there is a time to practice humanity, the time is now. The time is now to show some kindness, to show some compassion to people, to show some gentility--even as a New Yorker.
--Andrew Cuomo

What is the point?

A better economic metric than GDP would be the percentage of people in a given society who are warm, well fed, safe, comfortable, and secure in their person and properties. Just those things. It's a more complex metric, but what, exactly, is the point of human society?
--Jeff McFadden

Get Real

I know, but what do you want me to do? I mean, seriously Jon, let's get real, what do you want me to do?
--Dr. Anthony Fauci (Science Magazine; March 22, 2020)

Connection

The history of disaster demonstrates that most of us are social animals, hungry for connection, as well as for purpose and meaning.
--Rebecca Solnit

Stories

After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.
--Philip Pullman

Less

After forty years as an ecologist, I believe that the transition to a less materialistic world would be a cakewalk compared with living on a planet with too little photosynthesis.
--Peter C. Schulze

Interim

You are in this time of the interim
Where everything seems withheld.
The path you took to get here has washed out;
The way forward is still concealed from you.
"The old is not old enough to have died away;
The new is still too young to be born."
--John O'Donohue

Souls

These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.
--Thomas Paine

Imagine

In the midst of the chaos we're all experiencing and the destruction of our societal norms before our very eyes, what can we build? How can we imagine something better? How can we help?
--Anna Jane Joyner

Shock

What a shock to the system. The realization that everyone's health and well-being is dependent on everyone else's health and well-being.
--Robert Roth