Fundamental to Liberty

A woman's right to choose gets to the very heart of what it means to be an autonomous, free human being. Control of one's own body is fundamental to individual liberty.

--Digby

Appearance of Devotion

A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious.

--Aristotle

Worship Pain

It is rarely in the world's history that its ideal has been one of joy. The worship of pain has far more dominated the world.

--Oscar Wilde

Giant Nation's Vainglory

If we should perish, the ruthlessness of the foe would be only the secondary cause of the disaster. The primary cause would be that the strength of a giant nation was directed by eyes too blind to see all the hazards of the struggle; and the blindness would be induced not by some accident of nature or history but by hatred and vainglory.

--Reinhold Niebuhr (1952)

A Cable Weaved

Habit is a cable; we weave a thread of it each day, and at last we cannot break it.

--Horace Mann

Look!

Solomon said, "The thing that has been is the thing that shall be; and the thing that is done is that which shall be done: There is nothing new under the sun." Or, to put it a slightly different way, a man walked into the house with a handful of dog waste and said, "Look what I almost stepped in."

--Garrison Keillor

Can't Have Both

We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few. But we can't have both.

--Louis Brandeis

Importance of Community

We have become so focused on the individual that we have forgotten the importance of community for the future of our country.

--Yonce Shelton

Unrewarding Environments

Americans are suffering so much from being in unrewarding environments that it has made us very cynical. I think that American suburbia has become a powerful generator of anxiety and depression. If we happen to let it go, we won't miss it that much.

--James Howard Kunstler

Loss of Values

There is the decay of the centers and the despoiling of the suburbs. There is not enough housing for our people or transportation for our traffic. Open land is vanishing and old landmarks are violated. Worst of all, expansion is eroding the precious and time-honored values of community with neighbors and communion with nature. The loss of these values breeds loneliness and boredom and indifference.

--Lyndon B. Johnson

Science, Devout

Our esteem for facts has not neutralized in us all religiousness. It is itself almost religious. Our scientific temper is devout.

--William James

Things Fall Apart

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

--William Butler Yeats (The Second Coming)

Faith Not Rational

Faith is by definition not rational--that is, it is belief in the absence of verification.

--Timothy Shortell

The True Strangeness

Science offers the boldest metaphysics of our age. It is a thoroughly human construct, driven by the faith that if we dream, press to discover, explain, and dream again, the world will somehow come clearer and we will grasp the true strangeness of the universe.

--Edward O. Wilson

Prime Object

The responsibility of ministers for the public safety is absolute and requires no mandate. It is in fact the prime object for which governments come into existence.

--Winston Churchill

Isn't Science

I would almost contend that if something fits in with common sense it almost certainly isn't science.

--Lewis Wolpert

Universal Betterment

Once you stop believing in universal betterment, you stop investing in social defenses, like health care, or flood control. You build your shining condo on the hill, put a fence round it, and cancel the local bus service so the poor can't get at you. What was the final answer to the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama? Cancel the busses!

--Alexander Cockburn

Not the Same Idiot

Bureaucracy has murdered people in the greater New Orleans area. And bureaucracy needs to stand trial before Congress today. So I'm asking Congress, please investigate this now. Take whatever idiot they have at the top of whatever agency and give me a better idiot. Give me a caring idiot. Give me a sensitive idiot. Just don't give me the same idiot.

--Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish

Determining Life

Why should we think upon things that are lovely? Because thinking determines life. It is a common habit to blame life upon the environment. Environment modifies life but does not govern life. The soul is stronger than its surroundings.

--William James

Changes Ahead

It is extremely hard even for a very smart person immersed in the daily realities of his busy life to imagine, let alone anticipate, the changes in the societal structure that are lying ahead.

--Dmitry Podborits

Good People Sleep

Good people sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.

--George Orwell