Oppressive and Lawless

Executive imprisonment has been considered oppressive and lawless since John, at Runnymede, pledged that no free man should be imprisoned, dispossessed, outlawed, or exiled save by the judgment of his peers or by the law of the land. The judges of England developed the writ of habeas corpus largely to preserve these immunities from executive restraint.

--Justice Robert H. Jackson (Brown v. Allen, 1953)

Terrorism Is...

Terrorism is 10% bang and 90% an echo effect composed of media hysteria, political overkill and kneejerk executive action, usually retribution against some wider group treated as collectively responsible.

--Simon Jenkins

It's Like Your Dog

We are constantly trying to work out our relation to the other. It's like your dog meeting somebody else's dog. There is a growl, a sniff, a step forward, a potential rejection, or maybe an acceptance. That kind of thing is constantly taking place. Dogs do it very generously. As far as we human beings are concerned, obviously we are more subtle, but we are less generous because we have more "me." But still this process goes on constantly--we do that when we confront our world.

--Chogyam Trungpa

Kant Do

You could read Kant by yourself, if you wanted; but you must share a joke with some one else.

--Robert Louis Stevenson

Like Anyone

I never like anyone till I've seen him at his worst.

--Ethel M. Dell

Something Which Consumes

We can only hope we will be able to cope with today's risk of a new totalitarianism, backed as it is by the world's last remaining ideology. As conscious democrats, we should freely resist the power of capital, which sees mankind as nothing more than something which consumes and produces.

--Gunter Grass

Void For Vagueness

The word spiritual is a space-holder for a variety of other concepts, which it intentionally hides. Like the words love and monogamy, it is void for vagueness, and is a loose thread leading to a cover-up.

--Eric Francis

Reality

Some other faculty than the intellect is necessary for the apprehension of reality.

--Henri Louis Bergson

That's All

To be clear: the opposite of religious belief is not atheism or secularism or humanism. It is not an "ism." It is independence of mind--that's all.

--Martin Amis

Make Gentle

Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.

--Robert F. Kennedy

A Matter of Love

I think it is all a matter of love: the more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it is.

--Vladimir Nabokov

Let Us...

Let us be moral. Let us contemplate existence.

--Charles Dickens

The Lived Truth

I think that taking life seriously means something such as this: that whatever man does on this planet has to be done in the lived truth of the terror of creation, of the grotesque, of the rumble of panic underneath everything. Otherwise it is false. Whatever is achieved must be achieved with the full exercise of passion, of vision, of pain, of fear, and of sorrow. How do we know...that our part of the meaning of the universe might not be a rhythm in sorrow?

--Ernest Becker

Who Knows

Who knows but the world may end tonight?

--Robert Browning

Creation Better...

Creation is a better means of self-expression than possession; it is through creating, not possessing, that life is revealed.

--Vida D. Scudder

Beatitudes

For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes.

--Kurt Vonnegut

Where? Who?

Where does a cloud come from? Where does it go?
Where was it before it appeared?
Where do people go when they die?
Where do they come from when they're born?
Who are you?

--Zen koan

Comes to America

When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.

--Sinclair Lewis

War Situation

Despite the best that has been done by everyone...the war situation has developed not necessarily to our advantage.

--Emperor Hirohito (radio broadcast announcing Japan's surrender, August 15, 1945)