Troublemakers

We need in every community a group of angelic troublemakers. Our power is in our ability to make things unworkable. The only weapon we have is our bodies and we need to tuck them in places so wheels don't turn.
--Bayard Rustin

Serenity

Peace of mind isn't at all superficial, really. It's the whole thing. That which produces it is good maintenance; that which disturbs it is poor maintenance. What we call workability of the machine is just an objectification of this peace of mind. The ultimate test is always your own serenity.
--Robert M. Pirsig

Violent

It seems that all my life we have been bombing someone, teaching them a lesson. Every day I understand more deeply how violent we are. Violent to others and violent to ourselves.
--Robert Olmstead

Tribalism

Tribalism is the number one threat that we humans face. Our ability to continue as a species on Earth, as we know it, depends on getting past tribalism.
--Barbara Washington

The Greater

The world indeed is full of peril and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps, the greater.
--J. R. R. Tolkien

Subtle

The truths of nature are subtle, and require deep and careful thought.
--Leonard Mlodinow

Liberty

If slavery be thus fatally contagious, how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?
--Samuel Johnson

Acceptance

Acceptance is not defeat. Acceptance is just awareness.
--Stephen Colbert

Certain

People who claim certainty about God worry me, both those who believe and those who don't believe. They do not really listen to the other side of conversations, and they are too ready to impose their views on others. It is impossible to be certain about God.
--William Irwin

Us

What happens to any of us, anywhere in the world, had better be the business of us all.
--Mamie Till-Mobley

Rapid

Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid.
--Abraham Lincoln (letter to Joshua Speed; August 24, 1855)

Screens

This is the thing about screens: you can never be sure how clear they are.
--Olivia Laing

Key

We think of the key, each in his prison.
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison.
--T.S. Eliot

On Time

War sells papers, television advertising and arms. It makes politicians feel important. It provides nationalism with clear enemies to define itself against. Despite all the other failures this administration promises, the US might finally be on time for a world war.
--Frankie Boyle

Disaster

How can we account for our present situation unless we believe that men high in this government are concerting to deliver us to disaster?
--Senator Joseph McCarthy (June 1951)

Loss

Death is loss without the possibility of being found.
--Kathryn Schulz

Private

There are no private lives. This a most important aspect of modern life. One of the biggest transformations we have seen in our society is the diminution of the sphere of the private. We must reasonably now all regard the fact that there are no secrets and nothing is private. Everything is public.
--Philip K. Dick

Liberty

Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there, it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it.
--Learned Hand

Empathy

The truly civilized man is marked by empathy. By his recognition that the thought and understanding of men of other cultures may differ sharply from his own, that what seems natural to him may appear grotesque to others.
--Malcolm Kerr

Fight

If I do not fight bigotry wherever it is, bigotry is thereby strengthened. And to the degree that it is strengthened, it will, thereby, have the power to turn on me.
--Bayard Rustin