Higher Form

To criticize one's country is to do it a service. Criticism, in short, is more than a right; it is an act of patriotism--a higher form of patriotism, I believe, than the familiar rituals and national adulation.
--Senator J. William Fulbright

Together

Imperfections are not inadequacies; they are reminders that we're all in this together.
--Brené Brown

Screen

Events cast long shadows before.
One such event would be a war.
But how are shadows to be seen
When total darkness fills the screen?
--Bertolt Brecht (1934)

Pigs

One thing about a pig, he thinks he's warm if his nose is warm. I saw a bunch of pigs one time that had frozen together in a rosette, each one's nose tucked under the rump of the one in front. We have a lot of pigs in politics.
--Eugene McCarthy

Soul

You cannot lay bare your private soul and look at it. You are too much ashamed of yourself. It is too disgusting.
--Mark Twain

Their Day

They are out there: the brave, the stoical, the imaginative and the decent. Despite everything, they will have their day.
--Roger Cohen

If

If you can sit quietly after difficult news, if in financial downturns you remain perfectly calm, if you can see your neighbors travel to fantastic places without a twinge of jealousy, if you can happily eat whatever is put on your plate, and fall asleep after a day of running around without a drink or a pill...if you can always find contentment just where you are, you are probably a dog.
--Jack Kornfield

Written

It could not have been better put if it had been written by Goebbels himself.
--Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Extinct

That we die alone, however, seems nothing less than terrifying: Who wouldn't like company in the process of being extinct?
--Daphne Merkin

Loudly

Today I heard my heart screeching like a subway train
loudly enough to remind me it was still human
loudly enough to hurt.
--Audre Lorde

Radical

Radical hope is our best weapon against despair, even when despair seems justifiable.
--Junot Díaz

Newcomers

I have always thought of the United States as a country that belongs first to its newcomers--the people who strain hardest to become a part of it because they realize that it's precious; and who do the most to remake it so that our ideas, and our appeal, may stay fresh.
--Bret Stephens

Everywhere

later that night
i held an atlas in my lap
ran my fingers across the whole world
and whispered
where does it hurt?

it answered
everywhere
everywhere
everywhere.

--Warsan Shire

Pointless

It's totally pointless to try and hold Donald Trump accountable for anything. He's not running the country, he's just driving the getaway car.
--Martha Plimpton

Tested

We know ourselves only insofar as we have been tested.
--Wislawa Szymborska

Weather

Weather is the boundary between natural science and human history.
--Stephen Fybish

Infinite

The aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom, but to set some limit on infinite error.
--Bertolt Brecht

Grace

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
--Wendell Berry (The Peace of Wild Things)

Destiny

There is nothing more mysterious than destiny--of a person, of our species, of our planet, or of the universe itself.
--Brian Swimme

Excess

Don't ever be afraid of telling someone you love them. There are things wrong with your world, but an excess of love is not one.
--Matt Haig