Orators from the United States

"Men may make laws to hinder and fetter the ballot, but men cannot make laws that will bind or retard the growth of manhood. We went into slavery a piece of property; we came out American citizens. We went into slavery pagans; we came out Christians. We went into slavery without a language; we came out speaking the proud Anglo-Saxon tongue. We went into slavery with slave chains clanking about our wrists; we came out with the American ballot in our hands. Progress, progress is the law of nature; under God it shall be our eternal guiding star."

"Character, not circumstances, makes the man. It is more important that we be prepared for voting than that we vote, more important that we be prepared to hold office than that we hold office, more important that we be prepared for the highest recognition than that we be recognized."

"In working out our destiny, while the main burden and center of activity must be with us, we shall need in a large measure the help, the encouragement, the guidance that the strong can give the weak. Thus helped, we of both races in the South shall soon throw off the shackles of racial and sectional prejudice and rise above the clouds of ignorance, narrowness, and selfishness into that atmosphere, that pure sunshine, where it will be our highest ambition to serve man, our brother, regardless of race or past conditions."

"I think I have learned that the best way to lift one's self up is to help someone else."

"There is no power on earth, that can neutralize the influence of a high, pure, simple and useful life."

"The world cares very little what you or I know, but it does care a great deal about what you or I do."

"Of all forms of slavery there is none that is so harmful and degrading as that form of slavery which tempts one human being to hate another by reason of his race or color. One man cannot hold another man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch with him."

"In any country, regardless of what its laws say, wherever people act upon the idea that the disadvantage of one man is the good of another, there slavery exists. Wherever, in any country the whole people feel that the happiness of all is dependent upon the happiness of the weakest, there freedom exists."

"There are two ways of exerting one's strength: one is pushing down, the other is pulling up."

"There is no escape — man drags man down, or man lifts man up."

"You can't hold a man down without staying down with him."

"In all things social as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress."

"We have cleared the forests, reclaimed the land, and are building cities, railroads, and great institutions."

"The unprecedented leap the Negro made when freed from the oppressing withes of bondage is more than deserving of a high place in history. It can never be chronicled. The world needs to know of what mettle these people are built."

"After making careful inquiry I can not find a half a dozen cases of a man or woman who has completed a full course of education in any of our reputable institutions like Hampton, Tuskegee, Fiske, or Atlanta, who are imprisoned. The records of the South show that 90 percent of the colored people imprisoned are without knowledge of trades and 61 percent are illiterate. But it has been said that the negro proves economically valueless in proportion as he is educated. Let us see. All will agree that the negro in Virginia, for example, began life forty years ago in complete poverty, scarcely owning clothing or a day's food. The reports of the State auditor show the negro today owns at least one twenty-sixth of the real estate in that Commonwealth exclusive of his holdings in towns and cities, and that in the counties east of the Blue Ridge Mountains he owns one-sixteenth. In Middlesex County he owns one-sixth: in Hanover, one-fourth. In Georgia the official records show that, largely through the influence of educated men and women from Atlanta schools and others, the negroes added last year $1,526,000 to their taxable property, making the total amount upon which they pay taxes in that State alone $16,700,000. Few people realize under the most difficult and trying circumstances, during the last forty years, it has been the educated negro who counseled patience, self-control, and thus averted a war of races. Every negro going out of our institutions properly educated becomes a link in the chain that shall forever bind the two races together in all essentials of life."

"From some things that I have said one may get the idea that some of the slaves did not want freedom. This is not true. I have never seen one who did not want to be free, or one who would return to slavery."

"I pity from the bottom of my heart any nation or body of people that is so unfortunate as to get entangled in the net of slavery. I have long since ceased to cherish any spirit of bitterness against the Southern white people on account of the enslavement of my race. No one section of our country was wholly responsible for its introduction, and, besides, it was recognized and protected for years by the General Government. Having once got its tentacles fastened on to the economic and social life of the Republic, it was no easy matter for the country to relieve itself of the institution. Then, when we rid ourselves of prejudice, or racial feeling, and look facts in the face, we must acknowledge that, notwithstanding the cruelty and moral wrong of slavery, the ten million Negroes inhabiting this country, who themselves or whose ancestors went through the school of American slavery, are in a stronger and more hopeful condition, materially, intellectually, morally, and religiously, than is true of an equal number of black people in any other portion of the globe. This is so to such an extend that Negroes in this country, who themselves or whose forefathers went through the school of slavery, are constantly returning to Africa as missionaries to enlighten those who remained in the fatherland. This I say, not to justify slavery — on the other hand, I condemn it as an institution, as we all know that in America it was established for selfish and financial reasons, and not from a missionary motive — but to call attention to a fact, and to show how Providence so often uses men and institutions to accomplish a purpose."

"I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed. Looked at from this standpoint, I almost reached the conclusion that often the Negro boy's birth and connection with an unpopular race is an advantage, so far as real life is concerned. With few exceptions, the Negro youth must work harder and must perform his tasks even better than a white youth in order to secure recognition. But out of the hard and unusual struggle through which he is compelled to pass, he gets a strength, a confidence, that one misses whose pathway is comparatively smooth by reason of birth and race."

"I learned the lesson that great men cultivate love, and that only little men cherish a spirit of hatred. I learned that assistance given to the weak makes the one who gives it strong; and that oppression of the unfortunate makes one weak."

"I would permit no man, no matter what his colour might be, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him."

"Few things can help an individual more than to place responsibility on him, and to let him know that you trust him."

"Nothing ever comes to me, that is worth having, except as the result of hard work."

"Cast down your bucket where you are."

"In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress."

"No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top."

"No man who continues to add something to the material, intellectual, and moral well-being of the place in which he lives is long left without proper reward."

"In one thing, at least, I feel sure that the English are ahead of Americans, and that is, they have learned how to get more out of life. The home life of the English seems to me to be about as perfect as anything can be. Everything moves like clockwork. I was impressed, too, with the deference that the servants show to their "masters" and "mistresses" - terms which I suppose would not be tolerated in America. The English servant expects, as a rule, to be nothing but a servant, and so he perfects himself in the art to a degree that no class of servants in America has yet reached. In our country the servant expects to become, in a few years, a "master" himself. Which system is preferable? I will not venture an answer."

"My whole life has largely been one of surprises. I believe that any man's life will be filled with constant, unexpected encouragements of this kind if he makes up his mind to do his level best each day of his life — that is, tries to make each day reach as nearly as possible the high-water mark of pure, unselfish, useful living."

"There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs."

"I am afraid that there is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don't want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public. My experience is that people who call themselves "The Intellectuals" understand theories, but they do not understand things. I have long been convinced that, if these men could have gone into the South and taken up and become interested in some practical work which would have brought them in touch with people and things, the whole world would have looked very different to them. Bad as conditions might have seemed at first, when they saw that actual progress was being made, they would have taken a more hopeful view of the situation."

"Associate yourself with people of good quality, for it is better to be alone than in bad company."

"Opportunity is like a bald-headed man with only a patch of hair right in front. You have to grab that hair, grasp the opportunity while it's confronting you, else you'll be grasping a slick bald head."

"There is trouble in the White House More than you can tell; Yelling like wild men, Niggers raising hell.I see a way to settle it Just as clear as water, Let Mr. Booker Washington Marry Teddy's daughter."

"Now Washington is a great and good man, a Christian statesman, and take him all in all the greatest man, save General Lee, born in the South in a hundred years; but he is not a typical negro."

"Almost everything Washington said or did was shot through with a certain irony. He bowed before the prejudices of the meanest Southerner, but he moved in circles in the North which were closed to all but a few white men. He told Negroes that Jim Crow was irrelevant, but he himself violated the law by riding first class in Pullman cars with Southern white men and women. And irony of ironies: he who advised Negroes to forget about politics wielded more political power than any other Negro in American history."

"Booker T. Washington advised, networked, cut deals, made threats, pressured, punished enemies, rewarded friends, greased palms, manipulated the media, signed autographs, read minds with the skill of a master psychologist, strategized, raised money, always knew where the camera was pointing, traveled with an entourage, waved the flag with patriotic speeches, and claimed to have no interest in partisan politics. In other words, he was an artful politician. He was not a lawyer, scholar, college-bred man, or a military hero. But he knew how to use the power of symbolism through the lens of a storyteller."

"He was a thinker rooted in the Bible and Shakespeare, a lover of epigrams, a teller of folksy tales, a prodigious writer, and theatrical in his method of inspiring crowds."

"Washington performed on the world stage as a moral charismatic leader representing African Americans. Some strongly believe he failed in that role; others believe that he succeeded against the odds. Some believe he was a trickster and self-made man; others firmly believe he was tricked and was a "made-man" by white power brokers. Whatever one's position, it is undeniable that Washington was an influential educational, business, cultural and political leader. He certainly had all the basics of leadership: a vision, a means of implementing the vision, and the enthusiasm of followers."

"Washington, unlike many other Black leaders of his time was a frequent traveler in the Deep South who knew the conditions firsthand instead of the abstract. Washington was a witness to the violence and racism of Jim Crow in the Black Belt and lived beside desperate poverty and illiteracy. Because of the paradoxical nature of being both a pragmatic realist and a utopian separatist, Washington sometimes expressed conflicting and ambiguous positions on issues."

"Booker Washington is the combined Moses and Joshua of his people. Not only has he led them to the promised land, but still lives to teach them by example and precept how properly to enjoy it."

"I have for some years had the pleasure of Mr. Booker Washington's acquaintance, and I share with all those who know the facts the appreciation of the services he has rendered and is rendering to the solution of one of the gravest and most perplexing problems of our time. He is a man who, in every sense, deserves well of his contemporaries, and I believe that, when hereafter the story is written of Christian people's endeavour in our day to atone for and to amend the racial wrongdoings of the past, Mr. Booker Washington's name will stand in the very forefront of those for whom the world will give thanks."

"So thoroughly did he learn the speech and thought of triumphal commercialism, and the ideals of material prosperity, that the picture of a lone black boy poring over a French grammar amid the weeds and dirt of a neglected home soon seemed to him the acme of absurdities. One wonders what Socrates and St. Francis of Assisi would say to this."

"We are a people born of many peoples. Our culture, our skills, our very aspirations have been shaped by immigrants—and their sons and daughters—from all the earth. Sam Gompers from England, Andrew Carnegie from Scotland, Albert Einstein from Germany—and Booker T. Washington and Al Smith—Marconi and Caruso—men of all nations and races and estates—they have made us what we are."

"There is nothing more touching in his book than the passages which record her devotion and her constant endeavor to help him find the way so dark to her. There is nothing more beautiful and uplifting in literature than the tender reverence, the devout honor with which he repays her affection. His birth was a part of slavery, and she was, in his eyes, as blameless for its conditions as if it had all the sanctions. The patience, the fearless frankness, with which he accepts and owns the facts, are not less than noble; and it is not to their white fathers, but to their black mothers, that such men as Fredrick Douglass and Booker Washington justly ascribe what is best in their natures."

"What strikes you, first and last, in Mr. Washington is his constant common sense. He has lived heroic poetry, and he can, therefore, afford to talk simple prose. Simple prose it is, but of sterling worth, and such as it is a pleasure to listen to as long as he chooses to talk. It is interfused with the sweet, brave humor which qualifies his writing, and which enables him, like Dunbar, to place himself outside his race, when he wishes to see it as others see it, and to report its exterior effect from his interior knowledge."

"His modesty, his patience, his forbearance, are sublime."

"Historical and contemporary judgments affirm that Washington was in reality “a great accommodator.” But to create Tuskegee in Alabama in that era he could hardly have been otherwise. He did create Tuskegee—a splendid achievement—but, in so doing, was in turn almost forced to create of himself an image of national leadership. But in time, he grew to like this image and eventually to take advantage of it, so his enemies claimed, for the exercise of power itself. As a bridge between the white and colored peoples of the United States, he sought and gained more often than not the favors of the white power structure from which came the endowments supporting Tusekegee."

"Before embarking on his illustrious career as an educator and activist, Booker T. Washington, the son of enslaved parents, spent part of his childhood working in the salt furnaces of the Kanawha Salines. "Though I was a mere child, my stepfather put me and my brother at work in one of the furnaces," he explained in his autobiography. "Often I began work as early as four o'clock in the morning." At the time, Washington was nine years old."

"For a hundred years since emancipation, Negroes had searched tor the elusive path to freedom. They knew that they had to fashion a body of tactics suitable for their unique and special conditions. The words of the Constitution had declared them free, but life had told them that they were a twice-burdened people—they lived in the lowest stratum of society, and within it they were additionally imprisoned by a caste of color. For decades the long and winding trails led to dead ends. Booker T. Washington, in the dark days that followed Reconstruction, advised them: “Let down your buckets where you are.” Be content, he said in effect, with doing well what the times permit you to do at all. However, this path, they soon felt, had too little freedom in its present and too little promise in its future."

"The vast majority of Negros are members of or associated with either the Baptist Church or the several branches of the Methodist Church. ... So strong has been their allegiance to these two denominations that Dr. Booker T. Washington used to say, with his characteristic humor, that if ever you discovered a Negro who was not either a Baptist or a Methodist, some white man had been tampering with his religion."

"It is not hyperbole to say that Booker T. Washington was a great American. For twenty years before his death he had been the most useful, as well as the most distinguished, member of his race in the world, and one of the most useful, as well as one of the most distinguished, of American citizens of any race."

"The race that can produce a Booker T. Washington in a century ought to feel it can do miracles in time."

"The action of President Roosevelt in entertaining that nigger will necessitate our killing a thousand niggers in the South before they learn their place again."

"What man is a worse enemy to a race than a leader who looks with equanimity on the disfranchisement of his race in a country where other races have universal suffrage by constitutions?"

"Silence is tantamount to being virtually an accomplice in the treasonable act of this Benedict Arnold of the Negro race."

"Social equality carries with it civil equality, political equality, financial equality, judicial equality, business equality, and wherever social equality is denied by legislative enactments and judicial decrees, the sequel must be discrimination, proscription, injustice and degradation. ... With all due respect to Prof. Washington personally, for we do respect him personally, he will have to live a long time to undo the harm he has done to our race. His remarks on social equality, which is nothing more than civil equality, will be quoted by newspapers, magazines, periodicals, legislatures, congressmen, lawyers, judges and all grades of whites to prove that the Negro race is satisfied with being degraded, not that the Professor meant it, but such will be the construction given it by our civil and political enemies."

"I am just as much opposed to Booker T. Washington as a voter as I am to the coconut-headed, chocolate-colored typical little coon who blacks my shoes every morning."

"Whenever I get dumped, I nail the door shut so that no one can come inside, get a towel and clip it around my neck so it's like a Superman cape, take off my shoes so I can slide across the room, and...get a fake mic, like a celery stick or a pen, and I play any record that features the vocalist Ronnie James Dio. And you can just pretend you're Dio, because on every album he does, he has minimum one, usually three, *EVIL WOMAN LOOK OUT!*- songs. And if you wanna point like Dio, it's a three-finger point. (heavy metal voice) 'The exit is that way. Evil LURKS! Evil lurks in twilight! Dances in the DARK! Evil woman! Just WALK AWAY!'"

"You always know the mark of a coward. A coward hides behind freedom. A brave person stands in front of freedom and defends it for others."

"Don't hide behind the Constitution or the Bible. If you're against gay marriage, just be honest, put a scarlet 'H' on your shirt, and say, 'I am a homophobe!'"

"If I let you, you would make me destroy myself. But in order to survive you, I must first survive myself. I can sink no further and I cannot forgive you. There's no choice but to confront you, to engage you, to erase you. I've gone to great lengths to expand my threshold of pain. I will use my mistakes against you. There's no other choice. Shameless now. Nameless now. Nothing now. No one now. But my soul must be iron cause my fear is naked. I'm naked and fearless - and my fear is naked!"

"Listen to the stage manager and get on stage when they tell you to. No one has time for the rock star act. None of the techs backstage care if you're David Bowie or the milkman. When you act like a jerk, they are completely unimpressed with the infantile display that you might think comes with your dubious status. They were there hours before you building the stage, and they will be there hours after you leave tearing it down. They should get your salary, and you should get theirs."

"I got three letters today telling me that I'm god. Why can't I pay the rent?"

"My pen knows what to do. I close my eyes and I see this girl who glows. A girl who radiates. When she smiles, she beams. She warms my heart. I open my eyes with a feeling of floating past all the garbage around me. I will emerge unscathed because I will not endeavor to hide myself from whatever is coming. Bring on the worst. I welcome it with open arms."

"You would think that pot had some kind of power; I mean come on, it’s a plant, not a reason for living. Controlled by a plant, how hilarious. A plant! A fucking plant!"

"BULLLLLSHIT!!"

"The Iron never lies to you. You can walk outside and listen to all kinds of talk, get told that you're a god or a total bastard. The Iron will always kick you the real deal. The Iron is the great reference point, the all-knowing perspective giver. Always there like a beacon in the pitch black. I have found the Iron to be my greatest friend. It never freaks out on me, never runs. Friends may come and go. But two hundred pounds is always two hundred pounds."

"When life hands you a lemon, say "Oh yeah, I like lemons. What else you got?"

"Knowledge without Mileage is bullshit to me."

"If I lose the light of the sun, I will write by candlelight, moonlight, no light. If I lose paper and ink, I will write in blood on forgotten walls. I will write always. I will capture nights all over the world and bring them to you."

"I know what we're gonna do! OOOOO - REAL ROCK POWER! There'll be nothing left. It'll be like Godzilla stepping on a cupcake. You're outta here! You're dead! YOU'RE DEAD! And so they clear, we put our gear on and we walk out there. 14,000 people have dwindled to... about six. It's alright! They'll come back! So we go out there - 'OOOOO POOOSSSHHHHH!' Three songs later, there's about 3,000 people. Four songs into the set, there's about 800 people. No response whatsoever. We get to the end of the set, there's like eight guys standing a mile away, 'Fuck you!'"

"I have to use a handbasket, which says 'I'm only kidding. I'm not really here buying a lot of shit. I'm just buying a few things. I'm just goofing around. Hey!' It's a way of avoiding the truth. It's like when you come into your apartment, and your two buddies are fucking each other. You know, like 'Uhhh! Ooohhh! Oh - ha ha ha ha! You're wondering about this, huh? Ha! We were just kiddin' around! We were just goofin' around! Nothin' else to do; let's fuck each other! Go figure!'"

"'HOW YA DOIN'!? PHIL! PETE! TOM! SAM, RIGHT?' I grab a shopping cart. Fuck the handbasket; I'm going big today. Goin' up to everybody in there: 'HEY, HOW YA DOIN'! HAVING A GOOD BED, BATH & BEYOND EXPERIENCE TODAY? RIGHT ON! HEY, TONY! HOW ARE THOSE FUCKIN' CANDLES DOING? ANY CANDLES ON SALE?'"

"The Ninja, as you know, operates by stealth. And so, case in point: I put out records... no one hears them! I make videos... (whispers) no one sees! I go on tour.... (whispers) no one knows! NINJA! I was never here!"

"Cynicism is only intellectual sloth."

"I make music all the time that no-one ever hears. Y' know, I sing in the shower, I hit on things. Music is life - life is music. Of all people, Nietzsche said 'Life without music is an error'. And so I'll be making music one way or another. Oh believe me, I make music..I've made whole records that no-one heard. Oh they came out, no-one bought them! We used to do whole secret tours, we used to stand outside like 'We're playing tonight!' and only the bouncers and bartenders would see you. I'm used to it. I'm that tree that falls in the forest."

"Someone who would go across a desert that can kill you, to get to another country? You want to be an American *that* bad? 'Cause I've never had to lift my damn finger to be an American. I'm honored to share a country with you."

"It is no surprise to me that hardly anyone tells the truth about how they feel. The smart ones keep themselves to themselves for good reason. Why would you want to tell anyone anything that's dear to you? Even when you like them and want nothing more than to be closer than close to them? It's so painful to be next to someone you feel strongly about and know you can't say the things you want to."

"I must tell you that I was always afraid of the fury with which I loved you. It overwhelmed me. I thought it beyond comprehension, therefore my silence."

"I will never say the things that I want to say to you. I know the damage it would do. I love you more than I hate my loneliness and pain."

"They say true love only comes around once and you have to hold out and be strong until then. I have been waiting. I have been searching. I am a man under the moon, walking the streets of earth until dawn. There's got to be someone for me. It's not too much to ask. Just someone to be with. Someone to love. Someone to give everything to. Someone."

"Thank you for touching me. Some of the only moments worth living were spent with you. Not you especially, the collective you."

"If I was a woman these days, I'd be killing motherfuckers. My handgun would never cool and my hands would be covered in testicular blood. I would have a horrible reputation with a lot of men because I would be calling them on their weak bullshit left and right."

"Basically, men are afraid of women and can't handle the fact that they came out of the same thing they spend the rest of their lives trying to get back into."

"If I was gay, there would be no closet, you would never see the closet I came out of. Why? I would have burned it for kindling by the time I was 12. Because I know with all certainty in my mind, there is nothing wrong with being gay, and you know it."

"One of my legs is shot off! But leave me one or two guns loaded — I am going to have a last shot. Be quick and go!"

"My heart is a stone: heavy with sadness for my people; cold with the knowledge that no treaty will keep whites out of our lands; hard with the determination to resist as long as I live and breathe. Now we are weak and many of our people are afraid. But hear me: a single twig breaks, but the bundle of twigs is strong. Someday I will embrace our brother tribes and draw them into a bundle and together we will win our country back from the whites."

"No tribe has the right to sell, even to each other, much less to strangers ... Sell a country! Why not sell the air, the great sea, as well as the earth? Didn't the Great Spirit make them all for the use of his children? ... The way, the only way to stop this evil is for the red man to unite in claiming a common and equal right in the land, as it was first, and should be now, for it was never divided."

"Brothers — My people wish for peace; the red men all wish for peace; but where the white people are, there is no peace for them, except it be on the bosom of our mother. Where today are the Pequod? Where are the Narragansett, the Mohican, the Pokanoket, and many other once powerful tribes of our people? They have vanished before the avarice and the oppression of the White Man, as snow before a summer sun. Will we let ourselves be destroyed in our turn without a struggle, give up our homes, our country bequeathed to us by the Great Spirit, the graves of our dead and everything that is dear to us? I know you will cry with me, Never! NEVER!."

"The annihilation of our race is at hand unless we unite in one common cause against the common foe. Think not, brave Choctaws and Chickasaws, that you can remain passive and indifferent to the common danger, and thus escape the common fate. Your people, too, will soon be as falling leaves and scattering clouds before their blighting breath. You, too, will be driven away from your native land and ancient domains as leaves are driven before the wintry storms. Sleep not longer, O Choctaws and Chickasaws, in false security and delusive hopes. Our broad domains are fast escaping from our grasp. Every year our white intruders become more greedy, exacting, oppressive and overbearing. Every year contentions spring up between them and our people and when blood is shed we have to make atonement whether right or wrong, at the cost of the lives of our greatest chiefs, and the yielding up of large tracts of our lands."

"If there be one here tonight who believes that his rights will not sooner or later be taken from him by the avaricious American pale faces, his ignorance ought to excite pity, for he knows little of our common foe... Then listen to the voice of duty, of honor, of nature and of your endangered country. Let us form one body, one heart, and defend to the last warrior our country, our homes, our liberty, and the graves of our fathers."

"Brother, I wish you to give me close attention, because I think you do not clearly understand. I want to speak to you about promises that the Americans have made. You recall the time when the Jesus Indians of the Delawares lived near the Americans, and had confidence in their promises of friendship, and thought they were secure, yet the Americans murdered all the men, women, and children, even as they prayed to Jesus?"

"Flags were given to my people, and they were told they were now the children of the Americans. We were told, if any white people mean to harm you, hold up these flags and you will then be safe from all danger. We did this in good faith. But what happened? Our beloved chief Moluntha stood with the American flag in front of him and that very peace treaty in his hand, but his head was chopped by a American officer, and that American officer was never punished. Brother, after such bitter events, can you blame me for placing little confidence in the promises of Americans?"

"It is you, the Americans, by such bad deeds, who push the red men to do mischief. You do not want unity among the tribes, and you destroy it. You try to make differences between them. We, their leaders, wish them to unite and consider their land the common property of all, but you try to keep them from this. You separate the tribes and deal with them that way, one by one, and advise them not to come into this union. Your states have set an example of forming a union among all the Fires, why should you censure the Indians for following that example? But, brother, I mean to bring all the tribes together, in spite of you, and until I have finished, I will not go to visit your president. Maybe I will when I have finished, maybe. The reason I tell you this, you want, by making your distinctions of Indian tribes and allotting to each a particular tract of land, to set them against each other, and thus to weaken us."

"The only way to stop this evil is for all the red men to unite in claiming an equal right in the land. That is how it was at first, and should be still, for the land never was divided, but was for the use of everyone. Any tribe could go to an empty land and make a home there. And if they left, another tribe could come there and make a home. No groups among us have a right to sell, even to one another, and surely not to outsiders who want all, and will not do with less. Sell a country! Why not sell the air, the clouds, and the Great Sea, as well as the earth? Did not the Great Good Spirit make them all for the use of his children?"

"Brother, I was glad to hear what you told us. you said that if we could prove that the land was sold by people who had no right to sell it, you would restore it. I will prove that those who did sell did not own it. Did they have a deed? A title? No! You say those prove someone owns land. Those chiefs only spoke a claim, and so you pretended to believe their claim, only because you wanted the land. But the many tribes with me will not agree with those claims. They have never had a title to sell, and we agree this proves you could not buy it from them."

"I am Shawnee! I am a warrior! My forefathers were warriors. From them I took only my birth into this world. From my tribe I take nothing. I am the maker of my own destiny! And of that I might make the destiny of my red people, of our nation, as great as I conceive to in my mind, when I think of Weshemoneto, who rules this universe! I would not then have to come to Governor Harrison and ask him to tear up this treaty and wipe away the marks upon the land. No! I would say to him, "Sir, you may return to your own country!""

"The being within me hears the voice of the ages, which tells me that once, always, and until lately, there were no white men on all this island, that it then belonged to the red men, children of the same parents, placed on it by the Great Good Spirit who made them, to keep it, to traverse it, to enjoy its yield, and to people it with the same race. Once they were a happy race! Now they are made miserable by the white people, who are never contented but are always coming in! You do this always, after promising not to anyone, yet you ask us to have confidence in your promises. How can we have confidence in the white people? When Jesus Christ came upon the earth, you killed him, the son of your own God, you nailed him up! You thought he was dead, but you were mistaken. And only after you thought you killed him did you worship him, and start killing those who would not worship him. What kind of a people is this for us to trust?"

"Now, Brother, everything I have said to you is the truth, as Weshemoneto has inspired me to speak only truth to you. I have declared myself freely to you about my intentions. And I want to know your intentions. I want to know what you are going to do about the taking of our land. I want to hear you say that you understand now, and will wipe out that pretended treaty, so that the tribes can be at peace with each other, as you pretend you want them to be. Tell me, brother. I want to know now."

"It is true I am a Shawnee. My forefathers were warriors. Their son is a warrior. From them I take only my existence; from my tribe I take nothing. I am the maker of my own fortune; and oh! that I could make that of my red people, and of my country, as great as the conceptions of my mind, when I think of the Spirit that rules the universe. I would not then come to Governor Harrison to ask him to tear the treaty and to obliterate the landmark; but I would say to him: "Sir, you have liberty to return to your own country.""

"The being within, communing with past ages, tells me that once, nor until lately, there was no white man on this continent; that it then all belonged to red men, children of the same parents, placed on it by the Great Spirit that made them, to keep it, to traverse it, to enjoy its productions, and to fill it with the same race, once a happy race, since made miserable by the white people who are never contented but always encroaching. The way, and the only way, to check and to stop this evil, is for all the red men to unite in claiming a common and equal right in the land, as it was at first, and should be yet; for it never was divided, but belongs to all for the use of each. For no part has a right to sell, even to each other, much less to strangers — those who want all, and will not do with less."

"The white people have no right to take the land from the Indians, because they had it first; it is theirs. They may sell, but all must join. Any sale not made by all is not valid. The late sale is bad. It was made by a part only. Part do not know how to sell. It requires all to make a bargain for all. All red men have equal rights to the unoccupied land. The right of occupancy is as good in one place as in another. There can not be two occupations in the same place. The first excludes all others. It is not so in hunting or traveling; for there the same ground will serve many, as they may follow each other all day; but the camp is stationary, and that is occupancy. It belongs to the first who sits down on his blanket or skins which he has thrown upon the ground; and till he leaves it no other has a right."

"Brothers, we all belong to one family; we are all children of the Great Spirit; we walk in the same path; slake our thirst at the same spring; and now affairs of the greatest concern lead us to smoke the pipe around the same council fire! Brothers, we are friends; we must assist each other to bear our burdens. The blood of many of our fathers and brothers has run like water on the ground, to satisfy the avarice of the white men."

"Brothers, when the white men first set foot on our grounds, they were hungry; they had no place on which to spread their blankets, or to kindle their fires. They were feeble; they could do nothing for themselves. Our fathers commiserated their distress, and shared freely with them whatever the Great Spirit had given his red children. They gave them food when hungry, medicine when sick, spread skins for them to sleep on, and gave them grounds, that they might hunt and raise corn. Brothers, the white people are like poisonous serpents: when chilled, they are feeble and harmless; but invigorate them with warmth, and they sting their benefactors to death. The white people came among us feeble; and now that we have made them strong, they wish to kill us, or drive us back, as they would wolves and panthers."

"Brothers, the white men are not friends to the Indians: at first, they only asked for land sufficient for a wigwam; now, nothing will satisfy them but the whole of our hunting grounds, from the rising to the setting sun. Brothers, the white men want more than our hunting grounds; they wish to kill our old men, women, and little ones. Brothers, many winters ago there was no land; the sun did not rise and set; all was darkness."

"The Great Spirit made all things. He gave the white people a home beyond the great waters. He supplied these grounds with game, and gave them to his red children; and he gave them strength and courage to defend them."

"Brothers, the white men despise and cheat the Indians; they abuse and insult them; they do not think the red men sufficiently good to live. The red men have borne many and great injuries; they ought to suffer them no longer."

"Brothers, The white people send runners amongst us; they wish to make us enemies, that they may sweep over and desolate our hunting grounds, like devastating winds, or rushing waters."

"Brothers, we must be united; we must smoke the same pipe; we must fight each other’s battles; and, more than all, we must love the Great Spirit: he is for us; he will destroy our enemies, and make all his red children happy."

"Sell a country! Why not sell the air, the clouds and the great sea, as well as the earth? Did not the Great Spirit make them all for the use of his children?"

"The whites have driven us from the sea to the lakes. We can go no further... unless every tribe unanimously combines to give a check to the ambition and avarice of the whites they will soon conquer us apart and disunited and we will be driven from our native country and scattered as autumn leaves before the wind."

"The white men aren't friends to the Indians... At first they only asked for land sufficient for a wigwam; now, nothing will satisfy them but the whole of our hunting grounds from the rising to the setting sun."

"I found some extraordinary characters. He who attracted most my attention was a Shawnee chief, Tecumseh, brother to the Prophet, who for the last two years has carried on contrary to our remonstrances an active warfare against the United States. A more sagacious or more gallant warrior does not, I believe, exist. He was the admiration of every one who conversed with him."

"It is difficult to feel greatness after a lapse of 200 years, but Tecumseh truly seems admirable. He was noble in his speech and behavior, adamant in his opposition to U.S. expansion, farsighted in his policies, brave in battle, yet merciful and protective toward captives."

"If it were not for the vicinity of the United States, he would perhaps be the founder of an empire that would rival in glory Mexico or Peru. No difficulties deter him. For four years he has been in constant motion. You see him today on the Wabash, and in a short time hear of him on the shores of Lake Erie or Michigan, or on the banks of the Mississippi, and wherever he goes he makes an impression favorable to his purpose."

"So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view, and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and its purpose in the service of your people. Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide. Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, even a stranger, when in a lonely place. Show respect to all people and grovel to none. When you arise in the morning give thanks for the food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself. Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision. When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home."

"When the legends die, the dreams end; there is no more greatness."

"The Muscogee was once a mighty people. The Georgians trembled at your war-whoop, and the maidens of my tribe, on the distant lakes, sung the prowess of your warriors and sighed for their embraces. Now your very blood is white; your tomahawks have no edge; your bows and arrows were buried with your fathers. Oh! Muscogees, brethren of my mother, brush from your eyelids the sleep of slavery; once more strike for vengeance; once more for your country. The spirits of the mighty dead complain. Their tears drop from the weeping skies. Let the white race perish! They seize your land, they corrupt your women, they trample on your dead! Back! whence they came, upon a trail of blood, they must be driven! Back! back — ay, into the great water whose accursed waves brought them to our shores! Burn their dwellings! Destroy their stock! Slay their wives and children! The red man owns the country, and the pale-face must never enjoy it! War now! War forever! War upon the living! War upon the dead! Dig their very corpses from the graves! Our country must give no rest to the white man's bones."

"You are now at a crossroads. Forget your past. Who are you now? Who have you decided you really are now? Don't think about who you have been. Who are you now? Who have you decided to become? Make this decision consciously. Make it carefully. Make it powerfully. Then act upon it."

"I believe life is constantly testing us for our level of commitment, and life's greatest rewards are reserved for those who demonstrate a never-ending commitment to act until they achieve. This level of resolve can move mountains, but it must be constant and consistent. As simplistic as this may sound, it is still the common denominator separating those who live their dreams from those who live in regret."

"Action is the foundational key to all success."

"People’s lives are a direct reflection of the expectations of their peer group. … Your life experience will never far exceed the expectations of your peers, because to stay connected to them there is an unconscious contract that says we’re going to be within this range of each other. Now, on the other hand, if for some reason your friends have a higher expectation for life than you do, just to stay on the team you’ve got to raise your standard. And that's the beauty of life."

"The quality of your life is the quality of your communication."

"To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others."

"There were two great orators of antiquity. One was Cicero, and the other Demosthenes. When Cicero was done speaking, people always gave him a standing ovation and cheered, "What a great speech!" When Demosthenes was done, people said, "Let us march," and they did. That's the difference between presentation and persuasion. I hope to be classified in the latter category."

"I challenge you to make your life a masterpiece. I challenge you to join the ranks of those people who live what they teach, who walk their talk. They are the models of excellence the rest of the world marvels about. Join this unique team of people known as the few who do versus the many who wish — result-oriented people who produce their life exactly as they desire it."

"A real decision is measured by the fact that you've taken a new action. If there's no action, you haven't truly decided."

"Beliefs have the power to create and the power to destroy. Human beings have the awesome ability to take any experience of their lives and create a meaning that disempowers them or one that can literally save their lives."

"Put the dwarf within you to sleep."

"All personal breakthroughs begin with a change in beliefs. So how do we change? The most effective way is to get your brain to associate massive pain to the old belief. You must feel deep in your gut that not only has this belief cost you pain in the past, but it's costing you in the present and, ultimately, can only bring you pain in the future."

"I realized that we all need a word to anchor ourselves to the focus of Constant and Never-ending Improvement. When we create a word, we encode meaning and create a way of thinking. The words that we use consistently make up the fabric of how we think and even affect our decision making. As a result of this understanding, I created a simple mnemonic: CANI!™ (pronounced kuhn-EYE), which stands for Constant And Never-ending Improvement."

"Live life fully while you're here. Experience everything. Take care of yourself and your friends. Have fun, be crazy, be weird. Go out and screw up! You're going to anyway, so you might as well enjoy the process. Take the opportunity to learn from your mistakes: find the cause of your problem and eliminate it. Don't try to be perfect; just be an excellent example of being human."

"A King, by disallowing Acts of this salutary nature, from being the father of his people, degenerated into a Tyrant and forfeits all rights to his subjects' obedience."

"Caesar had his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell; and George the Third — ["Treason!" cried the Speaker] — may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it."

"The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers and New Englanders are no more. I am not a Virginian, but an American."

"It is not a little Surprising that Christianity, whose chief excellence consists of softening the human heart, in cherishing and improving its finer Feelings, should encourage a Practice so totally repugnant to the first Impression of Right and Wrong. What adds to the wonder is that this Abominable Practice has been introduced in the most enlightened Ages."

"I shall honour the Quakers for their noble Effort to abolish Slavery. It is equally calculated to promote moral & political Good."

"I will not, I cannot justify it."

"I believe a time will come when an opportunity will be offered to abolish this lamentable evil. Everything we do is to improve it, if it happens in our day; if not, let us transmit to our descendants, together with our slaves, a pity for their unhappy lot and an abhorrence of slavery."

"Give me liberty, or give me death!"

"Suspicion is a virtue as long as its object is the public good, and as long as it stays within proper bounds. … Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel."

"Show me that age and country where the rights and liberties of the people were placed on the sole chance of their rulers being good men, without a consequent loss of liberty?"

"Let Mr. Madison tell me when did liberty ever exist when the sword and the purse were given up from the people? Unless a miracle shall interpose, no nation ever did, nor ever can retain its liberty after the loss of the sword and the purse."

"When the American spirit was in its youth, the language of America was different: Liberty, Sir, was then the primary object."

"Are we at last brought to such an humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in possession and under our direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?"

"The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them."

"The great object is that every man be armed… Everyone who is able may have a gun."

"With respect to that part of the proposal which says that every power not granted remains with the people, it must be previous to adoption, or it will involve this country in inevitable destruction. To talk of it as a thing subsequent, not as one of your unalienable rights, is leaving it to the casual opinion of the Congress who shall take up the consideration of that matter. They will not reason with you about the effect of this Constitution. They will not take the opinion of this committee concerning its operation. They will construe it as they please. If you place it subsequently, let me ask the consequences. Among ten thousand implied powers which they may assume, they may, if we be engaged in war, liberate every one of your slaves if they please. And this must and will be done by men, a majority of whom have not a common interest with you. They will, therefore, have no feeling of your interests. It has been repeatedly said here, that the great object of a national government was national defence. That power which is said to be intended for security and safety may be rendered detestable and oppressive. If they give power to the general government to provide for the general defence, the means must be commensurate to the end. All the means in the possession of the people must be given to the government which is intrusted with the public defence. In this state there are two hundred and thirty-six thousand blacks, and there are many in several other states. But there are few or none in the Northern States; and yet, if the Northern States shall be of opinion that our slaves are numberless, they may call forth every national resource. May Congress not say, that every black man must fight? Did we not see a little of this last war? We were not so hard pushed as to make emancipation general; but acts of Assembly passed that every slave who would go to the army should be free. Another thing will contribute to bring this event about. Slavery is detested. We feel its fatal effects—we deplore it with all the pity of humanity. Let all these considerations, at some future period, press with full force on the minds of Congress. Let that urbanity, which I trust will distinguish America, and the necessity of national defence,—let all these things operate on their minds; they will search that paper, and see if they have power of manumission. And have they not, sir? Have they not power to provide for the general defence and welfare? May they not think that these call for the abolition of slavery? May they not pronounce all slaves free, and will they not be warranted by that power? This is no ambiguous implication or logical deduction. The paper speaks to the point: they have the power in clear, unequivocal terms, and will clearly and certainly exercise it. As much as I deplore slavery, I see that prudence forbids its abolition. I deny that the general government ought to set them free, because a decided majority of the states have not the ties of sympathy and fellow-feeling for those whose interest would be affected by their emancipation. The majority of Congress is to the north, and the slaves are to the south."

"In this situation, I see a great deal of the property of the people of Virginia in jeopardy, and their peace and tranquillity gone. I repeat it again, that it would rejoice my very soul that every one of my fellow-beings was emancipated. As we ought with gratitude to admire that decree of Heaven which has numbered us among the free, we ought to lament and deplore the necessity of holding our fellowmen in bondage. But is it practicable, by any human means, to liberate them without producing the most dreadful and ruinous consequences? We ought to possess them in the manner we inherited them from our ancestors, as their manumission is incompatible with the felicity of our country. But we ought to soften, as much as possible, the rigor of their unhappy fate. I know that, in a variety of particular instances, the legislature, listening to complaints, have admitted their emancipation. Let me not dwell on this subject. I will only add that this, as well as every other property of the people of Virginia, is in jeopardy, and put in the hands of those who have no similarity of situation with us. This is a local matter, and I can see no propriety in subjecting it to Congress."

"With respect to subsequent amendments, proposed by the worthy member, I am distressed when I hear the expression. It is a new one altogether, and such a one as stands against every idea of fortitude and manliness in the states, or any one else. Evils admitted in order to be removed subsequently, and tyranny submitted to in order to be excluded by a subsequent alteration, are things totally new to me. . . . I ask, does experience warrant such a thing from the beginning of the world to this day? Do you enter into a compact first, and afterwards settle the terms of the government?"

"If she chuses to set free one or two of my slaves she is to have full power to do so."

"This is all the inheritance I can give to my dear family. The religion of Christ can give them one which will make them rich indeed."

"Let us trust God and our better judgment to set us right hereafter. United we stand, divided we fall. Let us not split into factions which must destroy that union upon which our existence hangs. Let us preserve our strength for the French, the English, the Germans, or whoever else shall dare invade our territory, and not exhaust it in civil commotions and intestine wars."

"The question before the House is one of awful moment to this country. For my own part, I consider it as nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery; and in proportion to the magnitude of the subject ought to be the freedom of the debate. It is only in this way that we can hope to arrive at truth, and fulfill the great responsibility which we hold to God and our country. Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the Majesty of Heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings."

"It is natural for man to indulge in the illusions of hope and pride. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it."

"I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know no way of judging of the future but by the past."

"Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled that force must be called in to win back our love? Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the implements of war and subjugation; the last arguments to which kings resort."

"There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free—if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending—if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained—we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of hosts is all that is left us!"

"They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. Three millions of people, armed in the holy cause of Liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave."

"Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable—and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come."

"It is vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, peace! But there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"

"That religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity towards each other."

"There is an insidious campaign of false propaganda being waged today, to the effect that our country is not a Christian country but a religious one—that it was not founded on Christianity but on freedom of religion. It cannot be emphasized too clearly and too often that this nation was founded, not by "religionists", but by Christians—not on religion, but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For this very reason, peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here."

"The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government — lest it come to dominate our lives and interests."

"We should not forget that the spark which ignited the American Revolution was caused by the British attempt to confiscate the firearms of the colonists."

"One of his neighbors going to see him found him reading the Bible. Holding it up in his hand, he said: "This book is worth all the books that ever were printed, and it has been my misfortune that I have never found time to read it with the proper attention and feeling till lately. I trust in the mercy of Heaven that it is not yet too late.""

"While new American leaders such as George Washington, Patrick Henry, and Benjamin Franklin studied the Haudenosaunee government, they also engaged in land speculation over territory held by these peoples, and Mohawk lands were ceded through force, coercion, and deceit until fewer than 14,600 acres remained in New York State."

"Patrick Henry was an inveterate and voracious engrosser of land lying beyond the deadline set by the British State [i.e., the Royal Proclamation of 1763 which prohibited English colonists from settling west of the Appalachian Mountains]; later he was heavily involved in the affairs of one of the notorious Yazoo companies, operating in Georgia. He seems to have been most unscrupulous. His company's holdings in Georgia, amounting to more than ten million acres, were to be paid for in Georgia scrip, which was much depreciated. Henry bought up all these certificates that he could get his hands on, at ten cents on the dollar, and made a great profit on them by their rise in value when Hamilton put through his measure for having the central government assume the debts they represented. Undoubtedly it was this trait of unrestrained avarice which earned him the dislike of Mr. Jefferson, who said, rather contemptuously, that he was "insatiable in money.""

"Samuel Davies was one of the most influential of all 18th century Virginians, in that his legal preaching gave increasing credibility to Presbyterians throughout all of central Virginia. He was an impassioned orator, often addressing outdoor congregations that numbered hundreds of souls. Patrick Henry's mother regularly brought her young son to Hanover County's Polegreen Meetinghouse to hear Davis' sermons. Nearly all of Henry's biographers mention Samuel Davies as a prominent influence on this young man's oratorical development, which was something which Henry also admitted shortly before his death, crediting this preacher with "teaching me what an orator should be.""

"As the 18th century progressed toward revolution in the Virginia Commonwealth, the language of freedom and individual rights had appealing religious meanings for the audiences of Samuel Davies and appealing political meanings for the audiences of Patrick Henry."

"When this country here was first being founded there were 13 colonies. The whites were colonized. They were fed up with this taxation without representation, so some of them stood up and said “Liberty or death.” Though I went to a white school over here in Mason, Michigan, the white man made the mistake of letting me read his history books. He made the mistake of teaching me that Patrick Henry was a patriot, and George Washington -- wasn’t nothing nonviolent about old Pat or George Washington. “Liberty or death” was what brought about the freedom of whites in this country from the English. They didn't care about the odds. Why they faced the wrath of the entire British Empire. And in those days they used to say that the British Empire was so vast and so powerful when the sun would never set on them. This is how big it was, yet these 13 little, scrawny states, tired of taxation without representation, tired of being exploited and oppressed and degraded, told that big British Empire “Liberty or death.” And here you have 22 million Afro-American black people today catching more hell than Patrick Henry ever saw. And I'm here to tell you, in case you don't know it, that you got a new generation of black people in this country who don't care anything whatsoever about odds. They don't want to hear you old Uncle Tom handkerchief heads talking about the odds. No. This is a new generation. If they're gonna draft these young black men and send them over to Korea or South Vietnam to face 800 million Chinese — if you're not afraid of those odds, you shouldn't be afraid of these odds."

"You can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want."

"Outstanding people have one thing in common: an absolute sense of mission."

"The world's most deadly disease is "hardening of the attitudes.""

"What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals."

"The most important persuasion tool you have in your entire arsenal is integrity."

"Success means doing the best we can with what we have. Success is the doing, not the getting — in the trying, not the triumph. Success is a personal standard — reaching for the highest that is in us — becoming all that we can be. If we do our best, we are a success. Success is the maximum utilization of the ability that you have."

"Expect the best. Prepare for the worst. Capitalize on what comes."

"People who truly understand God's purpose for their lives know that we are called to be intimately involved with one another."

"If you go looking for a friend, you’re going to find they’re very scarce. If you go out to be a friend, you’ll find them everywhere."

"The usual devastating put-downs imply that a person is basically bad, rather than that he is a person who sometimes does bad things. Obviously, there is a vast difference between a "bad" person and a person who does something bad. Besides, failure is an event, it is not a person — yesterday ended last night."

"You might occasionally feel that some people are standing in the way and slowing your progress, but in reality the biggest person standing in your way is you. Others can stop you temporarily — you are the only one who can do it permanently."

"Go so far as you can see and when you get there you will always be able to see farther. … as you head toward your goals, be prepared to make some slight adjustments to your course. You don't change your decision to go — you do change your direction to get there."

"Fewer people are bent from hard work than are crooked from avoiding it."

"When you give a man a dole, you deny him his dignity, and when you deny him his dignity you rob him of his destiny."

"A man or woman is seldom happy unless he or she is sustaining him or herself and making a contribution to others."

"Failure has been correctly identified as the line of least persistence."

"Success occurs when opportunity meets preparation."

"There is no such thing as a lazy person; he is either sick or uninspired."

"Desire is the ingredient that changes the hot water of mediocrity to the steam of outstanding success."

"If you don't save something on your current income, you won't save anything on your future income."

"Happiness is not pleasure — it is victory."

"Duty makes us do things well, but love makes us do them beautifully."

"Little men with little minds and little imaginations go through life in little ruts, smugly resisting all changes which would jar their little worlds."

"Secrets of Closing the Sale, is essential reading. Ziglar tells us that selling and closing are not mysteries to be solved; instead they are as tangible as when his wife up-sold him on a new house."

"An anarchist society, far from being a remote ideal, has become a precondition for the practice of ecological principles."

"Our Being is Becoming, not stasis. Our Science is Utopia, our Reality is Eros, our Desire is Revolution."

"When cybernated and automatic machinery can reduce toil to the near vanishing point, nothing is more meaningless to young people than a lifetime of toil. When modern industry can provide abundance for all, nothing is more vicious to poor people than a lifetime of poverty. When all the resources exist to promote social equality, nothing is more criminal to ethnic minorities, women and homosexuals than subjugation."

"The American left today as I know it—and believe me, I am very familiar with the American left—is going toward authoritarianism, toward totalitarianism. It's becoming the real right in the United States. We don't have an appreciable American left any more in the United States. What I saw of the SDS in the '60s was very abhorrent to me: Marxism, Leninism, almost the KGB mentality—a police politics that I found completely totalitarian in nature. And in Europe, I would say that today the real support for State power and totalitarianism comes from the Communist parties and the Socialist parties and, where they are sizable, the Trotskyist groups. They are the ones that really frighten me."

"People who resist authority, who defend the rights of the individual, who try in a period of increasing totalitarianism and centralization to reclaim these rights—this is the true left in the United States. Whether they are anarcho-communists, anarcho-syndicalists, or libertarians who believe in free enterprise, I regard theirs as the real legacy of the left, and I feel much closer, ideologically, to such individuals than I do to the totalitarian liberals and Marxist-Leninists of today."

"I have no quarrel with libertarians who advance the concept of capitalism of the type that you have advanced. I believe that people will decide for themselves what they want to do. The all-important thing is that they be free to make that decision and that they do not stand in the way of communities that wish to make other decisions. I could live beautifully in a society of the kind that you have described, as well as in a collectivistic one. However, if that collectivistic one assumed any totalitarian forms, any authoritarian forms whatever, I would oppose that. And not only that: I would join your community in fighting it. Let me make it very plain that if socialism, which is what I call the authoritarian version of collectivism, were to emerge, I would join your community. I would migrate to your community and do everything I could to prevent the collectivists from abridging my right to function as I like. That should be made very clear."

"Without changing the most molecular relationships in society — notably, those between men and women, adults and children, whites and other ethnic groups, heterosexuals and gays (the list, in fact, is considerable) — society will be riddled by domination even in a socialistic 'classless' and 'non-exploitative' form. It would be infused by hierarchy even as it celebrated the dubious virtues of 'people's democracies,' 'socialism' and the 'public ownership' of 'natural resources.' And as long as hierarchy persists, as long as domination organises humanity around a system of elites, the project of dominating nature will continue to exist and inevitably lead our planet to ecological extinction."

"The ecological principle of unity in diversity grades into a richly mediated social principle; hence my use of the term social ecology."

"To speak of 'limits to growth' under a capitalistic market economy is as meaningless as to speak of limits of warfare under a warrior society. The moral pieties, that are voiced today by many well-meaning environmentalists, are as naive as the moral pieties of multinationals are manipulative. Capitalism can no more be 'persuaded' to limit growth than a human being can be 'persuaded' to stop breathing. Attempts to 'green' capitalism, to make it 'ecological', are doomed by the very nature of the system as a system of endless growth."

"The assumption that what currently exists must necessarily exist is the acid that corrodes all visionary thinking."

"Once again the dead are walking in our midst- ironically, draped in the name of Marx, the man who tried to bury the dead of the nineteenth century."

"For these people to call themselves reds and describe attacks upon them as redbaiting is a form of McCarthyism in reverse. To rephrase Trotsky's juicy description of Stalinism, they are the syphilis of the radical youth movement today. And for syphilis there is only one treatment-an antibiotic, not an argument."

"We argue that the problem is not to "abandon"Marxism or to "annul" it,but to transcend it dialectically, just as Marx transcended Hegelian philosophy, Ricardian economics, and Blanquist tactics and modes of organization."

"Abject misery alone does not produce revolutions; more often than not, it produces an aimless demoralization, or worse, a private, personalized struggle to survive."

"Not only did Lenin oppose direct workers' control within a matter of weeks after the decree of November 14, even union control came to an end shortly after it had been established. By the summer of 1918, almost all of Russian industry had been placed under bourgeois forms of management."

"It would be incredibly naive to suppose that Leninism was the product of a single man. The disease lies much deeper, not only in the limitations of Marxian theory but in the limitations of the social era that produced Marxism."

"This pursuit of security in the past, this attempt to find a haven in a fixed dogma and an organizational hierarchy as substitutes for creative thought and praxis is bitter evidence of how little many revolutionaries are capable of 'revolutionizing themselves and things,' much less of revolutionizing society as a whole. The deep-rooted conservatism of the People's Labor Party 'revolutionaries' is almost painfully evident; the authoritarian leader and hierarchy replace the patriarch and the school bureaucracy; the discipline of the Movement replaces the discipline of bourgeois society; the authoritarian code of political obedience replaces the state; the credo of 'proletarian morality' replaces the mores of puritanism and the work ethic. The old substance of exploitative society reappears in new forms, draped in a red flag, decorated by portraits of Mao (or Castro or Che) and adorned with the little 'Red Book' and other sacred litanies."

"Listen, Marxist: The organization we try to build is the kind of society our revolution will create. Either we will shed the past - in ourselves as well as in our groups - or there will simply be no future to win."

"Nor do piecemeal steps however well intended, even partially resolve problems that have reached a universal, global and catastrophic character. If anything, partial 'solutions' serve merely as cosmetics to conceal the deep seated nature of the ecological crisis. They thereby deflect public attention and theoretical insight from an adequate understanding of the depth and scope of the necessary changes."

"If we recognise that every ecosystem can also be viewed as a food web, we can think of it as a circular, interlacing nexus of plant animal relationships (rather than a stratified pyramid with man at the apex)... Each species, be it a form of bacteria or deer, is knitted together in a network of interdependence, however indirect the links may be."

"If we do not do the impossible, we shall be faced with the unthinkable."

"Almost anyone, I suppose, can call himself or herself an anarchist, if he or she believed that the society could be managed without the state. And by the state—I don't mean the absence of any institutions, the absence of any form of social organisation—the state really refers to a professional apparatus of people who are set aside to manage society, to preëmpt the control of society from the people. So that would include the military, judges, politicians, representatives who are paid for the express purpose of legislating, and then an executive body that is also set aside from society. So anarchists generally believe that, whether as groups or individuals, people should directly run society."

"I had entered the communist children's movement, an organisation called the Young Pioneers of America, in 1930 in New York City; I was only nine years of age. And I'd gone through the entire '30s as a—Stalinist—initially, and then increasingly as someone who was more and more sympathetic to Trotskyism. And by 1939, after having seen Hitler rise to power, the Austrian workers revolt of 1934 (an almost completely forgotten episode in labour history), the Spanish revolution by which I mean the so-called Spanish civil war—I finally became utterly disillusioned with Stalinism, and drifted increasingly toward Trotskyism. And by 1945, I, finally, also became disillusioned with Trotskyism; and I would say, now, increasingly with Marxism and Leninism."

"The basic problem I really have is that whenever I meet leftists in the socialist and Marxist movements, I'm called a petit-bourgeois individualist. [audience laughs] I'm supposed to shrink after this— Usually I'm called petit-bourgeois individualist by students, and by academicians, who’ve never done a days work life [sic] in their entire biography, whereas I have spent years in factories and the trade unions, in foundries and auto plants. So after I have to swallow the word petit-bourgeois, I don't mind the word individualist at all!I believe in individual freedom; that's my primary and complete commitment—individual liberty. That’s what it's all about. And that's what socialism was supposed to be about, or anarchism was supposed to be about, and tragically has been betrayed.And when I normally encounter my so-called colleagues on the left—socialists, Marxists, communists—they tell me that, after the revolution, they're gonna shoot me. [audience laughs, Murray nods] That is said with unusual consistency. They're gonna stand me and Karl up against the wall and get rid of us real fast; I feel much safer in your company. [audience laughs and applauds]"

"Describing his concept of an ecological society, Bookchin blithely spoke of killing animals for food, hunting, and other human purposes. He thereby typifies the entire left spectrum, which is unable to escape speciesist social conditioning to grasp that human and nonhuman animals have equal interests in freedom, happiness, and life over captivity, suffering, and death. Like Marx, Bookchin embraced the Cartesian-mechanistic view of animals as dumb creatures devoid of any complex consciousness or social life. In Bookchin's terms, animals belong to the non-reflexive world of "first nature," along with rocks, trees, and other insensate objects, and he reserved the self-conscious and creative world of "second nature" for humans. For as social evolution phased out of biological evolution, humans alone, he claimed, made the ascent from instinct and mere sensation to self-consciousness, language, and reasoning."

"Left anticommunists remained studiously unimpressed by the dramatic gains won by masses of previously impoverished people under communism. Some were even scornful of such accomplishments. I recall how in Burlington Vermont, in 1971, the noted anticommunist anarchist, Murray Bookchin, derisively referred to my concern for "the poor little children who got fed under communism" (his words)."

"[Professor Jennifer] Burns doesn't seem to understand that when leftists, or conservatives or liberals for that matter, refer to capitalism, they don't mean what Ayn Rand meant by it. They mean the system that is otherwise known as mercantilism, corporatism, state capitalism, or even fascism—a system in which huge corporations, aided by the state, dominate a heavily-regulated and centrally-directed economy. This is what both conservatives and liberals advocate, this is what the New Left opposed. One New Left guru, the late Murray Bookchin, told me thirty years ago in Boston that he had no quarrel with what Ayn Rand and Murray Rothbard meant by the term capitalism, a system in which people divide their labour, specialise in producing certain goods and services, and trade among themselves. Bookchin told me that he would say that that is not capitalism, though there are many different definitions."

"I do not write about nice people. I am not nice people. Neither is anyone I have ever cared deeply about."

"I want to write a great book — I want to make a difference — I want to have adventures and take enormous risks and be everything they say we are and not give a damn what anyone says."

"Take the whole range of imaginative literature, and we are all wholesale borrowers. In every matter that relates to invention, to use, or beauty or form, we are borrowers."

"Write on my gravestone: "Infidel, Traitor" — infidel to every church that compromises with wrong; traitor to every government that oppresses the people."

"Revolutions are not made; they come. A revolution is as natural a growth as an oak. It comes out of the past. Its foundations are laid far back."

"What gunpowder did for war, the printing press has done for the mind, and the statesman is no longer clad in the steel of special education, but every reading man is his judge."

"The best use of laws is to teach men to trample bad laws under their feet."

"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty — power is ever stealing from the many to the few…. The hand entrusted with power becomes … the necessary enemy of the people. Only by continual oversight can the democrat in office be prevented from hardening into a despot: only by unintermitted Agitation can a people be kept sufficiently awake to principle not to let liberty be smothered in material prosperity."

"What the Puritans gave the world was not thought, but action."

"Truth is one forever, absolute; but opinion is truth filtered through the moods, the blood, the disposition, of the spectator."

"In God's world there are no majorities, no minorities; one, on God's side, is a majority."

"Every man meets his Waterloo at last."

"Whether in chains or in laurels, Liberty knows nothing but victories."

"Difference of religion breeds more quarrels than difference of politics."

"I think the first duty of society is justice."

"Revolutions never go backward."

"[T]he Negro race, instead of being that object of pity or contempt which we usually consider it, is entitled, judged by the facts of history, to a place close by the side of the Saxon."

"[R]aces love to be judged in two ways—by the great men they produce, and by the average merit of the mass of the race."

"Aristocracy is always cruel."

"He who stifles free discussion, secretly doubts whether what he professes to believe is really true."

"Corruption does not so much rot the masses: it poisons Congress. Credit-Mobilier and money rings are not housed under thatched roofs: they flaunt at the Capitol. As usual in chemistry, the scum floats uppermost."

"The agitator must stand outside of organizations, with no bread to earn, no candidate to elect, no party to save, no object but truth — to tear a question open and riddle it with light."

"To be as good as our fathers we must be better."

"Sit not, like the figure on our silver coin, looking ever backward."

"Be not dismayed by a defeat. What is defeat! Nothing but education, nothing but the first step to something better."

"Mrs. R. (Ernestine Rose) and myself were talking of the know nothing organizations, when she criticized Lucy Stone and Wendell Philips with regard to their feelings toward foreigners. Said she had heard them both express themselves in terms of prejudice against granting to foreigners the rights of Citizenship."

"Wendell Phillips, whose wife was part of the American delegation, introduced a counter-motion that the women be seated as full delegates. He spoke: "It is the custom there in America not to admit colored men into respectable society; and we have been told again and again that we are outraging the decencies of humanity when we permit colored men to sit by our side. When we have submitted to brick-bats and the tar-tub and feathers in New England rather than yield to the custom prevalent there to not admitting colored brethren into our friendship, shall we yield to parallel custom or prejudice against women in Old England? We cannot yield this question... for it is a matter of conscience.... We have argued it over and over again, and decided it time after time, in every society in the land, in favor of the women... It is a matter of conscience, and British virtue ought not to ask us to yield.""

"The ancients were always distinguished—especially the Chaldean astrologers and Magians—for their ardent love and pursuit of knowledge in every branch of science... As chemists they were unequalled, and in his famous lecture on The Lost Arts, Wendell Phillips says: “ The chemistry of the most ancient period had reached a point which we have never even approached.” The secret of the malleable glass, which, “if supported by one end by its own weight, in twenty hours dwindles down to a fine line that you can curve around your wrist,” would be as difficult to rediscover in our civilized countries as to fly to the moon. p. 50"

"Wendell Phillips states that he has a friend who possesses an extraordinary ring “ perhaps three-quarters of an inch in diameter, and on it is the naked figure of the god Hercules. By the aid of glasses, you can distinguish the interlacing muscles, and count every separate hair on the eyebrows. p. 240 In his lecture on the Lost Arts, Wendell Phillips very artistically describes the situation. “We seem to imagine/' says he, “ that whether knowledge will die with us or not, it certainly began with us. . . . We have a pitying estimate, a tender pity for the narrowness, ignorance, and darkness of the bygone ages.” p. 534"

"Mister Toombs was willing to dissolve the Union to save slavery, Mister Phillips, to save liberty; while Mister Seward, denounced and derided by both, declared that the deepest instinct of the American people was for union. Reserved rights. State rights, limited powers, the advantages of union and disunion, were the cucumbers from which we were busily engaged in distilling light, overlooking the fact of nationality in discussing the conditions of union. We were speculating upon costume. We gravely proved that the clothes were the clothes of a woman, or of a child, without seeing that whatever the clothes might be there was a full-grown man inside of them. "The Constitution is a contract between sovereign States", shouted Mister Toombs, "let Georgia tear it and separate". "The Constitution is a league with hell", calmly replied Mister Phillips, "let New York cut off New Orleans to rot alone". "Oh, dear! it"s a dreadful dilemma", whimpered President Buchanan. "States have no right to secede, and the United States have no right to coerce. Oh, dear me! it"s perfectly awful! I"m the most patriotic of men, but what shall I do? what shall I do?" Separate! Cut off! Secede! It was of a living body they spoke, which, pierced anywhere, quivered everywhere."

"Robert G. Ingersoll and Wendell Phillips were the two greatest orators of their time, and probably of all time. Their power sprang from their passion for freedom, for truth, for justice, for a world filled with light and with happy human beings. But for this divine passion neither would have scaled the sublime heights of immortal achievement. The sacred fire burned within them and when they were aroused it flashed from their eyes and rolled from their inspired lips in torrents of eloquence. Had Ingersoll and Phillips devoted their lives to the practice of law for pay the divine fire within them would have burned to ashes and they would have died in mediocrity."

"The good Lord had had a chance for a long time before the abolition. I believe that there is a moral government; and that God reigns. I am no pessimist; I give thanks to the good Lord, and also to the good men through whom He has worked. Prominent among them was Garrison, and scarcely less so was Phillips..."

"All 13 of us graduates had orations, and mine was on Wendell Phillips. The great anti-slavery agitator had just died in February and I presume that some of my teachers must have suggested the subject, although it is quite possible that I chose it myself. But I was fascinated by his life and his work and took a long step toward a wider conception of what I was going to do."

"Phillips, the peerless, grand and brave,/A tower of strength to the outcast slave./Earth has no marble too pure and white/To enrol his name in golden light."

"behind them (The Masses staff) still throbbed the tradition of nineteenth-century American radicalism, the un-ambiguous nay-saying of Thoreau and the Abolitionists. This tradition implied that the individual person was still able to square off against the authority of the state; it signified a stance-one could not quite speak of it as a politics-of individual defiance and rectitude, little concerned because little involved with the complexities of society. The radicalism of nineteenth-century New England had been a radicalism of individual declaration far more than of collective action; and while Max Eastman and his friends were indeed connected with a movement, the Socialist party of Debs, in essential spirit they were intellectual freebooters, more concerned with speaking out than speaking to. They swore by Marx, but behind them could still be heard the voices of Thoreau and Wendell Phillips-and it was a good thing."

"In 1834, a Boston mob dragging William Lloyd Garrison through the streets with a rope around his neck, was observed by the young lawyer Wendell Phillips, offspring of a wealthy and respected family. He was so incensed by the sight that he joined in Garrison's defense and soon became one of the leading and most militant abolitionists."

"Women are stripped to the skin in the presence of leering, white-skinned, black-hearted brutes and lashed into insensibility and strangled to death from the limbs of trees. A girl child of fifteen years was lynched recently by these brutal bullies. Where has justice fled? The eloquence of Wendell Phillips is silent now. John Brown’s body lies moldering in the grave. But will his spirit lie there moldering, too? Brutes, inhuman monsters—you heartless brutes—you whom nature forms by molding you in it, deceive not yourselves by thinking that another John Brown will not arise."

"It's just what Wendell Phillips said," she declared. "'The Puritan's idea of hell is a place where everybody has to mind his own business.'"

"Wendell Phillips says, “The best and greatest thing one is capable of doing, that is his sphere.”"

"The biggest thing I learned was, especially the way I operate and how I am as a person, if I'm going to do a creative endeavor, I need to have full, complete control. Top to bottom. And with my book and website, I always had that. With the website, definitely, with the book, basically, with the movie...I didn't in a lot of ways. Nils and I, we had a lot of control, more control probably than almost any first time movie makers do within a normal studio system. We were in the middle between independent and not, because someone else paid for everything, and they kind of let us do what we wanted, but then once the movie was done creatively, it went in a direction that I did not want it to go, and there was nothing I could really do about it. It's hard enough to swim in that movie current by yourself, but when you've got weights tied to you and someone pulling you in a different direction, it's almost impossible. You need to pick a direction and go with it. If you're going to be a big studio movie, go be that, and if you're going to go be a rogue independent film, go be that. We had different people with different levels of authority on the movie that pulled us in different directions, and it just doesn't work. Either be in control or let someone else do it, but don't...too many chefs. I'm going to be better next time. Failure instructs, failure improves. Failure shouldn't deter you, unless you're just bad at it."

"I turned down $2 million for this script. There's absolutely no way that had I filmed the script through a major studio they would have done anything but fuck this movie up. They would have cut all the balls off the comedy, they would have put Seth Rogen and Dane Cook in it, they would have changed Tucker to make him fall in love, and all this stupid shit that would have driven me up a fucking wall."

"I try to make them understand it's not about getting pussy, it's about having fun. It's not about getting drunk, it's about being with your friends. It's not about dishing out put downs, it's about the thrill that comes with improving a witty line. It's not about being an asshole, it's about refusing to let others define your life. It's ultimately about being the person you want to be, and all the manic happiness that comes with that."

"Redheadedcalin doll: Doll comes with an innocent smile. Pull her string and doesn't speak, she just opens her legs."

"You see, I have fucked an amputee and a set of twins. If you add in a midget, you are looking at a legendary trifecta. How many other people can say they have done that? Seriously, raise your hand if you even know someone who has done that. Yeah, some of you have fucked midgets. Some of you have fucked amputees. Some have even fucked a set of twins. But how many can honestly say you have done all three categories? I'm not going to say that I'm the only guy on earth who has done this, but I would bet you could fit all of us into a Prius."

"I gave her an unmistakable "I want to fuck you" look, she shot me back a quick "My spine hurts" face, and I was smitten."

"EEK EEK EEK!! That's dolphin for 'I'm sorry.' But you already knew that.."

"Hey man, so can you speak to dolphins and pilot whales with that forehead of yours?"

"Tucker: You guys going to Milwaukee? Guy: Yes sir, heading home after a vacation. Tucker: Did you know there are midgets in Milwaukee? [The man and his wife are silent and confused.] Tucker: HUNDREDS OF THEM!"

"Nose full of fart, mouth full of cock, she never even paused."

"I'm sorry, but I stand by my decision. I am now a member of the elite club of people that have fought a professional team mascot. You sir, are not in that club."

"You ever wake up in the middle of the night because a couple of cats are clawing each other to death outside your window? That's what it's like listening to you speak."

"What are you looking for, McSeaBass? Its been the same menu for 40 years. Its all McShit. Just fucking order!"

"9:00: I don't know what I want. I just point at the Dollar Menu and say, 'Give me all of that.'"

"KJ: Jesus Christ, you are amazing. Where did you learn to fuck like that? TM: Home schooling."

"...and that we were now those guys...who started a fight at a Harry Potter book party."

"Great Holy Jesus--it looks like he fell into Kentucky Fried Movie."

"I was very thirsty. Laying in the bathtub, looking up at the faucet, I thought of a great idea. So I turned the nozzle on full blast, and put my mouth up to it. It was like drinking from a firehose, but I was too drunk and dehydrated to notice that I was getting completely soaked, or that water was shooting out of my nose."

"I have about half a second to make a crucial decision: I can either sprint and hope I make it there before I shit in my boxers, or I can stick my thumb up into my ass and shuffle the 60 yards to lavatory freedom."

"Tucker: Do you hate the World Bank? Girl: Uhh, umm, well, I mean, yeah, I feel that... Tucker: You don't hate the World Bank. Girl: I don't? Tucker: No. You're mad at your father. You just want daddy to hug you more. Girl: What? Tucker: You were a sociology major weren't you? Girl: NO! Tucker: What was your major? Girl: [Pauses] Uhhh, English Literature. Tucker: [Pause--to give her a look of contempt] Did your parents send you a bill for college? How are those Marxist Literary Critique classes working out for you? You work at Barnes and Noble don't you? Girl: NO--I wor-- Tucker: Shouldn't you be blocking an intersection right now? How many anti-sweatshop petitions have you signed--EVEN THOUGH YOU HAVE REEBOKS ON. Very-anti globalization to wear those with your animal tested Clinque make-up made in Nepal. Well, at least you're consistent in your shameless hypocrisy. Girl: What a fascist piece of shi-- Tucker: You ever wake up in the middle of the night because a couple of cats are clawing each other to death outside your window? That's what it's like listening to you speak. Girl: [A mishmash of stammered half insults] Tucker: Seriously--If I stuck my dick in your mouth would that shut you up? Girl: Wha...YOU ARE SUCH AN ASSHOLE! Tucker: HEY--Don't blame me for the wound in your crotch. [As I walk off] By the way, you owe us a rib."

"I am Shiva, Destroyer of Worlds."

"We can't get kicked out of McDonald's! This is like the DMZ of drunk eating."

"Hi. I haven't insulted you yet, have I?"

"Tucker: Are you married? Girl: Yes. Tucker: How good is the marriage? Girl: Very good. Tucker: So there is no chance of us hooking up? Girl: No. Tucker: Well, do you have any hot friends who aren't fucking prudes? Hey--where are you going? I was only kidding! I respect the sanctity of the monogamous relationship! WHORE!"

"Tucker: WHERE IS THE BATHROOM? Janitor: No, no se habla Ingles. Tucker: WHAT?!? Huh, uh...DONDE ESTA FUCKING BANO? Janitor: AYA, AYA!"

"Tucker: I understand how female porn stars are selected, but if you are guy, and you don't have a huge cock or shoot 8-ropers, how do you get into the porn industry? Mermaid: Networking, dude, networking. Stripper: I don't know. I just fucked whoever they told me to. It paid good. Tucker: Well isn't that pleasant? I bet your parents are beaming with pride."

"The Cousin: Hey Tucker, you know she's French, don't you? Tucker: Oh hell no--You're French? Girl: My parents are, but I was born here. I want to move to France after graduation. Tucker: You fucking cheese-eating surrender monkey. I thought someone stunk around here. So if I start speaking German can I push you around and take all your stuff? Those hairy fucking stink-bags would be speaking Kraut right now if it wasn't for us, and they aren't the least bit appreciative. I hope they all fucking die, and your frog-sympathizing ass with them."

"Yinzer: DAMN!! I wish I had your balls! Tucker:"I wish you had a breath mint, but I guess we don't always get what we wish for."

"Every girl asked me, "What makes you god's gift to women?" Some answers: 13 inches. Who ever thought it could be too big? I have 20 million dollars and terminal cancer. I like to listen. I'm a convicted sex offender. Have you seen this face? Look at how hot I am! I like to cut up hookers. Bend over and I'll show you."

"The Academy should give Caitlin a fucking Oscar. She delivered her scripted lines perfectly, even improvising beautifully with the "Uncle Tucker" bit. And I should get an award for choreography or something."

"A girl said this to me last night: "You aren't at all what I expected. I thought you would be more suave and debonair." That statement by itself isn't all that funny, until you put it into context: She said it to me as we were laying in bed, having just fucked three times. That was two hours after I met her."

"Here’s to the people we’ve met, And to the people we’ve fucked, And to those of us Who’ve had no such luck. Here’s to beer in the glass, And vodka in the cup. Here’s to pokin’ her in the ass So she won’t get knocked up. Here’s to all of you, And here’s to me, Together as friends we’ll always be. But if we should ever disagree, Then FUCK ALL OF YOU, HERE’S TO ME!"

"In many churches Christianity has been watered down until the solution is so weak that if it were poison it would not hurt anyone, and if it were medicine it would not cure anyone!"

"It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until He has hurt him deeply."

"God wants us to worship Him. He doesn't need us, for He couldn't be a self-sufficient God and need anything or anybody, but He wants us. When Adam sinned it was not he who cried, 'God, where art Thou?' It was God who cried, 'Adam, where art thou?'"

"Some of my friends good-humoredly – and some a little bit severely – have called me a 'mystic.' Well I'd like to say this about any w:mysticism I may suppose to have. If an arch-angel from heaven were to come, and were to start giving me, telling me, teaching me, and giving me instruction, I'd ask him for the text. I'd say, 'Where's it say that in the Bible? I want to know.' And I would insist that it was according to the scriptures, because I do not believe in any extra-scriptural teachings, nor any anti-scriptural teachings, or any sub-scriptural teachings. I think we ought to put the emphasis where God puts it, and continue to put it there, and to expound the scriptures, and stay by the scriptures. I wouldn't – no matter if I saw a light above the light of the sun, I'd keep my mouth shut about it 'til I'd checked with Daniel and Revelation and the rest of the scriptures to see if it had any basis in truth. And if it didn't, I'd think I'd just eaten something I shouldn't, and I wouldn't say anything about it. Because I don't believe in anything that is unscriptural or that is anti-scripture."

"Whatever else it embraces, true Christian experience must always include a genuine encounter with God. Without this, religion is but a shadow, a reflection of reality, a cheap copy of an original once enjoyed by someone else of whom we have heard. It cannot but be a major tragedy in the life of any man to live in a church from childhood to old age and know nothing more real than some synthetic god compounded of theology and logic, but having no eyes to see, no ears to hear, and no heart to love."

"The idea that this world is a playground instead of a battleground has now been accepted in practice by the vast majority of Christians. They are facing Christ and the world. ...The ‘worship’ growing out of such a view of life is as far off center as the view itself—a sort of sanctified nightclub without the champagne and the dressed-up drunks.""

"Modern civilization is so complex as to make the devotional life all but impossible. It wears us out by multiplying distractions and beats us down by destroying our solitude, where otherwise we might drink and renew our strength before going out to face the world again. … The thoughtful soul to solitude retires," said the poet of other and quieter times; but where is the solitude to which we can retire today? Science, which has provided men with certain material comforts, has robbed them of their souls by surrounding them with a world hostile to their existence."

"We have measured ourselves by ourselves until the incentive to seek higher plateaus in the things of the Spirit is all but gone."

"Truth is a glorious but hard mistress. She never consults, bargains or compromises."

"Complacency is the deadly enemy of spiritual progress. The contented soul is the stagnant soul."

"I find that many men and women are troubled by the thought that they are too small and inconsequential in the scheme of things. But that is not our real trouble—we are actually too big and too complex, for God made us in His image and we are too big to be satisfied with what the world offers us! … Man is bored, because he is too big to be happy with that which sin is giving him. God has made him too great, his potential is too mighty."

"We have become so engrossed in the work of the Lord that we have forgotten the Lord of the work."

"Many of us Christians have become extremely skillful in arranging our lives so as to admit the truth of Christianity without being embarrassed by its implications. We arrange things so that we can get on well enough without divine aid, while at the same time ostensibly seeking it."

"In our constant struggle to believe we are likely to overlook the simple fact that a bit of healthy disbelief is sometimes as needful as faith to the welfare of our souls. I would go further and say that we would do well to cultivate a reverent skepticism. It will keep us out of a thousand bogs and quagmires where others who lack it sometimes find themselves. It is no sin to doubt some things, but it may be fatal to believe everything. Faith is at the root of all true worship, and without faith it is impossible to please God. Through unbelief Israel failed to inherit the promises. “By grace are ye saved through faith.” “The just shall live by faith.” Such verses as these come trooping to our memories, and we wince just a little at the suggestion that unbelief may also be a good and useful thing. … Faith never means gullibility. The man who believes everything is as far from God as the man who refuses to believe anything. Faith engages the person and promises of God and rests upon them with perfect assurance. Whatever has behind it the character and word of the living God is accepted by faith as the last and final truth from which there must never be any appeal. Faith never asks questions when it has been established that God has spoken. 'Yea, let God be true, but every man a liar' (Rom. 3:4). Thus faith honors God by counting Him righteous and accepts His testimony against the very evidence of its own senses. That is faith, and of such we can never have too much. Credulity, on the other hand, never honors God, for it shows as great a readiness to believe anybody as to believe God Himself. The credulous person will accept anything as long as it is unusual, and the more unusual it is the more ardently he will believe. Any testimony will be swallowed with a straight face if it only has about it some element of the eerie, the preternatural, the unearthly."

"Whatever a man wants badly and persistently enough will determine the man's character."

"Any belief that does not command the one who holds it is not a real belief; it is a pseudo belief only."

"...if my fire is not large, it is yet real, and there may be those who can light their candle at its flame. (forward)."

"Let the seeking man reach a place where life and lips join to say continually, "Be thou exalted," and a thousand minor problems will be solved at once."

"Let a man set his heart only on doing the will of God and he is instantly free."

"We are right when, and only when, we stand in a right position relative to God, and we are wrong so far and so long as we stand in any other position."

"When God would make His name known to mankind, He could find no better word than "I AM.""

"The blessed and inviting truth is that God is the most winsome of all beings and in our worship of Him we should find unspeakable pleasure."

"In the long pull we pray only as well as we live."

"To have found God and still to pursue Him is the soul's paradox of love, scorned indeed by the too-easily-satisfied religionist, but justified in happy experience by the children of the burning heart."

"Apart from sin we have nothing of which to be ashamed. Only an evil desire to shine makes us want to appear other than we are."

"God never hurries. There are no deadlines against which He must work."

"What comes to mind when we think about God is the most important thing about us."

"One hundred religious persons knit into a unity by careful organization do not constitute a church any more than eleven dead men make a football team. The first requisite is life, always."

"The truly spiritual man is indeed something of an oddity. He lives not for himself but to promote the interests of Another. He seeks to persuade people to give all to his Lord and asks no portion or share for himself. He delights not to be honored but to see his Saviour glorified in the eyes of men. His joy is to see his Lord promoted and himself neglected. He finds few who care to talk about that which is the supreme object of his interest, so he is often silent and preoccupied in the midst of noisy religious shoptalk. For this he earns the reputation of being dull and overserious, so he is avoided and the gulf between him and society widens. He searches for friends upon whose garments he can detect the smell of myrrh and aloes and cassia out of the ivory palaces, and finding few or none he, like Mary of old, keeps these things in his heart."

"To be right with God has often meant to be in trouble with men."

"God … must always be sought for Himself, never as a means toward something else. Whoever seeks God as a means toward desired ends will not find God. The mighty God, the maker of heaven and earth, will not be one of many treasures, not even the chief of all treasures. He will be all in all or He will be nothing. God will not be used."

"I am familiar with what goes on in the Arab countries, and I'm sad to say that most of us want to annihilate Israel. We want to kill all the Israelis... Do you know what they used to say in the mosques in Egypt? "We want to go to the White House and turn it into the Islamic House..." We call upon the Arab countries to stop teaching hatred to the Arab children."

"Jewish success is due to a culture that promotes excellence, blessed with self discipline, education, dedication and a quest for leaving this world a better place."

"Everything looks like a failure in the middle."

"Powerlessness corrupts: absolute powerlessness corrupts absolutely."

"It was one to three football fields in length. It was massive, about 300 feet above the ground. It had three lights on the points of its triangle and a large red light beneath."

"I was 8 or 9 when I had a sighting of a disk-shaped craft that convinced me that it was certainly not an airplane or anything conventional."

"They may be a quarter million years more advanced than we are technologically. Their technology will look like magic to us. I don't think that we should be running around thinking these are gods in flying saucers that we should worship. We need to take this in a very rational way."

"This thing came within a few hundred feet of us and only 10 feet above the ground. It signaled to us for about 10 or 15 minutes. It was an extraordinary event."

"It really is the same thing. They are identical issues.... The implication of having this information released is so vast, profound, and far-reaching that no aspects of life on earth would be unchanged."

"The conventional world of science thinks what I'm doing is nonsense, yet I'm one of the biggest skeptics in the UFO community because 90 percent of what I hear about this subject is nonsense. A lot of the information (about aliens) presented to the public is some kind of fantasy, but at its core there's always a little truth. About 55 percent of the population believe that (UFOs) are real and that some segment of the government is hiding it from them. That's a majority of the population, more people than voted for Clinton in the last election. About 10 percent of Americans have seen (a UFO) at some point. If you go out and talk to people, they believe this stuff is real. (Greer cites both the Gallup and Harris polls)"

"The secrecy hasn't been enforced because the government thinks people are going to freak out when they find we're not alone in the universe... what will be shocking is the scandal of the last 50 years of ecosystem destruction, when we've had the technology to avoid it since the late '50s. It's accepted that black holes exist, yet no one has ever seen one. We know they exist because of their effect on nearby objects. Do I have the left arm of ET strapped to a table? No. Are there (government) programs that do, and witnesses willing to come forward and testify to this in the right setting? Yes. Billy Graham, for example, has stated that it's likely there are other life forms out there. His take on it is that we should regard them as children of God, even as humanity is. The Vatican came out with a similar statement three or four years ago. Where you're going to have a problem is with your really orthodox groups, people who think the Earth is only 6,000 years old. They are going to see this as a threat to their very literalistic doctrines. It's been by turns frustrating and fascinating and wonderful beyond imagination."

"Ending the secrecy surrounding the UFO/ET subject is a laudable goal. It is long overdue. It would transform the world in ways both simple and profound. And yet it is fraught with danger. The covert projects which have been running UFO related programs for nearly 60 years are not interested in a disclosure which upsets their apple cart. They want such a disclosure to transform their apple cart into a freight train. And they potentially have the power and connections to do it... I write about the kind of disclosure the world needs. An honest one. An open one. One which replaces secrecy with democracy. A disclosure which is peaceful, scientific and hopeful. But then there is the disclosure the powers that be would like to see: Manipulated. Calculated to consolidate power and engender fear. Configured in such a way that chaos and a deepening need for Big Brother is carefully inculcated into the masses. We have seen the plans and it is not a pretty picture. I write this as a warning. A warning that the wolves in sheep clothes are very cunning indeed. And have almost limitless resources... Evil steps in when good people do nothing... We stand at the beginning of a new time, and a new world awaits us. But we must embrace it, and help create it. For if we are passive, others will have their way- at least in the short run."

"People in Congress who make inquiries, and President Clinton who made inquires, are simply denied access."

"We can prove through the testimony and documents that we will be presenting that this subject has been hidden from members of Congress and at least two administrations that we are aware of, two presidential administrations."

"There is a secret government -- a covert government -- operation that has dealt with this for at least 50 years."

"These testimonies establish once and for all that we are not alone. Technologies related to extraterrestrial phenomena are capable of providing solutions to the global energy crisis, and other environmental and security challenges. (May 9, 2001)"

"We're not alone. There are life forms out there, which while they are not hostile, have clearly shown that they're not pleased with our tendency to put weapons in space."

"If you got bombarded and shot down from the sky and mistreated, how would you behave? (response after being asked why extraterrestrials had not made contact with the general public."

"...the 10,000-pound gorilla that has been kept secret for about 50 or 60 years."

"...the people who have dealt directly with the extraterrestrial evidence and the bodies. (Answer to Question: If you had five minutes of television time around the world to convince the skeptics that you were right, what evidence would you show?")"

"Back in the early 1960s, when I was eight or nine... some neighborhood boys and I saw a disc-shaped, windowless object that hovered, silent, then simply vanished...I knew what I'd seen, and it was life-changing."

"(Greer's response to: How would zero-point energy transform the global economy?] It would replace everything. You wouldn’t need oil, but the $30 trillion-a-year global economy would quickly grow to $200 trillion because there’d be clean, sustainable energy, and manufacturing and transportation would be very inexpensive. Eighty percent of the world’s population lives in amazing poverty, and it would lift that. It would revolutionize the planet. People talk about the “peace dividend,” but it’s time for a “space dividend.” The entity that runs this stuff is the world’s largested RICO [Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization]. They used to be called MJ – Majestic – 12 – but the last term I heard was PI-40. It’s not one society. There are sweeping conspiracy theories about the Masons, Bilderbergers, Trilateral Commission and Counsel of Foreign Relations. I know people in all these entities, and most of them couldn’t find their ass in a well-lighted room. It’s much more prosaic and nuanced than that."

"[Greer's response to: Why do they feel the ruling elite] threatened?] It would decentralize power. Right now the centralized financial and oil system is so integrated with the way the world runs... About... 50% of people involved in these super secret projects want this stuff out. They know we're running out of time environmentally & geopolitically. I have no doubt that the outcome will be peaceful, that these technologies will completely rehabilitate Earth's fortunes & environment, and eliminate poverty... in our lifetimes. But the question is, how much madness has to go on between now and then?"

"We have confirmation - and I'm not going to give the name yet because we are trying to coax this guy out of the closet - but one of the senior most people in the SETI project, which is the Carl Sagan Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Effort, has confirmed to the Disclosure Project... that they have received multiple extraterrestrial signals... but that now they are getting external human, probably NRO (National Reconnaissance Office) or NSA jamming of those signals and they are getting very frustrated. The question is why hasn't the SETI project, funded by Paul Allen who's the co-founder of Microsoft, come forward with this information? I'm a little uncomfortable even mentioning this, except for the fact that the public needs to know that this effort, which has received a great deal of mainstream media attention, has actually confirmed to us from two inside sources that they have received extraterrestrial signals and have confirmed them as being extraterrestrial and that they have become increasing in frequency."

"They have had numerous extraterrestrial signals. They were apparently searching in a spectrum or in an area . . . where they hit the mother lode. The signals were so numerous that they began to have their systems externally jammed by some sort of human agency that did not want them to continue receiving those signals..."

"I received this information from a source in SETI. This person, if I were to say who he is, almost every one your listeners would probably know the name."

"There is a major country in the world - G7 Country - that has decided to do this with us and has invited us to become the primary contactee to precipitate an event with these extraterrestrial vehicles with the full support of their air force, space command, everything, land and meet the leadership of this country with us facilitating this so that this can than be proximally disclosed to the world, and thats what we are doing eminent - what we are working on eminently. (February 11, 2007)"

"Since the mid-1950s, classified projects connected to extraterrestrial matters have operated outside of constitutionally required oversight and control by the President and Congress. This constitutes a grave and ongoing threat to US national security and global security and peace. The implications of this subject are such that no aspect of life on Earth will be unaffected by its Disclosure. We are acutely aware that this subject is highly controversial and suffers from great social opprobrium within certain elite circles and within the mainstream media. Indeed, secrecy on the subject has, in part, been maintained by a carefully orchestrated psychological nexus of ridicule, fear, intimidation and disinformation that makes it difficult for any public figure to openly address the matter... Because of this misguided secrecy, the wondrous new sciences related to advanced energy generation, propulsion and transportation have been withheld from the people. These advances include the generation of limitless clean energy from the so-called zero point energy field and quantum vacuum flux field from the space around us, and propulsion that has been termed (incorrectly) anti-gravity. The field of electromagnetic energy that is teeming all around us and which is embedded within the fabric of space/time can easily run all of the energy needs of the Earth – without pollution, oil, gas, coal, centralized utilities or nuclear power."

"The world will not find justice and peace so long as half of the world’s population lives in poverty while the other half cannibalizes the Earth to maintain its standard of living. This dire situation can and must be transformed into a world of abundance, clean and plentiful energy and genuine sustainability. On this foundation, with these new sciences, technologies and a new consciousness, we can move forward as a people, united and in peace. Then and only then will we be welcome amongst the other civilizations of the cosmos."

"The so-called MJ-12 or Majestic group that controls this subject operates without the consent of the people, or the oversight of the President and Congress. It functions as a transnational government unto itself, answerable to no one. All checks and balances have been obliterated. While as a governing entity it stands outside of the rule of law, its influence reaches into many governments, corporations, agencies, media and financial interests. Its corrupting influence is profound and, indeed, it has operated as a very powerful and embedded global RICO whose power to date remains unchecked. Upwards of $100 billion of USG funds go annually into this operation, also known as the ‘black budget’ of the United States - enough to provide universal health care to every man, woman and child in America. Interests in Europe, the Vatican and Asia, especially France and China, are urging Disclosure. If the United States does not move forward, these other interests will, and America will be left behind and become increasingly irrelevant in the world. This cannot be allowed to happen. The European and Asian arenas will move with or without US involvement at some point in the very near future, as well they should. Six decades of secrecy is enough. We are also morally obliged to warn you of an existing highly secretive plan to use advanced technologies to hoax an ‘alien attack’ on Earth. There exists within the direct control of this Majestic group assets capable of launching such a false flag operation and virtually every person on Earth, as well as most leaders, would be deceived by it. Components of this operation have been tested on the public over the past 50 years..."

"We have concluded that the actual extraterrestrial presence is distinctly non-hostile. In light of the reckless and aggressive nature of many of our covert military actions and the extraordinarily advanced technologies that permit interstellar travel by these extraterrestrial civilizations, if they were hostile, human civilization would have been dealt with decisively at the dawn of the nuclear era. These visitors, however, appear to be very concerned with unchecked human hostility, war-making and weapons of mass destruction, combined with our early potential for space travel. The tendency for people to engage in anthropocentric projection leads many to assume a threat where none exists. It is more likely that humanity may be seen as a threat to the cosmic order, insofar as we have failed to restrain the expansion of weapons of mass destruction while attempting to push farther and farther into space. Moreover, we have failed to initiate an enlightened and peaceful diplomatic mission to these extraterrestrial visitors. This needs to change immediately. Disclosure of this subject must be very carefully planned and positioned as a hopeful and elevating moment in human history. A poorly positioned Disclosure that demonizes these visitors or frightens the public may prove more harmful than secrecy."

"World peace and universal peace are two sides of the same coin. Once we vow to live peacefully on Earth and go into space only in peace, we will be welcome with open arms. Until then, a type of cosmic quarantine exists - rightly - around the Earth. Unfortunately, the media and movie industry are highly penetrated by interests loyal to the Majestic group, which has used the media to, in turns, ridicule the subject and present terrifying images of ‘alien invasion’. In short, the populace is almost thoroughly brainwashed on the matter, and this presents a further hurdle that must be carefully taken into account when planning Disclosure."

"President Obama, we stand ready to assist you and your Administration with these and other tasks, and pledge to you our full support. I will personally fulfill any request from your office with the utmost integrity, discretion and confidentiality. Please be assured of my heartfelt prayers on your behalf for your guidance, protection and success as you begin your historic role as President of the United States."

"In a sense what he's calling for [President Trumps plans to create a United States Space Force] is acknowledging something that has existed in an unacknowledged special access project, black project, that has been operational in one form or another since the mid-to-late ‘60s... I have a man who is a very top secret technology management office whistleblower from the Pentagon who has acknowledged to me that we have operational systems on satellites in space that can track and target and destroy any object in space, and those have been fully operational for many years.... This is what we've discovered is the unacknowledged extra access projects are run off the books in an extra-constitutional way, and the leaders in Congress and in the presidency rarely have full access, never mind control, over those projects. This is something that needs correcting as soon as possible."

"We’ve been working for over 25 years to disclose this information, and the public has accepted the fact that we’re not alone in the Universe, the vast majority. In fact, if you look at the, even on Unacknowledged, this documentary, it’s on Netflix now, around the world, it’s had tens of millions people see it. And on pirated sites, probably a hundred million people. So... this information is out there, but the governments have not seen fit to officially recognize it because it would disrupt the status-quo... There are a lot of people, like, of course, the science fiction, who’d make you think that there’s a risk of some kind of alien invasion or threat. It’s the other way around, we’re viewed as the threat, the human civilisation right now is viewed as a very unstable civilisation that has not attained a peaceful world situation, which should have happened at the end of World War 2, and has not yet happened... These (advanced) civilisations are waiting for us to grow up... and until then, there’s not going to be any overt action by them unless some catastrophic event was to happen."

"Recently the Pentagon released a radar case off the coast of California where one of our fighter jets tracked one of these objects moving in a way that no conventional aircraft could possibly move, and this was in The New York Times, and CNN and elsewhere.... There’s a huge amount of evidence... We have... been accumulating it for decades... Everyone thinks we have a free press in America, we do not. We have a managed press. And if CNN started drilling on this subject they would be told to stand down off of it... ABC News was pursuing this with us, I gave them 35 hours of digital tape of top-secret testimony and hard evidence...the executive producer...was told: “You will not be allowed to do this story.” So there’s a myth around the world that... the big mainstream media are free to do this. And this is not the case."

"A BIG thank you to everyone who has supported http://CE5Film.com ! We just reached $300,000 today towards our goal of $700,000 - Let's keep going and much appreciation to all of you!"

"There have been several main stream media articles re UFOs recently with a disturbing bias. Read Dr. Greer's "When Disclosure Serves Secrecy" and watch the the Phoenix workshop about how the intelligence community controls the media: https://conta.cc/2MjMIzG"

"But it is time for you to know: Why did an emergency physician who had been chairman of a busy ER leave his career to get out to the world the information that we are not alone? What had I personally experienced from childhood onwards - that gave me the knowledge of cosmic cultures, cosmic consciousness and a glimpse of the wondrous future that awaits humanity? What are the new energy and propulsion technologies that can give us a new world, free of pollution, poverty and conflict? What is the nexus where Mind, Space, Time and Matter all come together- and how might this be used technologically by an advanced civilization? What does the blue-print of the next 500,000 years of human civilization on earth look like - and how can we transition to that time? What did I find- and experience - as I met with heads of state, CIA officials, billionaires and covert operatives who in turns are desperate to maintain the secrecy and yet pray for relief from the black box they have nailed shut around them? Who has been keeping this Hidden Truth and Forbidden Knowledge secret - and most importantly, why?"

"It is critical to understand that an enormous and sophisticated disinformation campaign exists around the whole extraterrestrial question- at least 90 percent of the information and images portrayed to the public are selected to evoke fear — followed by hatred of all things alien... But fear and horror sells, and the usual suspects benefit from a terrified, misinformed populace... We know that clandestine paramilitary operations exist, controlled by a shadowy group staging simulated UFO/ETV events. This is not speculation: we have interviewed many independent corroborating military people who have participated on the teams that have deliberately "abducted" people to create the illusion of real extraterrestrial encounters."

"Most of the UFO/ET information put out is designed by counter-intelligence, PSYOPS and disinformation people for a specific, intended effect. This is a concerted effort to create a false "alien threat." If someone comes forward with a dissimilar story, they're blacklisted from lectures and subsequently unable to get their story out to the public or the media in book form or through any other significant channel. But those who create terrifying messages - akin to the movie "Independence Day", or certain abduction books, - receive high dollar advances along with big publishing deals and film contracts. This is assuredly by design. The power elite want those alarming stories seeded into the mass consciousness, and for the truth to be buried."

"Within the Shadow Government is a hard-core group of eschatologists: people obsessed with the end of the world who would like to see it go out in one big eco-alien cataclysm, to hasten the return of Christ! This is their agenda: They maintain that the world has to be in the most dire of conditions for the Second Coming to occur, and they hope to make circumstances ripe for that goal. It is just plain madness."

"I went to live in Israel in January of 1978, initially just to visit for about ten days. I ended up staying for three years, working at the world headquarters of the Baha'i religion on Mount Carmel in Haifa. It was a wonderful and interesting experience being at some very sacred places. In all my travels throughout that area, I could feel the presence of the spiritual teachers that have come to this small area. And at the same time, I sensed that every rock is soaked in the blood of conflict."

"We live in a time where universal education and the universal ability to read should open up the whole array of knowledge to every denizen on the planet. And those who would care to be gatekeepers or bottle- necks - and keep a choke hold on the flow of knowledge - simply need to step down and stand aside."

"So I explained, “In my dream, the President is going down to Colombia; either on take-off or landing, Air Force One is hit.” I described everything -- that it’s an inside job and it is Colombian defense people who betray the security detail and are acting on behalf of these people who run the drug cartels. The Secret Service agent said, “What do we need to do to avoid this?” I said, “Well, if you can’t get the President to cancel the trip, you need to, at the last minute, change where Air Force One lands... be sure that everyone within striking distance of a shoulder-held missile is connected to your people and not Colombian. And you need to sweep the area that far out. He said, “We’ll do it.” Weeks later, in “Newsweek” I read an article that said that, in fact, a contract for $5 million had been put out on the life of President Bush and that arms merchants in the Middle East, including Israel, had sold the drug cartels in Colombia shoulder-held missiles! This article, which came out AFTER my vision, stated that advisors to the President were asking him to cancel this trip. It turns out, of course, he did take the trip and he wasn’t killed."

"People often ask, “How do you know the difference between a man- made UFO and an extraterrestrial vehicle?” It’s very obvious if you are ever close up to one, because the entire quality of it is different. The ones that are extraterrestrial are extremely advanced, in the sense that they are “awake.” The actual craft itself has artificial intelligence and is conscious. The beings on board are connected into it and can connect to you consciously. And the kind of light it gives off is like nothing you have ever seen on Earth: It is extraordinary. It looks like it is not of this world and has an energy and intelligence associated with it that is very advanced."

"So you have people like Laurance Rockefeller, who really wanted to do the right thing- but he allowed his wings to be clipped by family loyalties, and was surrounded by a mob of intelligence operatives and spooks who were hell bent on intercepting his interests, and making sure that whatever support he could give, went into the toilet. Many wonderful things happened, including the fact that we were able to put together briefing materials which Laurance Rockefeller used to personally brief Bill and Hillary Clinton at the “JY” Ranch."

"I later found out from a friend of the Clinton’s that when President Clinton returned to the White House and was reviewing the briefing documents again he exclaimed —and she did a perfect impersonation of Bill Clinton— “ I know this is all true, but God damn it, they won’t tell me a thing. Not a God damned thing !”"

"[Vice Admiral] Shannon D. Cramer had ordered the meeting, and actually had to pull rank... to make it happen. The meeting went on for an hour or two, during which time I made a very clear case regarding how we had established contact on numerous occasions with the UFOs in question. They were writing furiously as we disclosed this information to them. We continued to explain that it was well past time for this information to be disclosed to the public. At one point... asked, “Well, what if these life forms are hostile?” I looked at him and I said, “You know what? You and I wouldn’t be having this conversation if they were hostile given the fact that the technologies that they have are so advanced that they can alter the fabric of space-time. If they were hostile, in a nanosecond the earth could be turned into a cinder floating through space and you know it. And insofar as we have been doing reckless and dangerous things against them for decades, the fact that you and I still are breathing the free air of earth is abundant testimony to their non-violence.” He just looked at me."

"Later we learned that Admiral Cramer was told that he was not to be involved in this sort of meeting again. When our military advisor went back to visit the Admiral, his aide insisted, “Don’t ever bring up that subject again with Admiral Cramer. He can’t talk about that!” Do you think that we should have been surprised to learn that, shortly afterwards... I was told that Admiral Cramer was rewarded for not pushing this issue anymore..."

"In 1994, a... friend of Bill Clinton, came to my home after I had briefed the CIA Director. He was a very easygoing, affable guy He said, "You know, everyone agrees with what you're recommending, but there's a consensus that if the President does what you've suggested to him and to the CIA Director — that they exert executive power to get inside this operation and disclose it — the President will end up like Jack Kennedy." I thought he was joking, and to be honest with you, I laughed out loud. I truly thought, "Oh, come on." But no, he was deadly serious. And he made it very clear that he was serious. So it went from crisis to crisis, as I came to realize that the government of the United States and of every other nation was really hostage to an illegal, rogue group that had technologies that could do circles around a B-2 Stealth bomber and could, at will, terminate a presidency or terminate any other person who got in their way. This was made very clear to me by people who were in the inner circle of the greatest corridors of power on Earth."

"Between 1994 and 1997, as we continued to work the system, I decided it was very important to reach out to the legislative bodies of the world. If the President... was too terrified, and too threatened to act, and his inner circle was being denied access to information, then the next best venue was Congress. So many senior White House officials were being denied access that it was clear only an open hearing in Congress could change things officially. Regarding other senior officials being blocked: Astronaut Gordon Cooper personally told me that Secretary of Defense Cohen had learned of Gordon Cooper's team filming a landed UFO at a dry lake bed at Edwards Air Force base in the 1950s. Cohen tried to get access to that information but was denied access. Cohen knew the dates and details of the landing and filming - and yet Cohen could not gain access to the film or the records! So, we met with a number of members of Congress... we found we could meet privately with a number of key Congressmen.... What I found in almost every case is that they all wanted to know, but they didn't want to act."

"We requested that the long awaited Disclosure event take place at the U.N. They agreed to that. But around the time that the agreement was made, they ushered Boutros-Ghali out. Normally, the Secretary Generals get two terms. He only had one. They cited all sorts of reasons why they had to get rid of him... So in comes Kofi Annan. A senior aide to Kofi Annan... reached out to us. He said, "They have agreed to let us have the big hall, at the United Nations, to host these top military and government witnesses to UFOs for a conference". This was agreed to. But a few weeks later, this ambassador called me... He said, "Well, I know we've agreed to host this for you, but it can no longer happen. The Secretary General was visited by some people who showed him documents that so scared him that he knew he couldn't do anything more with this." I was told that the U.N., which was almost bankrupt, would have been shut down and closed! Essentially, these intelligence operatives and trans-national rogues threatened the UN leadership and put the fear of God in them."

"Without peace, there can be no progress on the Earth. So let us work for peace with hearts filled with love. For when we pass from this world, all we really take with us is love - endless, infinite love."

"I've asked him to come forward publicly, but he's terrified and he's certain that he'll be assassinated if he does. He said that they actually had humans directing people who were made to look like extraterrestrials. This 'stagecraft' is very advanced and would fool almost anyone that it really was an ET doing the operation. He said they were using electronics, as well as drugs, to abduct people. "You have no idea how many important political and key military figures have had either themselves or their family members abducted by us so they would learn to hate the extraterrestrials and support the Star Wars effort." I said, "Yes, I do believe it," I told him, "because I met with Prince S.A., whose brother had been abducted through a covert paramilitary operation so that this powerful banking family would accept there was a threat. These operations are extremely well managed, and very sophisticated at the art of deception." A number of separate, corroborating people who've been in corporate and military intelligence programs have told me the exact same details regarding the modalities that are used and the purpose behind the operations. These hoaxes are perpetrated in other countries, as well."

"Jack Kennedy knew a great deal about this and was going to take decisive actions to try to correct it. He was going to rein in the military industrial complex. He was going to make peace with the Soviets; he was going to end the Cold War. In short, he was going to upset the fascist apple cart. And you have to understand that Jack Kennedy also was bright enough to know that Marilyn Monroe was murdered because she was going to talk about some of the things he had told her about ETs and related issues. Bobby Kennedy certainly knew about these things. I have a letter from Bobby Kennedy talking about UFOs and his interest in the subject, written not long before he was assassinated. Jack Kennedy, as I understand it from my sources, was in the process, in the fall of 1963, of putting through the federal system an executive order that would have altered the dynamics of many of these projects. He was very much in favor of virtually dissolving the CIA. He wanted the UFO matter disclosed and the technologies used to benefit humanity He wanted to change the course we were taking in Vietnam. Well, this rogue entity was not going to let all this happen. He was, of course, assassinated before these changes could be effected."

"When I met with Lord Hill Norton, in England — a five-star Admiral, "sea lord" and former MOD head... At one point, he asked me, "Why would they not tell me about this? I was head of the Ministry of Defense, and I was also head of MI-5 and MI-6.. I was head of the Military Committee for NATO! Yet I never knew about this... I only learned about it later, and I found out about it from people like Lord Mountbatten. Why wouldn't they tell me?" He was outraged that he was "out of the loop," just like Admiral Tom Wilson... head of Intelligence Joint Staff, and... CIA Director James Woolsey and on and on and on. I said, "Well, sir... What would you have done if you had found out that there was a transnational group that answered to no government in the world but had infiltrated almost every aspect of every government of any significance in the world; that had arrogated to itself, through a criminal enterprise and ruthless behavior ~ including murder and assassinations illegal control of the most important technologies ever discovered, including technologies capable of interstellar travel, technologies that could take the whole world off the need for fossil fuels, save the environment, and end poverty in the world; and that this group had utter contempt for the rule of law and for democracy and for the freedoms and welfare of the people, or even for the future of Earth?"

"He exclaimed, "I wouldn't have stood for it for one bloody moment!!" I said, "And that's why they never told you. You've just answered your own question." He asked, "Well, what do you mean?" I said, "Because if you had known, and this would have been your response, you would have ended up like Jack Kennedy or like Lord Mountbatten, blown up by an alleged IRA bomb that was actually set by this rogue group. And you would have ended up like Marilyn Monroe and Mary Meyer and all these other people, who were killed for not going along with the secrecy You would have ended up like all the rest of them." Then I added, "And like, unfortunately, some of my group — like former CIA Director, Bill Colby" He just looked at me. He then muttered something to effect of, "Those bastards!"."

"So the question is: Just exactly what has to happen before the body politic learns this lesson? We have already hit peak oil production, and we are going to become like "Mad Max", the movie, fighting over the last barrel of oil. The time has come to do the right thing, and move our civilization to its next level of development. Are we willing to live with the rule of law, like a civilized world, or are we going to be cowardly and look the other way when rogue and illegal operations and 'Murder Incorporated' run roughshod over the interests of the people?...How much chaos and stupidity will transpire before we come out on the other side?"

"I welcome the fact that releasing these technologies would require us to create an enforceable, sustainable, peaceful civilization just to survive. We're at the point now where every one knows we can't put off much longer dealing with these large structural and environmental issues. So when a solution comes along, it will focus people's attention and finally require us to do what we should have done decades ago."

"Without peace there can be no further progress on earth. The simple truth is this: We have reached the point in human evolution where the only possible future is a peaceful one. Now, there are many people who argue: "Oh, we're never peaceful and we'll always try to kill each other." The truth is most people don't want to go around murdering each other. Out of six billion people, most are actually very nice peaceful people. Unfortunately we have not been willing to restrain the few rabid dogs that routinely like to attack the flock."

"Some in these covert projects have misinterpreted certain ET actions: For example, when we tried to detonate a nuclear weapon on the moon, to show the USSR how powerful America was, an extraterrestrial vehicle came in and intercepted it and destroyed it. Now, you could take that to be evidence that these ETs were hostile towards us, when in reality they were trying to protect facilities on the moon, and also the sanctity of space as a peaceful place free from weapons of mass destruction.But from the shoes of those humans who wanted to see that moon detonation happen, their frustration could lead to the assumption that this ET action was proof of their hostility! A number of such events have happened, where humans have misinterpreted ET actions as evidence of hostility, when in reality it was evidence of enlightenment. These extraterrestrial civilizations are simply trying to contain an immature and out-of-control militarized civilization on earth from escaping the biosphere and going out into space."

"We have to be aware of the chaos, but we should not only focus on that. It's easy to dwell on the negative. But there is so much that's beautiful that's all around us and there's so much that's happening that's positive. We can discipline ourselves to dwell on that which is good and beautiful and draw that to us and bring it into the world. It isn't easy, because we live in a world that's increasingly harsh and destructive. But this propels us all the more to connect firmly to truth and to a deeper vision. We must have the courage to choose enlightenment, and take responsibility for our own evolution and the progress of humanity."

"We live in the most interesting of times. We're the last generation that will fully have the experience of both the old world and the new era. We're too close to it to really see it, but we have a beautiful station that is pivotal. It is unlike any generation before or that will come after. We are the generation of transformation. It is at once overwhelming and beautiful. We should be joyous and amazed at the extraordinary time we are in and the unparalleled opportunities we have. Efforts expended through the difficulty of this time, for this purpose- for the establishment of universal peace- will be honored and remembered for thousands of years. If we seize the opportunity, we are providing a service to humanity that no other generation could provide — and that's why we're here."

"For as long as mankind has fixed his gaze upon the heavens, the age-old question has remained, "Are we alone... in the universe?" As our tools for exploring this vast expanse continue to improve, the answer to our question comes more clearly into focus. It's now estimated that for every grain of sand on planet Earth, there is another earth-like planet capable of sustaining life. So... can we truly be alone?"

"I can introduce a man who says, "There are more things between heaven and hell than any of us have accepted." And I have the witnesses and the documents to prove it. Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Steven Greer."

"On May 9th, 2001, 20 military, government, and corporate witnesses, held a press conference in Washington DC. And these are folks who have been involved in so-called "Black Budget", or covert unacknowledged projects. They described a decades long conspiracy to cover up extraterrestrial visitation to Earth. These unacknowledged special access projects are taking in at least 40 to 80 billion dollars per year. And the study of extraterrestrial technology in covert military programs. And, they are sitting on technologies that can change the world forever. This technology would liberate Earth from fossil fuels, environmental devastation, and poverty in a single generation."

"I didn't believe in UFOs until London control called us in the winter of 1962 and asked us would we chase one. Their testimony would make history. I said, "what are you gonna tell the public about it?" And he says, "No, we don't tell the public about this, it would panic the public." This was the most-watched event in the history of the National Press Club."

"We actually did recoveries of crashed saucers. There were bodies that were involved with some of these crashes. There were also some were alive. It marks the beginning of the global disclosure movement. These just were hovering off the floor without any visible means of support. They were referred to as "Alien reproduction vehicles." Fifteen years later, Dr. Steven Greer opened his archives of documents and interviews. This information was refused to the President of the United States by the director of Central Intelligence George Bush Senior. They revealed the true story of the secrecy, and of disclosure."

"There is no evidence. I wish to emphasize that these lifeforms from elsewhere are hostile towards us. But there is a great deal of evidence that they are concerned with our hostility. This is that story...One of my biggest disappointments over the last 25 years is those who lack the courage of their convictions. If one percent of the people who I've talked with, met with, or briefed, had that courage, this would have all been fixed long ago. I've always told them, "If you won't do it, I will." So here it goes..."

""Where's the evidence?" "Or where's the beef on the UFO issue?" In fact, we have so much evidence that Dr. J. Allen Hynek, who was in charge of project Blue Book for the Air Force, stated that it's an embarrassment of riches. We have so much."

"I'm Richard Doty. I was assigned as a special agent with the Air Force office special investigations at Kirtland Air Force base. I was a counter-intelligence officer at the base. During my time there, my first few months there, I was briefed into a special access program involving the US government's investigation and contacts with extraterrestrial. The visitation of these extraterrestrials to... To Earth."

"I can assure you that flying saucers, given that they exist, are not constructed by any power on Earth."

"And so the public has to understand there became to be this bifurcation that this separation between legitimate national security and military operations, and the deep black programs that are unacknowledged. We're talking about the black budget, the deep black, super-secret unacknowledged budget that runs in the 100 to 200 billion dollars a year. I'm being conservative."

"My '03 budget calls for more than $48 billion in new defense spending."

"More money for the Pentagon when it's own auditors admit the military cannot account for 25% of what it already spends."

"According to some estimates we cannot track 2.3 trillion dollars in transactions."

"$2.3 trillion with a "T." That's $8,000 for every man, woman, and child in America."

"We're spending well over a $100 million per day on classified programs that have no congressional oversight, no public scrutiny, uh, there is no monitor of these programs. A number of these programs go directly through Congress, totally. When you start going through these documents, these programs start dropping off the radar screen. These are all classified programs within the defense budget, but they don't supply any technical information on the program."

"And if people think that the Congress and the President actually have a hand on this, they're gravely mistaken. They do not. This is where we get into the structure of secrecy."

"The structure of secrecy is complex, and multifaceted. We've been led to believe that we live in a mostly transparent democracy, with the President at the top of the intelligence food chain. A true Commander-in-Chief. The reality however is much different."

"A shadowy government with it's own Air Force, it's own navy, it's own fund-raising mechanism, and the ability to pursue its own ideas of the national interests, free from all sects and balances, and free from the law itself."

"There is secrecy that is legal, and unfortunately, where Edward Snowden made his mistake, was by disclosing secrets, no matter how inappropriate it might have been that they were going on, that were being managed legally that the President and Congress and the intelligence communities knew about... On the other hand, there's secrecy that is illegal! And these are the unacknowledged special access projects. USAPs, U-S-A-P for short."

"What they've done is they formed this alliance among themselves, of the industry that makes money by building war machines. The military that uses the war machines and justifies them, and then the intelligence community that is not really an intelligence community, it's a covert operations community, armed with military weapons and nuclear weapons, and that they're trying to push the boundaries now of establishing their dominion in full-spectrum dominance over the planet."

"Meanwhile , Unacknowledged is being BLOCKED by media, no coverage even though it is the 2017 #1 Documentary on iTunes and widely popular on Netfli[ etc. The secret government is manipulating a false disclosure and threat via their lackeys and 'cut-outs'. Stay tuned!"

""Unacknowledged" focuses on the historic files of the Disclosure Project and how UFO secrecy has been ruthlessly enforced - and why. The best evidence for Extraterrestrial contact, dating back decades, is presented with direct top-secret witness testimony, documents and UFO footage, 80% if which has never been revealed anywhere else. The behind-the-scenes research and high level meetings convened by Dr. Steven Greer will expose the degree of illegal, covert operations at the core of UFO secrecy. From briefings with the CIA Director, top Pentagon Generals and Admirals, to the briefing of President Obama via senior"

"Staged UFO events feature craft with seams and rivets. That’s the way to tell ours from theirs."

"Dr. Steven Greer is a global authority on extraterrestrials who has previous works with Sirius and Unacknowledged and now founder of the Disclosure Project, brings this documentary to talk about shattering the bounds of secrecy of the ET phenomenon. People seeing UFO’s (Unidentified Flying Objects) is not a new phenomenon. What has been sightings spoken has turned into sightings being video’s with cell phones making it impossible to deny that, at the very least, something is happening in our world. Dr. Greer has submitted briefings to five presidents on the subject and with information that he has gathered. While the government creates their own narrative based on fear, Dr. Greer wants to put the facts together in this brutally honest documentary. He believes that it is possible to create a relationship between humans and Extraterrestrials (ET). This documentary brings groundbreaking video/photographic evidence along with the interviews of Princeton’s PEAR lab Adam Curry, civil rights attorney Daniel Sheehan and CIA’s Dr. Russel Targ. These interviews are as equally important as with what Dr. Greer has to share. The most important is Greer’s story of being visited as a child and through learning joint meditation with the ET’s, he was able to create the CE5 protocol which allows goodwill telepathy inviting ET’s to know where the good guys are."

"Dr. Greer has a formidable background in the science of human consciousness. A former emergency room doctor, Greer studied meditation, Sanskrit, the use of mantras, and the ritual of pujas from the time he was a teenager. He has published books and released documentaries and he seems to have the ear of practical, grounded folks at the highest levels of society, government, and the military. He speaks with riveting authority and intelligence. Dr. Greer claims that extra-terrestrials have been visiting us for a long time... Greer compiled evidence from hundreds of sources. He gathered a group of impressive and credible sources, and he presented the people and the evidence at a televised press conference at the National Press Club in Washington DC in May, 2001. Disclosure has already happened, according to Dr. Greer... Dr. Greer posits that the ETs visit us by way of transdimensional technology, using the science of consciousness. He reasons that the distances are so vast that any species who can travel across the cosmos must travel faster than the speed of light. And the way to exceed the speed of light is through the speed of thought, which is instantaneous, or nearly so. This assumption evokes physicist Dr. William Tiller’s work on quantum physics and intentionality."

"Dr. Greer would probably say “Conscious intention…creates robust effects,” not limiting this theory to human consciousness. Tiller goes so far as to posit the Tiller model, which states, “We are primarily elements of spirit, indestructible and eternal and ‘multiplexed’ in the Divine.” It’s that ‘multiplex’ that Greer touches on; it unites all beings who are consciously aware of being conscious. That is, who are awake. Tiller’s model and Greer’s discourse bear strong similarities... This story, like all good stories, has protagonists and villains. The protagonists are We the People who want the truth and who also want to make peaceful contact with other citizens of the Universe. The ETs themselves, who are waiting for the inhabitants of Earth to mature into peaceful, open-hearted contact, are also good guys. The villains are the war-mongering military-industrial complex who want to maintain their hegemony... These “petro-Nazis,”... maintain their vast wealth through cultivating war, fear, and dependence on fossil fuel oils... the new technologies gleaned from the downed ET craft could save the planet... could also save us ordinary folk vast amounts of money. Those technologies are being sequestered by the very people about whom Eisenhower warned us in 1961... This poignance, this heart-break, this sense of ‘what if?’ underscores Dr. Greer’s film. Close Encounters... evokes thought, excitement, wonder, and personal responsibility. We each can be one of the 1% whose higher thoughts resonate all of us into an uplifted reality — a reality of universal community and good will."

"If the American Negro is to have a culture of his own he will have to leave America to get it."

"I found a special eagerness among the younger, and I am sorry to say, the more intelligent Negroes, to dismiss the spiritual as something beneath their new pride in their race. It is as if they wanted to put it behind them as something to be ashamed of..."

"From what I have already seen of the workings of the Soviet Government, I can only say that anybody who lifts his hand against it ought to be shot! It is the government's duty to put down any opposition to this really free society with a firm hand, and I hope they will always do it, for I already regard myself at home here. This is home to me. I feel more kinship to the Russian people under their new society than I ever felt anywhere else. It is obvious that there is no terror here, that all the masses of every race are contented and support their government."

"If the United States and the United Nations truly want peace and security let them fulfill the hopes of the common people everywhere – let them work together to accomplish on a worldwide scale, precisely the kind of democratic association of free people which characterizes the Soviet Union today."

"I am truly happy that I am able to travel from time to time to the USSR — the country I love above all. I always have been, I am now and will always be a loyal friend of the Soviet Union."

"Today in Korea—in Southeast Asia—in Latin America and the West Indies, in the Middle East—in Africa, one sees tens of millions of long oppressed colonial peoples surging toward freedom. What courage—what sacrifice—what determination never to rest until victory!...And arrayed against them, the combined powers of the so-called Free West, headed by the greedy, profit-hungry, war-minded industrialists and financial barons of our America. The illusion of an “American Century” blinds them for the immediate present to the clear fact that civilization has passed them by—that we now live in a people’s century—that the star shines brightly in the East of Europe and of the world. Colonial peoples today look to the Soviet Socialist Republics...One reverently speaks of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin—the shapers of humanity’s richest present and future."

"It was deeply fascinating to watch how strikingly contemporary American audiences from coast to coast found Shakespeare's Othello — painfully immediate in its unfolding of evil, innocence, passion, dignity and nobility, and contemporary in its overtones of a clash of cultures, of the partial acceptance of and consequent effect upon one of a minority group. Against this background, the jealousy of the protagonist becomes more credible, the blows to his pride more understandable, the final collapse of his personal, individual world more inevitable. But beyond the personal tragedy, the terrible agony of Othello, the irretrievability of his world, the complete destruction of all his trusted and sacred values — all these suggest the shattering of a universe."

"In the early days of my carer as an actor, I shared what was then the prevailing attitude of Negro performers — that the content and form of a play or a film scenario was of little importance to us. What mattered was was the opportunity, which came so seldom to our folks … Later I came to understand that the Negro artist could not view the matter simply in terms of his individual interests, and that he had a responsibility to his people who rightfully resented the traditional stereotyped portrayals of Negros on stage and screen."

"For the first time since I began acting, I feel that I've found my place in the world, that there's something out of my own culture which i can express and perhaps help others preserve..i have found out now that the African natives had a definite culture a long way beyond the culture of the Stone age...an integrated thing, which is still unspoiled by western influences...I think the Americans will be amazed to find how many of the modern dance steps are relics of African heritage."

"The artist must elect to fight for freedom or for slavery. I have made my choice. I had no alternative. The history of the capitalist era is characterized by the degradation of my people: despoiled of their lands, their true culture destroyed... denied equal protection of the law, and deprived their rightful place in the respect of their fellows."

"Films make me into some cheap turn...You bet they'll never let me play a part in a film where a Negro is on top."

"One does not need a very long racial memory to loose on oneself in such a part … As I act, civilization falls away from me. My plight becomes real, the horrors terrible facts. I feel the terror of the slave mart, the degradation of man bought and sold into slavery. Well, I am the son of an emancipated slave and the stories of old father are vivid on the tablets of my memory."

"I found it very offensive to my people. It makes the Negro childlike and innocent and is in the old plantation hallelujah shouter tradition... the same old story, the negro singing his way to glory."

"Sometimes great injustices may be inflicted on the minority when the majority is in the pursuit of a great and just cause."

"Could I say that the reason that I am here today, you know, from the mouth of the State Department itself, is: I should not be allowed to travel because I have struggled for years for the independence of the colonial peoples of Africa."

"“I was not prepared for the happiness I see on every face in Moscow,” said Robeson. “I was aware that there was no starvation here, but I was not prepared for the bounding life; the feeling of safety and abundance and freedom that I find here, wherever I turn. I was not prepared for the endless friendliness, which surrounded me from the moment I crossed the border. I had a technically irregular passport, but all this was brushed aside by the eager helpfulness of the border authorities. And this joy and happiness and friendliness, this utter absence of any embarrassment over a ‘race question’ is all the more keenly felt by me because of the day I spent in Berlin on the way here, and that was a day of horror—in an atmosphere of hatred, fear and suspicion.”"

"Commenting on the recent execution after court-martial of a number of counter-revolutionary terrorists, Robeson declared roundly: “From what I have already seen of the workings of the Soviet Government, I can only say that anybody who lifts his hand against it ought to be shot!"

"“It is the government’s duty to put down any opposition to this really free society with a firm hand,” he continued, “and I hope they will always do it, for I already regard myself at home here. This is home to me. I feel more kinship to the Russian people under their new society than I ever felt anywhere else. It is obvious that there is no terror here, that all the masses of every race are contented and support their government.”"

"Pablo Neruda of Chile, one of the world’s greatest poets..Martin Anderson Nexo, the greatest modern Danish humanist...Rev. James Endicott, fearless Canadian minister and fighter for peace..."

"As Americans, preserving the best of our traditions, we have the right—nay the duty—to fight for participation in the forward march of humanity."

"We must join with the tens of millions all over the world who see in peace our most sacred responsibility. Once we are joined together in the fight for peace we will have to talk to each other and tell the truth about each other. How else can peace be won? I have always insisted—and will insist, even more in the future on my right to tell the truth as I know it about the Soviet peoples: of their deep desires and hopes for peace, of their peaceful pursuits of reconstruction from the ravages of war, as in historic Stalingrad; and to tell of the heroic efforts of the friendly peoples in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Albania, Romania, Bulgaria, great, new China and North Korea—to explain, to answer the endless falsehoods of the warmongering press with clarity and courage."

"In this framework we can make clear what co-existence means. It means living in peace and friendship with another kind of society—a fully integrated society where the people control their destinies, where poverty and illiteracy have been eliminated and where new kinds of human beings develop in the framework of a new level of social living."

"The telling of these truths is an important part of our work in building a strong and broad peace movement in the United States...at home in the United States we found continued and increased persecution, first of leaders of the Communist Party, and then of all honest anti-fascists."

"But the deep desire for peace remained with the American people. Wallace was hailed by vast throngs when he resigned from Truman’s cabinet in protest against the war-mongering of the then Secretary of State James Byrnes, now the Negro-hating governor of South Carolina. We know how Truman betrayed the American people in their hopes for peace, how he betrayed the Negro people in their thirst for equal rights, how he tore up the Bill of Rights and subjected the whole American people to a reign of FBI-terrorization."

"The Korean war has always been an unpopular war among the American people. We remember the unforgivable trickery in the use of the United Nations to further the purposes of “American century” imperialists in that land—quite comparable to the taking of Texas from Mexico, the rape of Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Hawaii...today the Negro people watch Africa and Asia and closely follow the liberation struggles of the rising peoples in these lands. We watch the United Nations and see the U.S.A. join with the western imperialist nations to stifle the liberation struggles. We cannot help but see that it is Vishinsky and the spokesman of the Eastern European Peoples Democracies who defend and vote for the interests of the African and Asian peoples. Yes, peace can and must be won, to save the world from the terrible destruction of World War III."

"You want to shut up every Negro who has the courage to stand up and fight for the rights of his people, for the rights of workers, and I have been on many a picket line for the steelworkers too."

"In Russia I felt for the first time like a full human being. No color prejudice like in Mississippi, no color prejudice like in Washington."

"My father was a slave, and my people died to build this country, and I am going to stay here, and have a part of it just like you. And no Fascist-minded people will drive me from it. Is that clear?"

"I am here because I am opposing the Neo-Fascist cause, which I see arising here in these committees."

"Whatever has happened to Stalin, gentlemen, is a question for the Soviet Union.… You are responsible, and your forebears, for 60 million to 100 million black people dying in the slave ships and on the plantations, and don’t ask me about anybody, please."

"You are the non-patriots, and you are the un-Americans, and you ought to be ashamed of yourselves."

"Yes, all Africa remembers that it was Litvinov who stood alone beside Haile Selassie in Geneva, when Mussolini's sons flew with the blessings of the Pope to drop bombs on Ethiopian women and children. Africa remembers that it was the Soviet Union which fought the attempts of the Smuts to annex Southwest Africa to the slave reservation of the Union of South Africa... if the peoples of the Congo refuse to mine the uranium for the atom bombs made in Jim Crow factories in the United States; if all these peoples demand an end to floggings, an end to the farce of 'trusteeship' in the former Italian colonies.... The Soviet Union is the friend of the African and the West Indian peoples."

"Vast quantities of U.S. bombers, tanks and guns have been sent against Ho Chi Minh and his freedom-fighters; and now we are told that soon it will be 'advisable' to send America GI's into Indo-China in order that the tin, rubber and tungsten of Southeast Asia be kept by the "free world"-meaning white Imperialism."

"I met Paul Robeson and Alpheus Hunton. Absolute giants. One could not help but be impressed. Minds were pried open by their keen insight, the manner in which they explained things. One had to join the struggle for the oppressed."

"my first childhood memory of the name Moses came from hearing Paul Robeson singing of him, in the unmistakable deep bass that was his voice alone: "Go down Moses/Way down in Egypt land/Tell ol' Pharaoh/To let my people go""

"Robeson studied several African languages and planned to undertake a thorough study of West African folk song and folklore. As he wrote in a 1934 article in the London Spectator, his goal was to introduce the world to the beauty, power, and dignity of African and African-descended art. "I hope to be able to interpret this original and unpolluted [African] folk song to the Western world and I am convinced that there lies a wealth of uncharted musical material in that source which I hope, one day, will evoke the response in English and American audiences which my Negro spirituals have done." He even understood himself to be "African," both culturally and spiritually, and he saw in black cultural values the foundation for a new vision of a new society, one that could emancipate not only black people but the entire West...Whereas for Claudia Jones the structural position of black people-black women in particular-in the political economy placed them in the vanguard of the revolution, for Paul Robeson it was their culture that gave the black movement its special insight and character...Unfortunately, neither Du Bois nor Robeson nor anyone else with a continuing commitment to the Left had anything to say about Stalin's atrocities-the political assassinations, the gulags, the Soviet state's hidden war against political dissidents and Russian Jews. Although it is not clear who knew what before Khruschev unveiled these crimes to the world in 1956, the silence that followed these revelations is one of the great tragedies in the history of the Communist movement. The other great tragedy, for the black freedom movement in particular, was the silencing of radical leadership. Robeson, Du Bois, and Claudia Jones were among the many victims of statesponsored anticommunist witch hunts."

"Paul Robeson stood/on the northern border/of the USA/and sang into Canada/where a vast audience/sat on folding chairs/waiting to hear him./He sang into Canada./His voice left the USA/when his body was/not allowed to cross that line…"

"“Cross That Line” is an important poem to me because I loved Paul Robeson so much as a child. I loved his voice. We had a record of him singing. And I wouldn’t read his biography till I was an adult, and know about what he suffered as a so-called communist and how his passport was taken away from him and he was not allowed to leave the nation, though he had a huge fan club in Europe and elsewhere. So I thought this was so funny when he did this, and I now own a CD of this concert."

"There is this... that must be admired about Du Bois, Robeson, Ben Davis and others. They are not taking it lying down. Ben Davis is in prison... Robeson has sacrificed... DuBois has fought without let up for over half a century and at 85 be is determined as ever. Some day when truth gets a hearing, America, regardless of colour, we will honour them."

"Downtown they were still mournfully talking about the good, solid white folks who had walked into space from Wall Street's many windows. Uptown we were talking about Paul Robeson, who was singing songs which gripped some inner fibres in us that had been dozing. And he was saying things which widened black eyes and sharpened black ears, things which sounded elusively familiar."

"My first real job was as art editor of the People's Voice. Adam Powell, Charlie Buchanan and Ben Davis published that great sheet and one day Adam called me into his office. "Ollie," he said, "there's someone I want you to meet." A beaming giant of a man left his chair, thumped me on the back with a hand as powerful as John Henry's sledgehammer and boomed, "Feller, I just wanted you to know that those cartoons of yours are great."Of course it was Paul Robeson. I can't remember doing much more than gulping. What can one say to a mountain? But it was the beginning of a treasured friendship."

"Paul Robeson was holding forth on the wizardry of old w:Josh Gibson, w:Satchel Paige and other black ballplayers jimcrowed out of what was euphemistically called the national pastime..."One day," said Paul, "our boys are going to bust right into the Yankee Stadium dugout and teach 'em the fine points of the game.""

"And then there was Robeson and the heart-filling voice singing WHAT IS AMERICA TO ME."

"We helped plow the fields, build the dams, write the poems and sing the music of America. Are not all Americans proud, of Doree Miller, of Frederick Douglass, of Paul Robeson, of Joe Louis, of Marian Anderson."

"Not very long ago I was invited by the satirical Krokodile to see the Soviet Union. In Tashkent I sat on a parkbench where I could drink in the breathtaking oriental beauty of the opera house. I was thinking of coming back the next day with my sketch pad when a little Uzbek girl came to me holding out a flower. Her oval face was so lovely, even with the tooth missing from in front. Of course I couldn't understand what she was saying but Yuri, my interpreter explained, "She asks if you are Paul Robeson?" Her mother appeared and suddenly it seemed there were hundreds of Uzbek children with their mothers, all carrying hastily picked flowers. I was terribly flustered but I managed to explain that I wasn't Paul Robeson but that he was my friend. And then one Uzbek mother, proud of her English said, "Here, he is our beloved Pauli.""

"Today I wish to pay tribute to an astonishing, powerful forefather of all of us, an exemplary Black man, an unparalleled role model who studied, and mastered, twenty-five languages, including Chinese and Arabic, as well as East and West coast African languages. A great human being, an exemplary Black man who graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Rutgers University, a huge hero who twice made All-America in football, and who earned fifteen Varsity letters in six or seven other sports, besides. An exemplary Black man who sang like a God and comported himself like a king."

"I want to remember and to praise his compassion and his defiance and the ever enlarging scope of his moral concern. Today, as the United States insists upon punishing the Arab peoples of Iraq, I want to embrace the lucid, principled commitment of his amazing life. I want to respect and fathom his declaration of himself as African. I want to follow him to the workers of England, whose cause he so passionately espoused. I want to watch him rushing again and again to the side of the miners of Wales. I want to intervene and shield him from the atrocious insults he endured at restaurants, concert halls, hotels, and the actual and the political attempts to lynch him. I want to join his studies of Marx and track his on-site inspection of Soviet efforts at equality for minority peoples. I want to cheer him on as he founded, just one year after I was born, the Council on African Affairs, which, for almost twenty years, was the sole United States organization devoted to assistance of African liberation struggles. I want to enjoy his twenty minutes of standing ovation triumphs onstage as Othello, or as himself, singing Negro Spirituals and Russian and Spanish folksongs. I want to understand and copy his devotion to the eradication of racist everything and his rejection and exposure of economic inequities everywhere. I need to honor his resistance to the stupidity of Harry Truman's Cold War and Joe McCarthy's un-American witch-hunt. I want to cheer as he becomes an honorary member of the C.I.O. and the International Longshoremen's Union. I want to shout when W.E.B. DuBois presents him with the 1952 Stalin Peace Prize."

"I am thrilled to think about the visionary, loving excellence of his life, symbolized by his painstaking fluency in twenty-five languages-a life and a fluency that ignorant, hateful, totally wrong men, here, in America, sought to cancel with one word! And that one word was "communist"!"

"For the sake of our future collective history I ask that we never forget this one great forefather who, regardless of his glory, never forgot to claim our suffering as his own; that son of a slave who never bowed down to tyranny; That compassionate king who went all over the world singing our own best song in solidarity with the best hopes of people everywhere longing for justice and equality and peace."

"Treasure Yourself"

"Ask yourself: Is there any way I can become even more loving than I am? Can I fill my heart with more loving kindness? Can you, despite the fact that there are less than perfect people in our world, think loving thoughts about yourself and about others? Spread that love around as far as your mind will allow!"

"Often we allow ourselves to get all worked up about things that, upon closer examination, aren't really that big a deal. We focus on little problems and blow them out of proportion. … Whether we had to wait in line, listen to unfair criticism, or do the lion's share of the work, it pays enormous dividends if we learn not to worry about little things. So many people spend so much of their life energy "sweating the small stuff" that they completely lose touch with the magic and beauty of life."

"Let Go of the Idea that Gentle, Relaxed People Can't Be Superachievers"

"Be Aware of the Snowball Effect of Your Thinking"

"Do Something Nice for Someone Else — and Don't Tell Anyone About It"

"Let Others Have the Glory"

"There is a bumper sticker that has been out for some time now. You see it on cars all across the nation. It says, "Practice Random Acts of Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty." I have no idea who thought of this idea, but I've never seen a more important message on a car in front of me. Practicing random kindness is an effective way to get in touch with the joy of giving without expecting anything in return. It's best practiced without letting anyone know what you are doing."

"There is no prescription for how to practice random kindness. It comes from the heart. Your gift might be to pick up litter in your neighborhood, make an anonymous contribution to a charity, send some cash in an unmarked envelope to make someone experiencing financial stress breathe a little easier, save an animal by bringing it to an animal rescue agency, or get a volunteer position feeding hungry people at a church or shelter. You may want to do all these things, and more. The point is, giving is fun and it doesn't have to be expensive."

"Search for the Grain of Truth in Other Opinions"

"Turn Your Melodrama into a Mellow-Drama"

"When our familiar world falls apart, especially through the pain of death — of losing someone we love — we are shaken at our very core. We realize, perhaps for the first time, that there is no easy or quick way out. We must go through the process, which will be a little different for each of us — the common thread being pain. In the midst of that inner struggle, however, something begins to happen. There are the moments that are most resisted — and there is extreme pain. Simultaneously, however, there are voluntary or involuntary bursts of letting go. Perhaps the pain is too much for the moment — the mind takes a break, shuts down, or wakes up, I’m not really sure. But in those moments, there is a release from the pain; an acknowledgment that although we don’t understand it, and it hurts like hell, the universe somehow knows what it’s doing."

"One of my favorite sayings comes from Seng-Ts’an. He said, "Our way is not difficult, save the picking and choosing." Entire books and weeklong courses could be developed around these words. The wisdom is simple, but extremely powerful and profound, particularly when dealing with loss. Although it’s so much easier said than done, when we take a step back and a full breath, we can see loss from what I believe is the deepest perspective."

"Our way through life should not be difficult — but it is. The fact is that our lives are filled mostly with picking and choosing. "I want this, but not that." And because things are not anything other than the way they really are, we suffer. Nowhere is this more apparent and painful than when we are trying to find life after death. We so desperately want things to be the way they were. But they are not. So the longing itself becomes an additional source of suffering."

"Healing from a loss is a natural process of life — just as healing from a broken bone is too. Knowing this in the midst of pain is of great comfort. If it’s at all possible, don’t be alone. Seek out the comfort and help you need and deserve. This is not the time to be brave or strong. Instead it’s the time to reach out to others and to be open to receive their kindness. It’s your turn. Finding life after death is among the greatest challenges we face. But it is possible, and it will happen for you. I send you my love. :)"

"The shortest distance between two points is an intention and this is certainly the case when it comes to becoming more loving to oneself and to others. We must first have the desire and then the intention and commitment to be a source of love — this means that rather than waiting for the world to be more loving, we decide that we will be the first one to reach out and act loving — no matter what!"

"He walked the earth generously spreading as much love and kindness in small ways, as well as big ways, as humanly possible. He was selfless with his heart, generous with his pocketbook, and most of all, he reached out with his spirit. … Please remember that Richard Carlson left his own trail as he walked the earth and lived a life devoted to peace, love, and the betterment of humanity."

"His work consisted of translating the essence of the world's wisdom traditions into practical, easy-to-remember advice. He didn't just tell people to be kind, patient and grateful, he showed them how to make those values a part of their daily lives."

"He preached what the Buddha preached, but without the preaching... "Don't take your thoughts too seriously." He called it a thought attack. What you need to do is live in the present."

"His tenets are less anodyne than they might seem, concentrating as they do on not equating material possessions with happiness, being kind to others, attempting to see others' viewpoints and managing conflict serenely. When I interviewed him in 1998, I was prepared to be cynical. In fact, Carlson was not only likeable and friendly, but realistic. He did not deny the existence of "big stuff" (indeed, in 2002 he published What About the Big Stuff?). However, he claimed, reasonably enough, that we have no right to expect everything else in life to run smoothly. "We have come to believe, especially in industrialised Western nations where we are very privileged, that our lives should be perfect," he said. "We feel like we shouldn't have to deal with traffic jams or flat tyres or people who are rude to us.""

"For a number of years there has been a righteous discontent, a burning zeal to go forward in His name among the Baptist women of our churches and it will be the dynamic force in the religious campaign at the opening of the 20th century."

"White women are learning the political game. They are not as keen as they look. In the fight for reforms, they are overlooking or undervaluing their greatest moral asset – the Negro woman. The Negro woman neglected or ignored is the greatest political menace with which the white woman will have to contend. Adopted into the political family and educated, the Negro woman will become the safest and most valuable ally; neglected, she will become an enemy and a menace."

"The present attitude on the part of white women to ignore or undervalue the colored woman, or to accept Negro women who are picked by Tom, Dick or Harry, forebodes evil and ill for both groups. What the white women who are political leaders of their race – white women of class and culture – must do to safeguard the interests of both races, morally and politically, is to select Negro women of education, culture, ability and class – those who are above political and social price – and give them place in their party councils and conferences."

"The women who have pushed themselves forward into the political arena during the past three or four years, for the most part, are women who are absolutely without followers in their own race."

"The Negro must unload the leeches and parasitic leaders who are absolutely eating the life out of the struggling, desiring mass of people."

"The “Uncle Toms” are greater enemies than Tillman or Cole Blease had ever been to the Negro race. They have sold us for a mess of pottage. We got the mess, but not the pottage."

"Men must have life, the opportunity to learn, to labor, to love. Without these fundamental virtues we cannot achieve. We must not give up the struggle until this is obtained."

"Human beings are equipped with divinely planted yearnings and longings. That’s what the constitution meant by “certain unalienable rights”!"

"The Anglo-Saxon has four great loves. Love of liberty, love of home, love of women, and love of life. He’ll wade through blood for these. When we make up our minds to not take substitutes for them, we’ll get them."

"We must have a glorified womanhood that can look any man in the face — white, red, yellow, brown or black — and tell of the nobility of character within black womanhood."

"top making slaves and servants of our women. We’ve got to stop singing — “Nobody works but father.” The Negro mother is doing it all. The women are carrying the burden."

"Has the Negro girl proved herself worthy of the intellectual advantages which have been given her? What is your answer when I tell you that Negro women stand at the helm of outstanding enterprises; such are: Nannie Borroughs — Charlotte Hawkins Brown; they are proprietors of business — we recall Madam Walker and Annie Malone; they are doing excellent work in the field of Medicine, Literary Art, Painting and Music. Of that large group let us mention Mary Church Terrell and Jessie Fauset; Hazel Harrison, Caterina Jarbors and Marian Anderson as beacon lights. One very outstanding woman is a banner. Others are leaders in Politics."

"We now look into history with the generous pride of the nationalist, not with the cramped prejudice of the partisan. We do homage to Irish valour, whether it conquers on the walls of Derry, or capitulates with honour before the ramparts of Limerick; and, sir, we award the laurel to Irish genius, whether it has lit its flames within the walls of old Trinity, or drawn its inspiration from the sanctuary of Saint Omer’s. Acting in this spirit, we shall repair the errors and reverse the mean condition of the past. If not, we perpetuate the evil that has for so many years consigned this Country to the calamities of war and the infirmities of vassalage, "We must tolerate each other," said Henry Grattan, the inspired preacher of Irish nationality — he whose eloquence, as Moore has described it, was the very music of Freedom — "We must tolerate each other, or we must tolerate the common enemy..."But, sir, whilst we must endeavour wisely to conciliate let us not, to the strongest foe, nor in the most tempting emergency, weakly capitulate...Let earnest truth, stern fidelity to principle, love for all who bear the name of Irishmen, sustain, ennoble and immortalise this cause. Thus shall we reverse the dark fortunes of the Irish race, and call forth here a new nation from the ruins of the old.Thus shall a Parliament moulded from the soil, pregnant with the sympathies and glowing with the genius of the soil, be here raised up. Thus shall an honourable kingdom be enabled to fulfil the great ends that a bounteous Providence hath assigned her—which ends have been signified to her in the resources of her soil and the abilities of her sons."

"In this assembly, every political school has its teachers — every creed has its adherents — and I may safely say, that this banquet is the tribute of United Ireland to the representative of American benevolence. Being such, I am at once reminded of the dinner which took place after the battle of Saratoga, at which Gates and Burgoyne — the rival soldiers — sat together. Strange scene! Ireland, the beaten and the bankrupt, entertains America, the victorious and the prosperous! Stranger still! The flag of the Victor decorates this hail — decorates our harbour — not, indeed, in triumph, but in sympathy — not to commemorate the defeat, but to predict the resurrection, of a fallen people! One thing is certain — we are sincere upon this occasion. There is truth in this compliment. For the first time in her career, Ireland has reason to be grateful to a foreign power. Foreign power, sir! Why should I designate that country a "foreign power," which has proved itself our sister country? England, they sometimes say, is our sister country. We deny the relationship — we discard it. We claim America as our sister, and claiming her as such, we have assembled here this night. Should a stranger, viewing this brilliant scene inquire of me, why it is that, amid the desolation of this day — whilst famine is in the land — whilst the hearse-plumes darken the summer scenery of the island, whilst death sows his harvest, and the earth teems not with the seeds of life, but with the seeds of corruption — should he inquire of me, why it is, that, amid this desolation, we hold high festival, hang out our banners, and thus carouse — I should reply, "Sir, the citizens of Dublin have met to pay a compliment to a plain citizen of America, which they would not pay — 'no, not for all the gold in Venice' — to the minister of England.""

"Whilst my country remains in sorrow and subjection, it would be indelicate of me to participate in the festivities you propose. When she lifts her head and nerves her arm for a bolder struggle — when she goes forth like Miriam, with song and trimble, to celebrate her victory — I too shall lift up my head, and join in the hymn of freedom. Till then, the retirement I seek will best accord with the love I bear her, and the sadness which her present fate inspires. Nor do I forget the companions of my exile. The freedom that has been restored to me is embittered by the recollection of their captivity. My heart is with them at this hour, and shares the solitude in which they dwell. Whilst they are in prison a shadow rests upon my spirit, and the thoughts that otherwise might be free throb heavily within me. It is painful for me to speak. I should feel happy in being permitted to be silent for these reasons you will not feel displeased with me for declining the honours you solicit me to accept."

"In a way, your law school becomes part of your extended family. I say this because once you graduate with your Juris Doctor degree you are essentially married to that particular institution. No matter what your experience or opinion of the place, your alma mater is a name you cannot escape. The individuals that attend law school with you will be your life-long partners as you progress from a common starting point. Understanding the basic principles of professional networking, and utilizing the knowledge while on your law school campus, will reap a lifetime of rewards and provide you with many genuinely enhancing relationships."

"Our comforting sense of the permanence of our natural world, our confidence that it will change gradually and imperceptibly if at all, is the result of a subtly warped perspective. Changes that can affect us can happen in our lifetime in our world—not just changes like wars but bigger and more sweeping events. I believe that without recognizing it we have already stepped over the threshold of such a change; that we are at the end of nature. By the end of nature I do not mean the end of the world. The rain will still fall and the sun shine, though differently than before. When I say 'nature,' I mean a certain set of human ideas about the world and our place in it."

"An idea, a relationship, can go extinct, just like an animal or a plant. The idea in this case is 'nature,' the separate and wild province, the world apart from man to which he adapted, under whose rules he was born and died. In the past, we spoiled and polluted parts of that nature, inflicted environmental 'damage.' But that was like stabbing a man with toothpicks: though it hurt, annoyed, degraded, it did not touch vital organs, block the path of lymph or blood. We never thought that we had wrecked nature. Deep down, we never really thought we could: it was too big and too old; its forces—the wind, the rain, the sun—were too strong, too elemental. But, quite by accident, it turned out that the carbon dioxide and other gases we were producing in our pursuit of a better life... could alter the power of the sun, could increase its heat. And that increase could change the patterns of moisture and dryness, breed storms in new places, breed deserts...We have produced the carbon dioxide—we are ending nature."

"The greenhouse effect is a more apt name than those who coined it imagined. The carbon dioxide and trace gases act like the panes of glass on a greenhouse—the analogy is accurate. But it's more than that. We have built a greenhouse, 'a human creation' where once there bloomed a sweet and wild garden."

"The expected effects of a sea-level rise typify the many consequences of a global warming. On the one hand, they are so big we literally can't understand them. If there is a significant polar melting, the Earth's center of gravity will shift, tipping the globe in such a way that the sea level might actually drop at Cape Horn and along the coast of Iceland—I read this in a recent EPA report and found that I didn't really understand what it meant to tip the Earth, through I was awed by the idea. On the other hand, the changes ultimately acquire a quite personal dimension: Should I put in a wall in front of my house? Does this taste salty to you? And, most telling of all, the human response to the problems, the utterly natural human attempt to preserve the old natural way of life in this postnatural world, creates entirely new consequences. The ocean rises; I build a wall; the marsh dies, and, with it, the fish."

"We believe that we live in the 'age of information,' that there has been an information 'explosion,' an information 'revolution.' While in a certain narrow sense that is the case, in many more important ways just the opposite is true. We also live at a moment of deep ignorance, when vital knowledge that humans have always possessed about who we are and where we live seems beyond our reach. An unenlightenment. An age of missing information."

"It worries me because it alters perception. TV, and the culture it anchors, and drowns out the subtle and vital information contact with the real world once provided."

"Human beings—any one of us, and our species as a whole—are not all-important, not at the center of the world. That is the one essential piece of information, the one great secret, offered by any encounter with the woods or the mountains or the ocean or any wilderness or chunk of nature or patch of night sky."

"They'll lead us bit by bit toward the revolutionary idea that we've grown about as powerful as it's wise to grow; that the rush of technological innovation that's marked the last five hundred years can finally slow, and spread out to water the whole delta of human possibility. But those decisions will only emerge if people understand the time for what it is: the moment when we stand precariously on the sharp ridge between the human past and the posthuman future, the moment when meaning might evaporate in a tangle of genes or chips."

"These new technologies are not yet inevitable. But if they blossom fully into being, freedom may irrevocably perish. This is a fight not only for the meaning of our individual lives, but for the meaning of our life together."

"Right now, plenty of people feel the peacefulness of their lives degraded by sprawl, or worry about the way consumerism has eroded the quality of our communities. For them, the idea of enough is not completely alien or distasteful, though it remains difficult to embrace. We've been told that it's impossible – that some force like evolution drives us on to More and Faster and Bigger. 'You can't stop progress.' But that's not true. We could choose to mature. That could be the new trick we share with each other, a trick as revolutionary as fire. Or even the computer."

"The logic of divestment couldn't be simpler: if it's wrong to wreck the climate, it's wrong to profit from that wreckage."

"If it is wrong to wreck the planet, then it is wrong to profit from that wreckage."

"...as early as 1977, Exxon (now ExxonMobil, one of the world’s largest oil companies) knew that its main product would heat up the planet disastrously. This did not prevent the company from then spending decades helping to organize the campaigns of disinformation and denial that have slowed—perhaps fatally—the planet’s response to global warming....Exxon responded, instead, by helping to set up or fund extreme climate-denial campaigns....The company worked with veterans of the tobacco industry to try and infuse the climate debate with doubt."

"ExxonMobil, the world’s largest and most powerful oil company, knew everything there was to know about climate change by the mid-1980s, and then spent the next few decades systematically funding climate denial and lying about the state of the science.... But though we know now that behind the scenes Exxon understood precisely what was going on, in public they feigned ignorance or worse.... Thanks to Exxon’s willingness to sucker the world, that world is now a chaotic mess."

"Year after year throughout the last two decades they’ve made more money than any company in the history of money. But poor people around the world are already paying for those profits, and every generation that follows us now will pay as well, because the “Exxon position” has helped take us over one tipping point after another. Their sins of emission, like so many other firms and individuals, are bad. But their sins of omission are truly inexcusable."

"Consider this: as ice sheets melt, they take weight off land, and that can trigger earthquakes — seismic activity is already increasing in Greenland and Alaska. Meanwhile, the added weight of the new seawater starts to bend the Earth’s crust. “That will give you a massive increase in volcanic activity. It’ll activate faults to create earthquakes, submarine landslides, tsunamis, the whole lot,” explained the director of University College London’s Hazard Centre. Such a landslide happened in Scandinavia about eight thousand years ago, as the last Ice Age retreated and a Kentucky-size section of Norway’s continental shelf gave way, “plummeting down to the abyssal plain and creating a series of titanic waves that roared forth with a vengeance,” wiping all signs of life from coastal Norway to Greenland and “drowning the Wales-sized landmass that once connected Britain to the Netherlands, Denmark, and Germany.” When the waves hit the Shetlands, they were sixty-five feet high."

"If we keep raising carbon dioxide levels, we may not be able to think straight anymore. At a thousand parts per million (which is within the realm of possibility for 2100), human cognitive ability falls 21 percent. “The largest effects were seen for Crisis Response, Information Usage, and Strategy,” a Harvard study reported, which is too bad, as those skills are what we seem to need most."

"A team of British researchers released a study demonstrating that even if you can grow plenty of food, the transportation system that distributes it runs through just fourteen major choke-points, and those are vulnerable to — you guessed it — massive disruption from climate change. For instance, U.S. rivers and canals carry a third of the world’s corn and soy, and they’ve been frequently shut down or crimped by flooding and drought in recent years... “It’s the glide path to a perfect storm,” said one of the report’s authors."

"But in August 2018, a massive new study found something just as frightening: crop pests were thriving in the new heat. “It gets better and better for them,” said one University of Colorado researcher. Even if we hit the UN target of limiting temperature rise to two degrees Celsius, pests should cut wheat yields by 46 percent, corn by 31 percent, and rice by 19 percent. “Warmer temperatures accelerate the metabolism of insect pests like aphids and corn borers at a predictable rate,” the researchers found. “That makes them hungrier[,] and warmer temperatures also speed up their reproduction.”"

"The dramatic uncertainty that lies ahead may be the most frightening development of all... the most likely scenarios...are more than disturbing enough. Long before we get to tidal waves or smallpox, long before we choke to death or stop thinking clearly, we will need to concentrate on the most mundane and basic facts: everyone needs to eat every day, and an awful lot of us live near the ocean... Where I live, it’s the seasons: winter doesn’t reliably mean winter anymore, and so the way we’ve always viscerally told time has begun to break down..."

"Single most important stat on the planet: CO2 rose 3.5 parts per million last year, 2nd-highest annual rise on record. This is legit scary"

"The longer I think about @DNC insisting no-one hold a climate debate, the sillier it seems. We've literally never talked about this issue in a presidential debate, and we literally have to deal with it immediately. I don't understand why we shouldn't devote a night to it."

"What do Ben and Jerry’s, an 800,000-member South African trade union, countless college professors, a big chunk of Amazon’s Seattle workforce, and more high school students than you can imagine have in common? They’re all joining in a massive climate strike this coming Friday, September 20 — a strike that will likely register as the biggest day of climate action in the planet’s history."

"On May 23, at the end of the last massive school strike, Thunberg and 46 other youth activists released an open letter to The Guardian urging adults to join in next time. Because, as they pointed out, there are limits to what young people can do on their own. If you can’t vote, and if you don’t own stocks, then your ability to pull the main levers of power is limited. They wrote: “Sorry if this is inconvenient for you. But this is not a single-generation job. It’s humanity’s job.”"

"So now we have some sense of what it’s like: a full-on global-scale crisis, one that disrupts everything. Normal life—shopping for food, holding a wedding, going to work, seeing your parents—shifts dramatically. The world feels different, with every assumption about safety and predictability upended. Will you have a job? Will you die? Will you ever ride a subway again, or take a plane? It’s unlike anything we’ve ever seen. The upheaval that has been caused by Covid-19 is also very much a harbinger of global warming. Because humans have fundamentally altered the physical workings of planet Earth, this is going to be a century of crises, many of them more dangerous than what we’re living through now. The main question is whether we’ll be able to hold the rise in temperature to a point where we can, at great expense and suffering, deal with those crises coherently, or whether they will overwhelm the coping abilities of our civilization... The pandemic provides some useful sense of scale—some sense of how much we’re going to have to change to meet the climate challenge."

"Fair or not, boomers and the Silent Generation have about 70% of the country’s money, compared with about 5% for millennials. So if you want to push around Washington, or Wall Street, or your state capital, it helps to have some people with hairlines like mine."

"[D]ata from the World Meteorological Agency show that, as the U.N. Secretary-General, António Guterres, told the {COP28} global climate talks in Dubai last week, we can safely say, even with weeks to go, that 2023 will take the title {as the world's hottest year on record}. . . . And yet . . . [a]lmost simultaneous with the breakout in temperature, there was a breakout in the installation of renewable energy, especially solar power, around the world. . . . {T}he cost of clean energy has dropped so far that it is now possible that saving the planet might be a corollary of saving cash. This ongoing drop in price is more than a decade old, but sometime in the past few years it crossed an invisible line, making it cheaper than hydrocarbons, and this was the year when that reality finally translated into dramatic action on the ground. . . . There are plenty of other technologies we’re [currently] spending money on, including small nuclear reactors and giant carbon-sucking machines, that may or may not someday play a role in the climate fight, but, for all the furor they produce, they seem unlikely to make much difference anytime soon. In the next few years, while the planet’s climate system teeters on the edge of breaking, it’s sun, wind, and batteries that matter. They’re cheap, and they’re ready."

"Think about what your town is doing about environmental pollution before you go to Washington with radical environmentalist Bill McKibben to get arrested. I mean no lack of deference to McKibben or his followers. But there is plenty of work to go around, as all the movements that came after 1963 - women's, anti-war, and LGBTQ -- and gained power from the example that was set during the 1963 March on Washington, still show us."

"Bill McKibben wrote, ‘We live in a post-natural world.’ But did ‘Nature’ in this sense ever exist? Or was it rather the deification of the human that gave it an illusory apartness from ourselves? Now that non-human agencies have dispelled that illusion, we are confronted suddenly with a new task: that of finding other ways in which to imagine the unthinkable beings and events of this era."

""We had no money and no organization, so we figured we'd be doing well if we could organize a hundred of these things by April 14. And that would have been about a hundred more global warming rallies than there had been," he told Democracy Now! Instead, McKibben tapped a rich vein of discontent around the United States. "People were really eager to finally be able to take action about this," said the amazed activist, "and the thing has just kinda exploded." More than fourteen hundred Step It Up rallies took place in all fifty states in April 2007. McKibben followed with another Step It Up Day seven months later, which involved hundreds of thousands of people around the country, including eighty members of Congress."

"I also thank Bill McKibben and his 350.org colleagues for the most important work in the world, and the most unending."

"McKibben understands that a central goal of movement leadership is to create more leaders, not more followers."

"Bill McKibben, a leading champion in the fight against climate change"

"Bill McKibben has long said, when people ask him what's the most significant thing you can do for the climate, "Stop being an individual; join something.""

"Kids born today will see us navigate past the first greatest test of humanity, which is: can we actually be smart enough to live on a planet without destroying it?"

"Any future which is not beautiful is unacceptable."

"No future can be beautiful which involves an economy that violates the rights of future generations, that degrades fundamental planetary systems in any way, or that fails to offer every human being a basic share of safety, dignity and happiness."

"The future starts now."

"Cynicism is often seen as a rebellious attitude in western popular culture, but in reality, our cynicism advances the desires of the powerful: cynicism is obedience."

"We can freely acknowledge the tremendous struggle ahead of us, and yet choose to remain decidedly optimistic, and to work from a fundamental belief in the possibilities of the future. … Every time we explain how a better future might be built, we redraw the boundaries of the possible."

"We have to develop a model of prosperity that 4.5 billion more people can share and we don't know how to do it."

"To be young and aware is to suspect that, in the end, the debate about climate action isn’t about substance, but about rich old men trying to squeeze every last dollar, euro, and yen from their investments in outdated industries. It is to agree with the environmentalist Paul Hawken that we have an economy that steals the future, sells it in the present, and calls it GDP. It is to begin to see your elders as cannibals with golf clubs."

"Our goal should be to cool the planet in ways that reinforce and restore the resilience of its natural systems."

"My other car is a bright green city."

"The answer to the problem of the American car is not under its hood. ...The best car-related innovation we have is not to improve the car but to eliminate the need to drive it everywhere we go."

"Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else."

"I had no idea what I was doing when I wrote Search. There was no carefully designed work plan. There was no theory that I was out to prove. I went out and talked to genuinely smart, remarkably interesting, first-rate people. I had an infinite travel budget that allowed me to fly first class and stay at top-notch hotels and a license from McKinsey to talk to as many cool people as I could all around the United States and the world. I went to see Karl Weick, who had totally influenced my life. I had read his work a thousand times, and I'd never met him. I went to Oslo to talk with , who had studied empowerment on oil tankers. I went to the in London, where the leading thinkers on organizational development were looking at why people work together effectively in team configurations under certain circumstances. Word of the meeting got back to McKinsey USA, and I was invited to give a presentation to the top management of PepsiCo... The time was drawing near for the Pepsi presentation to take place. One morning at about 6, I sat down at my desk overlooking the San Francisco Bay from the 48th floor of the Bank of America Tower, and I closed my eyes. Then I leaned forward, and I wrote down eight things on a pad of paper. Those eight things haven't changed since that moment. They were the eight basic principles of Search."

"Bosses: You make your living going to meetings. Hence any meeting that does not bubble and incite enthusiasm is a forever-lost opportunity."

"EXCELLENCE in <140 Characters: Cherish your people, cuddle your customers, wander around, “try it” beats “talk about it,” Excellence or else, tell the truth."

"Creating in all employees the awareness that their best efforts are essential and that they will share in the rewards of the company's success."

"Without exception, the dominance and coherence of culture proved to be an essential quality of the excellent companies."

"Transforming leadership, [is defined as] leadership that builds on man's need for meaning, leadership that creates institutional purpose … he is the value-shaper, the exemplar, the maker of meanings … he is the true artist, the true pathfinder."

"Most of their real innovation comes from the market"

"What gets measured gets done."

"Every excellent company we studied is clear on what it stands for, and takes the process of value shaping seriously. In fact, we wonder whether it is possible to be an excellent company without clarity on values and without having the right sorts of values."

"Life is too short for non-WOW projects."

"Lists simplify, clarify, edify."

"If not excellence, what? If not excellence now, when?"

"The vitality of our network will determine our professional fate."

"Reward excellent failures. Punish mediocre successes."

"Service is the highest human calling."

"Do not even flippantly badmouth anybody this week. Button it up."

"The Big Four: Out-read 'em. Out-study 'em. Out-present 'em. Out-listen 'em."

"As project chief you are creating a narrative, a story, a good yarn. If you look at the process-journey that way, you and your gang will … dramatically up the odds of a WOW outcome!"

"The Peters Principles: Enthusiasm. Emotion. Excellence. Energy. Excitement. Service. Growth. Creativity. Imagination. Vitality. Joy. Surprise. Independence. Spirit. Community. Limitless human potential. Diversity. Profit. Innovation. Design. Quality. Entrepreneurialism. Wow."

"What is my personal strategy for the next 10 hours? Who can I talk with or what can I volunteer for to learn something new?"

"Musing on the phrase ‘waste of time.’ So much more complex than it appears. Many ‘wastes of time’—small talk, daydreaming—are imperatives.”"

"If you want to achieve Excellence, you can get there today. As of this second, quit doing less than Excellent work. The first 99.9% of getting from here to there is the determination to do it and not to compromise, no matter what set of road blocks those around you erect."

"Have fun/Make it fun. … All human endeavor is about emotion. Zest, joy, pride—and fun—are near the heart of any successful enterprise."

"Make the collective, professional pursuit of listening skills per se a keystone of corporate 'culture'."

"The most important personal ‘core competence’ by far is a rich set of relationships."

"The well-served customer...is an appreciating asset. Every small act on her or his behalf ups the odds of repeat business, add-on business, and priceless word-of-mouth referral."

"Training in listening, in statistical techniques and problem cause-and-effect analysis, in group problem solving, in sophisticated financial analysis (for everyone)—and then constant retraining, for upgrading and learning new skills—simply must become the norm, for realtor, banker, or high-tech wizard."

"The ... moral responsibility ... of every leader is staggering—an opportunity to be of service to (literally) civilization. Or not."

"Read deep! Read often! Out-READ the 'Competition'!!!"

"Ask! Interviewing/information extraction is an (exceptionally important) ‘art’ that must be mastered!"

"Success is about executing what you are doing today with unquestionable, breathtaking excellence."

"A ‘Client’ is ..."

"someone with whom I have an intimate relationship"

"in it with me for the long haul"

"someone with whom I co-invent the future"

"No such thing as a 'non-leader.' Every day offers every one of us scads of leadership opportunities."

"R&D/good times and bad times. R&D may have to take its lumps in tough times ... But beware of cutting too much muscle."

"Design, writ large, is increasingly the route to product or service differentiation."

"Passionate servant leaders, determined to create a legacy of earthshaking transformation in their domain create/must necessarily create organizations which are ... no less than Cathedrals in which the full and awesome power of the Imagination and Spirit and native Entrepreneurial flair of diverse individuals is unleashed ... In passionate pursuit of jointly perceived soaring purpose and personal and community and client service Excellence."

"Punctuality at meetings influences culture of punctuality, i.e., promise-keeping in general, on-time deliveries, etc."

"Organizations exist only to serve. Leaders exist only to serve."

"In the private or public sector, in big business or small, we observe that there are only two ways to create and sustain superior performance over the long haul. First, take exceptional care of your customers ... via superior service and superior quality. Second, constantly innovate. That’s it."

"‘Soft’ skills will be 10X more important in a virtual/work-at-home world. Team dynamics, individual growth, team creativity will dominate effectiveness.”"

"Most important things take lots of time. Peerless quality. Relationship building. Developing people. Superb design. EXCELLENCE."

"An organization, no matter how ‘technologically transformed,’ is at the end of the day no more/no less than: PEOPLE SERVING PEOPLE. (And as leader, your job is: SERVE THE PEOPLE WHO SERVE THE PEOPLE.) (One last thing: The people we serve are our Customers AND our Communities.)"

"Design that matters infuses HR and Purchasing and Finance as much as product development."

"Hire for all jobs based on empathy. Employ people who care about people; everything else can be trained."

"Everybody loves being recognized, in any way, large or small. ... Appreciation, applause, approval, respect—we all love it!"

"Professional success requires ... drive, initiative, commitment, involvement, and—above all—enthusiasm."

"Brains are in; heavy lifting is out. That's the essential nature of the new knowledge-based economy. Therefore, the development of knowledge is close to job No. 1 for corporations."

"Tennis or finance or engineering or bartending … this ‘simple’ lesson bears repeating. … Study! Study! Study!"

"Machines can automate a lot of things, but design is something humans do best."

"A blizzard of small steps and memorable touches are more important than ‘breakthrough’ attempts. So, take those constant small steps forward into the unknown."

"In the age of advancing AI, humans’ advantage is diversity—twists and turns and acts of customer love and amazement that the algorithms can’t match!"

"Superb relationships are at the heart of success. Kindness is the core of superb relationships."

"People first!"

"A career is a portfolio of projects that teach you new skills, gain you new expertise, develop new capabilities, grow your colleague set and constantly reinvent you as a brand."

"Intemperance weaves the winding-sheet of souls."

"One of those poor fellows that had become a Christian was badgered by his companions; and one of them said, "How do you know that Jesus Christ has forgiven your sins? " The man turned at once and said, "How do you know when you have got sugar in your tea?""

"If the Bible is God's word, and we believe it, let us handle it with reverence."

"A man is what he is, not what men say he is. His character no man can touch. His character is what he is before his God and his Judge; and only himself can damage that. His reputation is what men say he is. That can be damaged; but reputation is for time, character is for eternity."

"A man's enemies have no power to harm him, if he is true to himself and loyal to God."

"What you learn from bad habits and in bad society, you will never forget, and it will be a lasting pang to you. I tell you in all sincerity, not as in the excitement of speech, but as I would confess and have confessed before God, I would give my right hand if I could forget that which I have learned in bad society."

"It may be a very little thing for you to say to a young man the few words that turn him from the way of ruin, and win him back to life and hope. It may be a very little thing to you; but it is every thing to the young man."

"Equality of rights is the first of rights."

"There is beauty in art, in literature, in science, and in every triumph of intelligence, all of which I covet for my country; but there is a higher beauty still&mdash;in relieving the poor, in elevating the downtrodden, and being a succor to the oppressed. There is true grandeur in an example of justice, in making the rights of all the same as our own, and beating down the prejudice, like Satan, under our feet."

"If a man has done evil in his life, he must not be complimented in marble."

"Ideas are more important than battles."

"The true greatness of a Nation cannot be in triumphs of the intellect alone. Literature and art may widen the sphere of its influence; they may adorn it; but they are in their nature but accessaries. The true grandeur of humanity is in moral elevation, enlightened and decorated by the intellect of man. The truest tokens of this grandeur in a State are the diffusion of the greatest happiness among the greatest number, and that passionless God-like Justice, which controls the relations of the State to other States, and to all the people, who are committed to its charge."

"The age of Chivalry has gone. An age of Humanity has come. The Horse, whose importance more than human, have the name to that early period of gallantry and war, now yields his foremost place to Man. In serving him, in promoting his elevation, in contributing to his welfare, in doing him good, there are fields of bloodless triumph, nobler far than any in which Bayard or Du Guesclin conquered."

"With me, sir, there is no alternative. Painfully convinced of the unutterable wrongs and woes of slavery; profoundly believing that, according to the true spirit of the Constitution and the sentiments of the fathers, it can find no place under our National Government — that it is in every respect sectional, and in no respect national — that it is always and everywhere the creature and dependent of the States, and never anywhere the creature or dependent of the Nation, and that the Nation can never, by legislative or other act, impart to it any support, under the Constitution of the United States ; with these convictions, I could not allow this session to reach its close, without making or seizing an- opportunity to declare myself openly against the usurpation, injustice, and cruelty, of the late enactment by Congress for the recovery of fugitive slaves. Full well I know, sir, the difficulties of this discussion, arising from prejudices of opinion and from adverse conclusions, strong and sincere as my own. Full well I know that I am in a small minority, with few here to whom I may look for sympathy or support. Full well I know that I must utter things unwelcome to many in this body, which I cannot do without pain. Full well I know that the institution of slavery in our country, which I now proceed to consider, is as sensitive as it is powerful — possessing a power to shake the whole land with a sensitiveness that shrinks and trembles at the touch. But, while these things may properly prompt me to caution and reserve, they cannot change my duty, or my determination to perform it. For this I willingly forget myself, and all personal consequences. The favor and good-will of my fellow-citizens, of my brethren of the Senate, sir, — grateful to me as it justly is — I am ready, if required, to sacrifice. All that I am or may be, I freely offer to this cause."

"To make a law final, so as not to be reached by Congress, is, by mere legislation, to fasten a new provision on the Constitution. Nay, more; it gives to the law a character which the very Constitution docs not possess. The wise fathers did not treat the country as a Chinese foot, never to grow after infancy; but, anticipating Progress, they declared expressly that their great Act is not final. According to the Constitution itself, there is not one of its existing provisions — not even that with regard to fugitives from labor — which may not at all times be reached by amendment, and thus be drawn into debate. This is rational and just. Sir, nothing from man's hands, nor law, nor constitution, can be final. Truth alone is final."

"The Senator from South Carolina has read many books of chivalry, and believes himself a chivalrous knight, with sentiments of honor and courage. Of course he has chosen a mistress to whom he has made his vows, and who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight I mean the harlot, Slavery. For her, his tongue is always profuse in words."

"Without security, civilization is cramped and dwarfed. Without security, there can be no freedom. Nor shall I say too much, when I declare that security, guarded of course by its offspring, freedom, is the true end and aim of government."

"Slavery shall not exist anywhere within the United States or the jurisdiction thereof; and the Congress shall have power to make all laws necessary and proper to carry this prohibition into effect."

"I have fought a long battle with slavery; and I confess my solicitude when I see any thing that looks like concession to it. It is not enough to show me that a measure is expedient: you must show me also that it is right. Ah, sir, can any thing be expedient which is not right? From the beginning of our history the country has been afflicted with compromise. It is by compromise that human rights have been abandoned. I insist that this shall cease. The country needs repose after all its trials: it deserves repose. And repose can only be found in everlasting principles. It cannot be found by inserting in your constitution the disfranchisement of a race."

"Senators undertake to disturb us... by reminding us of the possibility of large numbers swarming from China; but the answer to all this is very obvious and very simple. If the Chinese come here, they will come for citizenship or merely for labor. If they come for citizenship, then in this desire do they give a pledge of loyalty to our institutions; and where is the peril in such vows? They are peaceful and industrious; how can their citizenship be the occasion of solicitude?"

"Worse than any heathen or pagan abroad are those in our midst who are false to our institutions."

"The time has passed for argument. Nothing more need be said. For a long time it has been clear that colored persons must be senators."

"The same national authority that destroyed slavery must see that this other pretension is not permitted to survive."

"You must take care of the civil rights bill - my bill, the civil rights bill - don't let it fail."

"If things are allowed to go on as they are, it is certain that slavery is to be abolished. By the time the north shall have attained the power, the black race will be in a large majority, and then we will have black governors, black legislatures, black juries, black everything. Is it to be supposed that the white race will stand for that? It is not a supposable case. War will break out everywhere like hidden fire from the earth. We will be overpowered and our men will be compelled to wander like vagabonds all over the earth, and as for our women, the horrors of their state we cannot contemplate in imagination. We will be completely exterminated, and the land will be left in the possession of the blacks, and then it will go back to a wilderness and become another Africa or Saint Domingo. Join the north and what will become of you? They will hate you and your institutions as much as they do now, and treat you accordingly. Suppose they elevate Charles Sumner to the presidency? Suppose they elevate Fred Douglass, your escaped slave, to the presidency? What would be your position in such an event? I say give me pestilence and famine sooner than that."

"(Can you give us one or two examples that would connect what we all learned in elementary and high school about American History to the idea that the queers were here all along?)...in the 19th Century, the 1850s, we have an intense relationship between Charles Sumner, a senator from Massachusetts who was one of the leading abolitionists, who had an intimate, passionate relationship with Samuel Gridley Howe, one of the major reformers of American culture back then. This is the man who started Perkins School for the Blind and completely reformed our notion of dealing with different physical disabilities. The letters between the two men are quite striking, and even though both of them were married...their relationship was sustaining to both of them. When Howe was on his honeymoon with Julia Ward Howe, he received word that Charles Sumner was very upset and wrote him a passionate note saying that he wished that he was there with them. Interestingly, Sumner himself married later. They have complicated relationships."

"Some one once asked Charles Sumner what bribes had been offered him in the course of his political career. “What bribe!” he replied. “No bribe has ever been offered me. I have never been solicited, with promise of payment, to pursue any course whatever. ” It could not have bene otherwise with Sumner. He as not a man to solicit temptation, or to dally with it, and people knew it. Usually, the people who are tempted are known to be in the market with principles to sell. But Charles Sumner, like some other great men of course country, had not a reputation of this kind."

"When Chase, Summer, Stevens, and Wilson talk to the negro of the importance of having the franchise, and stop short of giving the franchise to woman, I proclaim them hypocrites—I proclaim them politicians. They speak so to the newly freed slave, because he has already the ballot in his hands, and they want him to vote for them. We have not that right, and hence they do not speak one word in favor of our attaining the elective franchise."

"The supreme court of the nation had told us to go to the state courts for redress of grievances; when I did so I was given the brand of justice Charles Sumner knew Negroes would get when he fathered the Civil Rights Bill during the Reconstruction period."

"I teach identity leadership, based on the philosophy that you can’t lead anybody else until you lead yourself. Once you understand who you are, you can really focus on becoming the expert in your field."

"I love you for making the difference in my life."

"You are so special. I'm so proud of you."

"I can't believe that a coloured girl from the back woods of Mississippi has done all that you have done"

"There is no such a thing in America as an independent press, unless it is out in country towns. You are all slaves. You know it, and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to express an honest opinion. If you expressed it, you would know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid $150 for keeping honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for doing similar things. If I should allow honest opinions to be printed in one issue of my paper, I would be like Othello before twenty-four hours: my occupation would be gone. The man who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the street hunting for another job. The business of a New York journalist is to distort the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to villify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread, or for what is about the same — his salary. You know this, and I know it; and what foolery to be toasting an "Independent Press"! We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are jumping-jacks. They pull the string and we dance. Our time, our talents, our lives, our possibilities, are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."

"a brilliant journalist"

"Until my imprisonment I had believed that except for Albert Parsons, Dyer D. Lum, Voltairine de Cleyre, and a few others America was barren of idealists. Her men and women cared only for material acquisitions, I had thought. Swinton's account of the liberty-loving people who had been and still were in every struggle against oppression changed my superficial judgment. John Swinton made me see that Americans, once aroused, were as capable of idealism and sacrifice as my Russian heroes and heroines. I left the Swintons with a new faith in the possibilities of America."

"I submit that religious values and political realities are so inter-linked in the origin and perpetuation of this nation that we cannot lose the influence of religion in our public life without seriously jeopardizing our freedoms."

"Unpopular minority religions are especially dependent upon a constitutional guarantee of free exercise of religion. We are fortunate to have such a guarantee in the United States, but many nations do not. The importance of that guarantee should make us ever diligent to defend it."

"None should resist the plea that we unite to increase our concern for the welfare and future of our children — the rising generation."

"Desires dictate our priorities, priorities shape our choices, and choices determine our actions."

"You can never get enough of what you don't need, because what you don't need won't satisfy you."

"The Atonement of Jesus Christ and the healing it offers do much more than provide the opportunity for repentance from sins. The Atonement also gives us the strength to endure 'pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind,' because our Savior also took upon Him 'the pains and the sicknesses of his people' (Alma 7:11). Brothers and sisters, if your faith and prayers and the power of the priesthood do not heal you from an affliction, the power of the Atonement will surely give you the strength to bear the burden."

"If you wish to marry well, inquire well."

"If we choose the wrong road, we choose the wrong destination."

"If we all, as a society, did go vegan, and we moved away from eating animal foods and toward a plant-based diet, what would happen? If we didn’t kill all these cows and eat them, then we wouldn’t have to breed all these cows because we’re breeding cows, and chickens, and pigs, and fish. We’re breeding them over and over again, relentlessly. So if we didn’t breed them, then we wouldn’t have to feed them. If we didn’t have to feed them, then we wouldn’t have to devote all this land to growing grains, and legumes, and so forth to feed to them. And so then the forests could come back. Wildlife could come back. The oceans would come back. The rivers would run clean again. The air would come back. Our health would return."

"I believe that until we are willing and able to make the connections between what we are eating and what was required to get it on our plate, and how it affects us to buy, serve, and eat it, we will be unable to make the connections that will allow us to live wisely and harmoniously on this earth."

"In order to confine and kill animals for food, we must repress our natural compassion, warping us away from intuition and toward materialism, violence, and disconnectedness."

"Our deep urge to evolve to a more spiritually mature level of understanding and living, and to create a social order that promotes more justice, peace, freedom, health, sanity, prosperity, sustainability, and happiness, absolutely requires us to stop viewing animals as food objects to be consumed and to shift to a plant-based way of eating."

"The word “vegan,” newer and more challenging than “vegetarian” because it includes every sentient being in its circle of concern and addresses all forms of unnecessary cruelty from an essentially ethical perspective, with a motivation of compassion rather than health or purity, points to an ancient idea that has been articulated for many centuries, especially in the world's spiritual traditions."

"The contemporary vegan movement is founded on loving-kindness and mindfulness of our effects on others. It is revolutionary because it transcends and renounces the violent core of the herding culture in which we live."

"The good news is that our bodies thrive on a conscious plant-based diet, and that this diet is infinitely more compassionate to animals and people and more environmentally sustainable than eating animal foods."

"While there are thus many “former vegetarians,” it's unlikely that “former vegans” were ever actually vegans; it seems doubtful that compassion authentically attained is ever lost."

"There is something about veganism that is not easy, but the difficulty is not inherent in veganism, but in our culture."

"Sometimes I think the only effective method of destroying speciesism would be for each uncaring human to be forced to live the life of a cow on a feedlot, or a monkey in a laboratory, or an elephant in the circus, or a bull in a rodeo, or a mink on a . Then people would be awakened from their soporific states and finally understand the horrors that are inflicted on the animal kingdom by the vilest species to ever roam this planet: the human animal!"

"If mentally retarded children were in tiny cages at the National Institutes of Health waiting to be mutilated, blinded, burnt and killed by a vivisectionist, the tactics of the and would be unassailable. If black people were being hung upside down at a slaughterhouse as someone sliced their throats and dismembered their bodies, society would embrace the tactics of the ALF and the . If our husbands, wives or best friends were traipsing through the woods as someone fired an arrow or a bullet destined for their chest, then we would all give thanks to the compassionate revolutionaries who call themselves ALF and activists. If you honestly placed yourself in any animals' position, anything would be acceptable to prevent your torture, enslavement and eventual murder."

"Is slavery - owner, victim, profit, domination - exclusive to the human race? Have blacks, Jews, women and children been the only victims of this atrocity? Have not cows been enslaved? What about pigs, chickens, turkeys, fish, sheep? If they're not enslaved, then what are they? Free? Can slavery have a victim that is neither a human, nor an animal? Have not the oceans, the forests, the earth itself, become victims of ownership too?"

"Exactly what is your definition of humane? Besides psychological and physical abuse, torture, dismemberment and murder, what else do you think happens to animals inside of a slaughterhouse? Do you think they get belly rubs and tushy slaps? And if you think there is such a thing as humane slaughter. I'm curious, do you also think there is such a thing as humane rape? Humane child molestation? Humane slavery? How about a humane holocaust? In fact, what is your definition of a holocaust? Is it a massacre of human beings, or a massacre of innocent beings?"

"That Descartes' Cartesian way of looking at animals, like they're machines... It is outdated, and quite frankly, 100% insane. Because, if we all understand that animals use their eyes to see, ears to hear, noses to smell, mouths to eat, legs to walk, feathers to fly, fins to swim, genitalia to procreate, bowels to defecate.. I'm always perplexed that most people don't believe that they can also use their brains to think, feel, be rational, be aware and be self-aware! Am I supposed to believe, that every body part of an animal functions just like it's supposed to, except the brain?"

"My goal is simple. All I want to do is re-connect people with animals. Awaken some emotions and some feelings and some logic, that is been buried and suppressed, intentionally, by our society. And the reason why I say re-connect it's because each and every person in this room used to be a real animal rights person at one time, a true animal lover, and a real friend to the animal kingdom. And it's when we were kids! When we were young... When we were kids! We used to be in awe of animals."They used to make us laugh, and giggle and smile. They made us pretty happy! And there was a time in our lives, when we would do just about anything in the world to make them happy as well. To protect them from cruelty! Or to, at least, acknowledge the cruelty they were receiving. I mean, if somebody was mean to an animal in front of us when we were little, we would have screamed and cried. And that's because we all used to understand right from wrong, when it came to the treatment of animals. Until somebody told us, and taught us differently. You better believe that somebody told us to ignore their suffering! To mock and excuse, their pain, and their misery. To make fun of their very existence. And this is something I want you to focus on - today, tomorrow and beyond... What in the hell happened along the way?! Who taught us to be so mean, and nasty and vicious and hateful, or indifferent towards animals when they used to be our friends? These are innocent beings, who have done nothing wrong to us."

"I want to ask you, to use some empathy right now. And when I say 'empathy', what I'm saying is: place yourself in the position of the animals, and start to view this issue from the animals' point of view. From the victims' point of view. When you examine any form of injustice, whether humans are victims or animals are victims, please remember the victim's point of view. If you are not the victim, don't examine it entirely from your point of view because when you're not the victim, it becomes pretty easy to rationalize and excuse cruelty, injustice, inequality, slavery, and even murder. But when you're the victim, things look a lot differently from that angle."

"Right now, at this very moment, on American highways, there are no less than 5,000 concentration camp trucks. Trucks that we have constructed. Inside these trucks, there are living, terrified innocent beings. Cows and pigs and chickens. These trucks are being driven to concentration camp's slaughterhouses that we carefully constructed all across America. When the trucks arrive, the animals are so frightened that they won't even get off the truck. They're not stupid, they know what's next. So people go on the trucks with electric prods and force them to walk down the chutes to their own deaths. Or if the animals are small enough to man handle, like chickens, we'll just grab them off the trucks and toss them inside.Inside, these innocent, living beings are hanged upside down, fully conscious. In other words,they go in alive, against their will, and come out chopped up, into hundreds of pieces."

"Each human carnivore is responsible for the death and dismemberment of more than 3,000 animals throughout his or her lifetime. Annually, in the US alone, over 10 billion cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys and other animals live in concentration camps. Within the first year of their pathetic lives, they're sent to killing houses where knife-wielding terrorists slit their throats, drain their blood and dismember their bodies, all too often while the animals are still conscious and awake."

"Without question, liberations are akin to Harriet Tubman and the , which assisted in the liberation of blacks from white slave-owners. One must understand that ALF raids have two goals: giving enslaved animals a chance at freedom and causing major economic damage. As a movement, we must let go of the fantasy that those directly involved in torturing and murdering animals, and profiting handsomely from it, will listen to reason, common sense, and moral truth. The vast majority will not. If they did, there wouldn't be an animal liberation movement, because they would have understood the cruelty of their ways by now and adopted a vegan lifestyle."

"I think once Americans understand what we’re doing in the world and how much hatred this is generating, we will demand change. And I think history has proven that when we demand change in any area, eventually — it takes a little time — but we do get it. So I’m very hopeful..."

"Nobody wants to be able to connect the dots. So the N.S.A., the C.I.A., these types of organizations often recruit economic hit men and the jackals, the assassins, the 007 types, but they will recruit us, maybe train us, and then turn us over to a private corporation, so that you really can’t make the connection, so that if I were caught at what I was doing in one of these countries, it would not reflect on our government; it would only reflect on the corporation that I worked for."

"The other thing we do, Amy, and what’s going on right now in Latin America is that as soon as one of these anti-American presidents is elected, such as Evo Morales, who you mentioned, in Bolivia, one of us goes in and says, “Hey, congratulations, Mr. President. Now that you’re president, I just want to tell you that I can make you very, very rich, you and your family. We have several hundred million dollars in this pocket if you play the game our way. If you decide not to, over in this pocket, I’ve got a gun with a bullet with your name on it, in case you decide to keep your campaign promises and throw us out.”"

"I think that Hugo Chavez of Venezuela might not have survived his presidency... had we not been in Iraq and Afghanistan, that we were so diverted. We — the economic hit men tried to overthrow him, you know, a few years ago and were successful for about 48 hours. But then he had control over the oil company, and he was very, very popular. So he got back into office. At that point, had we not been involved in Iraq, I strongly suspect that we would have done something much more aggressive, as we’ve done so many other times. When the economic hit men fail, we take more drastic steps. Because we were so involved in Iraq, we didn’t do that."

"We also tried to do that to Saddam Hussein. When he didn’t come around, the economic hit men tried to bring him around. We tried to assassinate him. But that was an interesting point, because he had pretty loyal security forces, and in addition he had a lot of look-alike doubles, and what you don’t want to be is a bodyguard to a look-alike double and you think it’s the president and you accept a lot of money to assassinate him and you assassinate the look-alike, because if you do that, afterwards your life and your family’s isn’t worth very much, so we were unable to get through to Saddam Hussein, and that’s why we sent the military in..."

"I spend time in Central America. I speak Spanish. I used to be an economic hit man (EHM) whose job was to corrupt government officials so our corporations could exploit natural and human resources. I see that what has happened in Central America during my lifetime is a microcosm for much of the world. Predatory capitalism, global corporations, and US government agencies have used the stick and carrot–– EHM methods–– to coerce governments to promote economic systems that enrich the wealthy and drive the Poor and what used to be the Middle Class deeper and deeper into poverty. The Titans of industrial agriculture and infrastructure projects, and the retailers of sporting goods, clothing, and other sweatshop-oriented industries have ravaged and chemicalized lands that once supported thousands of small farmers. At the same time, they’ve created working conditions akin to slavery."

"Economic hit men (EHMs) are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. They funnel money from the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and other foreign “aid” organizations into the coffers of huge corporations and the pockets of a few wealthy families who control the planet’s natural resources. Their tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder. They play a game as old as empire, but one that has taken on new and terrifying dimensions during this time of globalization. I should know; I was an EHM."

"When men and women are rewarded for greed, greed becomes a corrupting motivator. When we equate the gluttonous consumption of the earth's resources with a status approaching sainthood, when we teach our children to emulate people who live unbalanced lives, and when we define huge sections of the population as subservient to an elite minority, we ask for trouble."

"In their drive to advance the global empire, corporations, banks, and governments (collectively the corporatocracy) use their financial and political muscle to ensure that our schools, businesses, and media support both the fallacious concept and its corollary. They have brought us to a point where our global culture is a monstrous machine that requires exponentially increasing amounts of fuel and maintenance, so much so that in the end it will have consumed everything in sight and will be left with no choice but to devour itself."

"The corporatocracy is not a conspiracy, but its members do endorse common values and goals. One of corporatocracy's most important functions is to perpetuate and continually expand and strengthen the system."

"People like me are paid outrageously high salaries to do the system's bidding. If we falter, a more malicious form of hit man, the jackal, steps to the plate. And if the jackal fails, then the job falls to the military."

"History tells us that unless we modify this story, it is guaranteed to end tragically. Empires never last. Everyone of them has failed terribly. They destroy many cultures as they race toward greater domination, and then they themselves fall. No country or combination of countries can thrive in the long term by exploiting others."

"This book was written so that we may take heed and remold our story. I am certain that when enough of us become aware of how we are being exploited by the economic engine that creates an insatiable appetite for the world's resources, and results in systems that foster slavery, we will no longer tolerate it. We will reassess our role in a world where a few swim in riches and the majority drown in poverty, pollution, and violence. We will commit ourselves to navigating a course toward compassion, democracy, and social justice for all."

"We used many techniques, but probably the most common is that we will go to a country that has resources that our corporations covet- like oil- and we will arrange a huge loan to that country from an organization like the World Bank or one of its sisters. But almost all of the money goes to U.S. corporations, not to the country itself, corporations like Bechtel and Halliburton, General Motors, General Electric, these types of organizations, and they build huge infrastructure projects in the country- power plants, highways, ports, industrial parks- things that serve the very rich and seldom even reach the poor.In fact the poor suffer because the loans have to be repaid, and they are huge loans, and the repayment of them means that poor won’t get education, health, and other social services and the country is left holding a huge debt, by intention. We go back, we economic hitmen, to this country and say, “Look, you owe us a lot of money. You can’t repay your debts, so give us a pound of flesh”."

"As soon as one of the anti-American presidents is elected, one of us goes in and says, “Hey, congratulations Mr. President. Now that you are president, I just want to tell you that I can make you very, very rich, you and your family. It’s several million dollars in this pocket, if you play the game our way. If you decide not to, over in this pocket, I’ve got a gun with a bullet with your name on it, in case you decide to keep your campaign promises and throw us out. Sell our oil companies your oil real cheap, or vote with us at the next UN vote, or send troops in support of ours to some place in the world such as Iraq”, and in that way, we have managed to build a world empire with very few people actually knowing that we have done this."

"An Economic Hit Man Confesses and Calls to Action: John Perkins: TEDxTraverseCity (19m)"

"TalkingStickTV - John Perkins - Confessions of an Economic Hit Man - Part I (53m)"

"John Perkins - The Secret History of the American Empire Marlboro College (1h25m)"

"The beauty myth is always actually prescribing behavior and not appearance."

"Beauty provokes harassment, the law says, but it looks through men's eyes when deciding what provokes it."

"To live in a culture in which women are routinely naked where men aren't is to learn inequality in little ways all day long. So even if we agree that sexual imagery is in fact a language, it is clearly one that is already heavily edited to protect men’s sexual—and hence social—confidence while undermining that of women."

"The books and films they see survey from the young boy's point of view his first touch of a girl's thighs, his first glimpse of her breasts. The girls sit listening, absorbing, their familiar breasts estranged as if they were not part of their bodies, their thighs crossed self-consciously, learning how to leave their bodies and watch them from the outside. Since their bodies are seen from the point of view of strangeness and desire, it is no wonder that what should be familiar, felt to be whole, becomes estranged and divided into parts. What little girls learn is not the desire for the other, but the desire to be desired. Girls learn to watch their sex along with the boys; that takes up the space that should be devoted to finding out about what they are wanting, and reading and writing about it, seeking it and getting it."

"For the first time in history, children are growing up whose earliest sexual imprinting derives not from a living human being, or fantasies of their own; since the 1960s pornographic upsurge, the sexuality of children has begun to be shaped in response to cues that are no longer human. […] Today's children and young men and women have sexual identities that spiral around paper and celluloid phantoms: from Playboy to music videos to the blank female torsos in women’s magazines, features obscured and eyes extinguished, they are being imprinted with a sexuality that is mass-produced, deliberately dehumanizing and inhuman."

"Just as 'beauty' is not related to sex, neither is it related to love. Even having it does not bestow love on a woman, though the beauty myth claims that it must. It is because 'beauty' is so hostile to love that many beautiful women are so cynical about men. […] The beautiful woman is excluded forever from the rewards and responsibilities of particular human love, for she cannot trust that any man will love her 'for herself alone.' A hellish doubt inheres in the myth that makes impersonal 'beauty' a prerequisite for love: Where does love go when beauty vanishes? And, if a woman cannot be loved 'for herself alone,' for whom is she being loved?"

"What becomes of a man who acquires a beautiful woman, with her 'beauty' his sole target? He sabotages himself. He has gained no friend, no ally, no mutual trust: She knows quite well why she has been chosen. He has succeeded in buying a mutually suspicious set of insecurities. He does gain something: the esteem of other men who find such an acquisition impressive."

"A culture fixated on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty, but an obsession about female obedience. Women's dieting has become what Yale psychologist Judith Rodin calls a 'normative obsession,' a never-ending passion play given international coverage out of all proportion to the health risks associated with obesity, and using emotive language that does not figure even in discussions of alcohol or tobacco abuse. […] Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women's history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one."

"The Victorian woman became her ovaries, as today's woman has become her 'beauty.' Her reproductive value, as the 'aesthetic' value of her face and body today, 'came to be seen as a sacred trust, one that she must constantly guard in the interest of her race.'"

"Health makes good propaganda. “'Proof' that women's activities outside the home are detrimental to the health and welfare of themselves, their families and the country as a whole” lent impetus, writes Ann Oakley, to the nineteenth-century cult of domesticity. The ovaries were seen as collective property rather than the woman's own business, as the face and body outline are seen today. Who can argue with health?"

"Pain is real when you get other people to believe in it. If no one believes in it but you, your pain is madness or hysteria."

"You do not win by struggling to the top of a caste system, you win by refusing to be trapped within one at all."

"I was completely dumbfounded but I actually had this vision of . . . of Jesus, and I'm sure it was Jesus. [...] But it wasn't this crazy theological thing; it was just this figure who was the most perfected human being - full of light and full of love. And completely accessible. Any of us could be like that. There was light coming out of him holographically, simply because he was unclouded. But any of us could become that as human beings."

"On a mystical level, it was complete joy and happiness and there were tears running down my face. On a conscious level, when I came out of it I was absolutely horrified because I'm Jewish. This was not the thing I'm supposed to have confront me."

"[Experiencing writers' block, Wolf sought specialist assistance. Being induced in "a light meditative state" (Wolf), she was required to descent downstairs in a relaxation technique.] I opened the door and there he was [...] I wasn't myself in this visual experience [...] I was a 13-year-old boy sitting next to him [Jesus] and feeling feelings I'd never felt in my lifetime, of a 13-year-old boy being with an older male who he really loves and admires and loves to be in the presence of. It was probably the most profound experience of my life. I haven't talked about it publicly [before]."

"Here's what we're not taught [about the Declaration and Constitution]: Those words at the time they were written were blazingly, electrifyingly subversive. If you understand them truly now, they still are. […] You are not taught—and it is a disgrace that you aren't—that these men and women were radicals for liberty; that they had a vision of equality that was a slap in the face of what the rest of their world understood to be the unchanging, God-given order of nations; and that they were willing to die to make that desperate vision into a reality for people like us, whom they would never live to see."

"[[w:Alex Cohen|[Alex] Cohen]]: There's never a line in this book that says George W. Bush is just like Hitler or Mussolini or Stalin, but there's enough that after a while there definitely seems to be the air of some comparisons happening. Isn't that a bit extreme to compare our president to these historical figures? Ms Wolf: Well, again, I stick very rigorously to the evidence. You had the Nazis unloaded coffins at night; we saw coffins being unloaded at night. They talked about enhanced interrogation, meaning torture; Karl Rove talked about enhanced interrogation, meaning torture. They said, you know, we've got to invade Czechoslovakia because it's a station ground for terrorists. And we said we've got to invade Iraq, a country we're not at war with, because they are torturing their ethnic minorities, it's a station ground for terrorists and they hate our freedoms. I don't need to draw an analogy. The analogies are there."

"JS [Justine Sharrock]: How is your comparison of Obama to Hitler any different from someone at a Tea Party holding up a placard of Obama with a Hitler mustache? NW: Those signs are offensive. If only the Holocaust was just about imposing health care on my people. Obama has done things like Hitler did. Let me be very careful here. The National Socialists rounded people up and held them without trial, signed legislation that gave torture impunity, and spied on their citizens, just as Obama has. It isn't a question of what has been done that Hitler did. It's what does every dictator do, on the left or the right, that is being done here and now. The real fight isn't left or right but between forces of democracy across the spectrum and the forces of tyranny."

"The First Amendment was designed to allow for disruption of business as usual. It is not a quiet and subdued amendment or right."

"It was amazing to go to Belfast, which does not yet have 5G, and feel the earth, sky, air, human experience, feel the way it did in the 1970s. Calm, still peaceful, natural, restful."

"So what can be done? Well, first of all, I can't believe that I'm saying this - a lifelong former Democrat and the child of hippies - but thank God for the Second Amendment. Because one reason the United States is not, you know, entirely enslaved like Australia or Shanghai or Canada, in many ways – we're relatively freer compared to those countries – is that we have, you know, millions of owners of guns. And I'm a peaceful person, this should not be taken out of context, but it is harder to subjugate an armed population. And this is why our Founders gave us the Second Amendment, for exactly times like these. They knew that it was harder to subjugate an armed population. But, you know, may that be the worst case scenario. I really hope that it doesn't devolve into civil war, which is really what the next thing is in history when you have an occupying force, which is what the WHO will be, you know, by next week."

"It was the doctors in pre-Nazi Germany in the early thirties who were co-opted by the National Socialists and sent to do exactly what we're seeing kind of replaying now. It was the medical organisations in the early thirties who were emboldened to be the arbiters of, you know, "life worthy of life, life unworthy of life"’, um, and to, kind of, medicalise and pathologise dissent or difference. So we're seeing wholesale purchasing of the medical establishment in the United States, in Britain and in countries around the world to do things much more serious."

"She is furthermore a serial espouser of mad conspiracy theories, insisting on their plausibility in the face of overwhelming evidence. In 2014 alone she managed to suggest that the Isis beheading victims were really actors, that the Scottish referendum had been rigged and that US personnel sent to Africa to help contain the ebola outbreak were really there as part of a plot to militarise the continent. Last year she joined the "chemtrail" conspiracists who believe that aircraft condensation trails in the sky are evidence of a secret government attempt at "geoengineering"."

"Wolf’s 1991 Fire with Fire – her call for a realpolitik in which 'sisterhood and capital' might be allies – misfired in Britain, partly because British feminism does retain a visceral if complex connection to political radicalism, to system-changing not tinkering."

"Wolf has tweeted that she overheard an Apple employee (who had attended a "top secret demo") describing vaccine technology that can enable time travel. She has posited that vaccinated people's urine and feces should be separated in our sewage system until their contaminating effect on our drinking water has been studied. She fears that while pro-vaccine propaganda has emphasized the danger the unvaccinated pose to the vaccinated, we have overlooked how toxic the vaccinated might be."

"Wolf’s story is instructive. The Beauty Myth, her 1990 blockbuster about the toll taken on women by the upward ratchet of unreasonable beauty standards, made her famous. In retrospect, the seeds of her intellectual decline were already present in that book, which contained both major statistical errors and a conspiratorial subtext that painted the influence of patriarchy as a deliberate plot. In the ensuing years, her work grew increasingly sloppy and absurd, until her reputation collapsed altogether in 2019 with the publication of Outrages."

"In the decade since Occupy, Wolf has connected the dots between an almost unfathomably large number of disparate bits of fact and fantasy. She has floated unsubstantiated speculations about the National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden ("not who he purports to be," hinting that he is an active spy). About US troops sent to build field hospitals in West Africa during the 2014 Ebola outbreak (not an attempt to stop the disease's spread, but a plot to bring it to the United States to justify "mass lockdowns" at home). About ISIS beheadings of US and British captives (possibly not real murders, but staged covert ops by the US government starring crisis actors). About the results of the 2014 Scottish referendum on independence, which the "no" vote won by a margin of more than 10 percentage points (potentially fraudulent, she claimed, based on an assortment of testimonies she collected). About the Green New Deal (not the demands of grassroots climate-justice movements, she said, but yet another elite-orchestrated cover for "fascism"). She has even spotted plots and conspiracies in oddly shaped clouds."

"To see Naomi Wolf, that histrionic proponent of the third wave, pop up to demand that the women accusing Julian Assange of sexual assault and rape be named (surely they have already been shamed) is a logical conclusion of this deal. It is a dead end. Much of Wolf's work is privileged narcissism dressed up as struggle. The Beauty Myth did not have an original thought in it, but never mind, it remains the only feminist text read by many. Wolf and many of her contemporaries muddled the personal with the political to such a degree it is embarrassing. Wolf was snapped up by the media as she was beautiful – as though feminists couldn't be. Greer and Steinem were lookers, weren't they? Wolf's argument now about the anonymity of accusers in rape trials arrives on these shores a little after the Lib Dems dropped this peculiar proposal, which was never in their manifesto anyway."

"Wolf actually compared him to Oscar Wilde. The similarity is that they were both in solitary confinement. Practically the same person then? Of course, Wolf has every right to think what she likes about Assange's accusers – and to change her mind as she did about abortion – but what kind of feminism is she now espousing? I find it very difficult to know."

"The war against the self is the internalization of the war against nature. We have been taught that we need an act of will to overcome our base natures. But when we try too hard to be good, we only separate ourselves from others."

"Constrained by habits and acculturalization, we have less choice than we imagine. Many apparently momentous decisions were actually determined within us long ago. In the long run, the most powerful choice we can make is where to focus our attention. Attention is healing. Attention is the bridge in relationship. And attention facilitates change and learning."

"Every culture has a Story of the People to give meaning to the world. Part conscious and part unconscious, it consists of a matrix of agreements, narratives, and symbols that tell us why we are here, where we are headed, what is important, and even what is real. I think we are entering a new phase in the dissolution of our Story of the People, and therefore, with some lag time, of the edifice of civilization built on top of it.... But the new mythos has not yet emerged. We will abide for a time in the space between stories. Those of you who have been through it on a personal level know that it is a very precious - some might say sacred - time. Then we are in touch with the real. Each disaster lays bare the real underneath our stories. The terror of a child, the grief of a mother, the honesty of not knowing why. In such moments we discover our humanity. We come to each other’s aid, human to human. We take care of each other. That’s what keeps happening every time there is a calamity, before the beliefs, the ideologies, the politics take over again. How can we prepare? We cannot prepare. But we are being prepared."

"We seek to move from the self of separation to the self of relationship that knows that everything outside is also inside. Then we are not alone. This is not something we can accomplish in the normal sense of the word. It cannot be another achievement of the separate self. Rather, it is a gift we can receive—and it is a gift we can pass on."

"We live within a cultural mythology that tells us we are separate beings in competitive relation for power, even for survival. We long to return to a culture of inclusiveness, cooperation, and the sharing of gifts."

"Miracles are not the intercession of an external, divine agency in violoation of the laws of nature. A miracles is something impossible from an old understanding of reality, and possible from a new one."

"How much freer and happier we would feel, and how much more powerful we would be, if only we stopped struggling against the grain of our natural gifts and inclinations, stopped trying to be what we are not, and instead used willpower to stay true to an exciting and joyful life purpose."

"No matter how complete the despair, no matter how bitter the cynicism, a possibility beckons of a world more beautiful and a life more magnificent than what we know today. Though we may rationalize it, it is not rational. We become aware of it in moments, gaps in the rush and press of modern life. These moments come to us alone in nature, or with a baby, making love, playing with children, caring for a dying person, making music for the sake of music or beauty for the sake of beauty. At such times, a simple and easy joy shows us the futility of the vast, life-consuming program of management and control."

"We intuit also that something similar is possible collectively."

"I write of a coming shift from a profit-taking economy to a gift economy, from an economy of ‘how can I take the most?’ to ‘how can I best give of my gifts?’ This future, in which the anxiety of "making a living" no longer drives us, will arise out of the transformation in the human sense of self that is gathering today. But it is not only a future. We can live it now."

"The fact that the regime of separation appears to be reaching new heights, the fact that the whole globe is falling into the grip of the monetization of life and the commodification of relationship, the fact that the numbering, labeling, and controlling of the world and everything in it is approaching unprecedented extremes, does not mean that prospects for a more beautiful world are receding into the distance. Rather, like a wave rolling toward shore, the Age of Separation rears up to its maximum height even as it hollows out in the moment before it crashes. This crash, inevitable eons ago, is upon us today. As for the world that we can build thereafter, we can see glimpses of it in all the ‘alternatives’ presented today with so little effect… Deep deep down, we all know that a much better world is possible, and more than possible, certain, someday."

"In religion, [we find] the pursuit of an ultimate aim, such as salvation or enlightenment, from which all other good things flow. How like the unlimited aim of money! I wonder what the effect would be on our spirituality if we gave up on the pursuit of a unitary abstract goal that we believe to be the key to everything else. How would it feel to release the endless campaign to improve ourselves, to make progress toward a goal? What would it be like just to play instead, just to be? Like wealth, enlightenment is a goal that knows no limit, and in both cases the pursuit of it can enslave. In both cases, I think the object of the pursuit is a spurious substitute for a diversity of things that people really want."

"When one is aligned with the purpose of service, acts that seem exceptionally courageous to others are a matter of course. When one experiences the world as abundant, then acts of generosity are natural, since there is no doubt about continued supply. When one sees other people as reflections of oneself, forgiveness becomes second nature, as one realizes “But for the grace of God, so go I.” When one appreciates the order, beauty, mystery, and connectedness of the universe, a deep joy and cheerfulness arises that nothing can shake. When one sees time as abundant and life as infinite, one develops superhuman patience. When one lets go of the limitations of reductionism, objectivity, and determinism, technologies become possible that the science of separation cannot countenance. When one lets go of the story of the discrete and separate self, amazing intuitive and perceptual capabilities emerge from lifelong latency."

"The things that we think we want are often substitutes for what we really want, and the pleasures we seek are less than the joy that they distract us from. From the normal vantage point, it certainly seems that only with discipline can we withstand the temptations that surround us: overeating, drugs, video games, mindless internet surfing, and everything else we consume. These things are undeniably destructive to our own lives and beyond; therefore, it would seem, we cannot always trust desire at all. But when we recognize that these are not really what we desire, our goal becomes not to suppress desire but to identify the true want or need, and to fulfill it. That is no trivial task; it is a profound path of self-realization."

"Boredom is so endemic to our culture, particularly among youth, that we imagine it to be a near-universal default state of human existence. In the absence of outside stimuli we are bored. Yet…boredom is virtually unique to Western culture (and by extension to the global culture it increasingly dominates).…greed like boredom is absent in most hunter-gatherer cultures based on a more open conception of self."

"The unstoppable compulsion to act, in bigger and wiser ways than you knew possible, has already been set in motion. I’m urging you to trust in that."

"Not blaming ourselves for mistakes is the flip side of not taking credit for our acts of courage or creativity or leadership, or our good ideas."

"There is a direct relationship between the absence of celebrity and the presence of good-to-great results. Why? First, when you have a celebrity, the company turns into “the one genius with 1,000 helpers.” It creates a sense that the whole thing is really about the CEO. At a deeper level, we found that for leaders to make something great, their ambition has to be for the greatness of the work and the company, rather than for themselves."

"This is not a book about charismatic visionary leaders. It is not about visionary product concepts or visionary market insights. Nor even is it about having a corporate vision. This is a book about something far more important, enduring, and substantial. This is a book about visionary companies. What is a visionary company? Visionary companies are premier institutions -- the crown jewels -- in their industries, widely admired by their peers and having a long track record of making a significant impact on the world around them. The key point is that a visionary company is an organization -- an institution. All individual leaders, no matter how charismatic or visionary, eventually die; and all visionary products and services -- all "great ideas" -- eventually become obsolete. Indeed, entire markets can become obsolete and disappear. Yet visionary companies prosper over long periods of time, through multiple product life cycles and multiple generations of active leaders."

"Those who built the visionary companies wisely understood that it is better to understand who you are than where you are going — for where you are going will almost certainly change"

"Core values = The organization’s essential and enduring tenets – a small set of general guiding principles, not to be confused with specific cultural or operating practices, and not to be compromised for financial gain or short-term expediency."

"The good news is that one of the key elements of being a visionary company is strikingly simple: Good old-fashioned hard work, dedication to improvement, and continually building for the future will take you a long way... The bad news is that creating a visionary company requires huge quantities of good old-fashioned hard work, dedication to improvement, and continually building for the future. There are no shortcuts. There are no magic potions. There are no work-arounds. To build a visionary company, you’ve got to be ready for the long, hard pull. Success is never final."

"It is better to first get the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats, and then figure out where to drive."

"The most effective leaders of companies in transition are the quiet, unassuming people whose inner wiring is such that the worst circumstances bring out their best. They're unflappable, they're ready to die if they have to. But you can trust that, when bad things are happening, they will become clearheaded and focused."

"For no matter what we achieve, if we don't spend the vast majority of our time with people we love and respect, we cannot possibly have a great life. But if we spend the vast majority of our time with people we love and respect – people we really enjoy being on the bus with and who will never disappoint us – then we will almost certainly have a great life, no matter where the bus goes. The people we interviewed from the good-to-great companies clearly loved what they did, largely because they loved who they did it with."

"Most businesses -— like most of anything else in life -— fall somewhere between mediocre and good. Few are great. When you compare great companies with good ones, many widely practiced business norms turn out to correlate with mediocrity, not greatness. So, then, why would we want to import the practices of mediocrity into the social sectors?"

"A culture of discipline is not a principle of business, it is a principle of greatness."

"Good is the enemy of great. That good is the enemy of great is not just a business problem. It is a human problem"

"I call myself bisexual because I acknowledge that I have in myself the potential to be attracted – romantically and/or sexually – to people of more than one sex and/or gender, not necessarily at the same time, not necessarily in the same way, and not necessarily to the same degree."

"The bullets bursted [sic] at the time of the war, and we used to die with bullets, but now let us die quietly."

"[Speaking to a crowd regarding the sale of tribal land to the US Government] My friends, you have all heard what my father-in-law says, but I do not think he is right. He believes what the white people tell him; but this is only another trick of the whites to take our land away from us, and they have played these tricks before. We do not want to trust the white people. They come to use with sweet talk, but they do not mean it. We will not sign any more papers for these white men."

"Just a few minutes."

"Mr. Lelar gave me a paper for the arrest of Crow Dog. Found defendant on a hill between White River and Rosebud Creek, where I made the arrest. Defendant had no clothes at the time, except a blanket, breechclout, and leggings and was on horseback. I did as I was ordered and took defendant to Fort Niobara."

"About the hides I will ask you. Those that are killed on the block. That ought to go to the poor people and the old women. The Great Father [US Government] when we went down there said he would agree to take all our hides at $3 apiece, but we don’t get that and I wish you would fix that again. I would rather get $4 for my hides. There are a good many poor people and old women that have no one to look out for them, and they ought to get those hides."

"One of the handsomest men in his race. His profile ... reminds one of Alexander the Great, so strong and chaste it is outline ... a good type of intellectual and progressive man."

"Talking to you through an interpreter is a good deal like a man trying to kiss his wife through a pane of glass."

"Captain Cragie U. S. A. arrived from the Rosebud agency. He says that Hollow Horn Bear is inciting the Indians. The hostiles will permit no freight to be handled until the old rate is restored. The captain looks for trouble very soon."

"Hollow Horn Bear was a friend of the white people and a Christian. He had few equals among his people."

"Hollow Horn Bear hopes to take home about 50,000 copies of his picture on the $5 certificates."

"Some day the earth will weep, she will beg for her life, she will cry with tears of blood. You will make a choice, if you will help her or let her die, and when she dies, you too will die."

"Saddam gave us a lot of things. The development of the country ... but I think what he took away from us in the meantime, was our very souls. We got into a stage where we were fearing each other, where husbands and wives didn't talk to each other, where parents were afraid to express anything in front of their kids because the teachers often asked the kids, 'what does daddy think of uncle Saddam? What does your mummy think of uncle Saddam?.' And there are horror stories of parents being executed because of the child."

"I woke up in the middle of the night with the sound of heavy explosion. It was deep at night. I do not remember what time it was. I just remember the sound was so heavy and so very shocking. Everything in my room was shaking -- my heart, my windows, my bed, everything. I looked out the windows and I saw a full half-circle of explosion. I thought it was just like the movies, but the movies had not conveyed them in the powerful image that I was seeing full of bright red and orange and gray, and a full circle of explosion. And I kept on staring at it until it disappeared. I went back to my bed, and I prayed, and I secretly thanked God that that missile did not land on my family's home, that it did not kill my family that night. Thirty years have passed, and I still feel guilty about that prayer, for the next day, I learned that that missile landed on my brother's friend's home and killed him and his father, but did not kill his mother or his sister. His mother showed up the next week at my brother's classroom and begged seven-year-old kids to share with her any picture they may have of her son, for she had lost everything."

"I grew up in war-torn Iraq, and I believe that there are two sides of wars and we've only seen one side of it. We only talk about one side of it. But there's another side that I have witnessed as someone who lived in it and someone who ended up working in it."

"I grew up with the colors of war -- the red colors of fire and blood, the brown tones of earth as it explodes in our faces and the piercing silver of an exploded missile, so bright that nothing can protect your eyes from it. I grew up with the sounds of war -- the staccato sounds of gunfire, the wrenching booms of explosions, ominous drones of jets flying overhead and the wailing warning sounds of sirens. These are the sounds you would expect, but they are also the sounds of dissonant concerts of a flock of birds screeching in the night, the high-pitched honest cries of children and the thunderous, unbearable silence. "War," a friend of mine said, "is not about sound at all. It is actually about silence, the silence of humanity.""

"I have learned not only that the colors and the sounds of war are the same, but the fears of war are the same. You know, there is a fear of dying."

"We have been so consumed with seemingly objective discussions of politics, tactics, weapons, dollars and casualties. This is the language of sterility."

"We are missing stories of women who are literally keeping life going in the midst of wars. Do you know -- do you know that people fall in love in war and go to school and go to factories and hospitals and get divorced and go dancing and go playing and live life going? And the ones who are keeping that life are women."

"There are two sides of war. There is a side that fights, and there is a side that keeps the schools and the factories and the hospitals open. There is a side that is focused on winning battles, and there is a side that is focused on winning life. There is a side that leads the front-line discussion, and there is a side that leads the back-line discussion. There is a side that thinks that peace is the end of fighting, and there is a side that thinks that peace is the arrival of schools and jobs. There is a side that is led by men, and there is a side that is led by women. And in order for us to understand how do we build lasting peace, we must understand war and peace from both sides. We must have a full picture of what that means."

"They are women who are standing on their feet in spite of their circumstances, not because of it. Think of how the world can be a much better place if, for a change, we have a better equality, we have equality, we have a representation and we understand war, both from the front-line and the back-line discussion."

"Rumi, a 13th-century Sufi poet, says, "Out beyond the worlds of right-doings and wrong-doings, there is a field. I will meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase 'each other' no longer makes any sense." I humbly add that out beyond the worlds of war and peace, there is a field, and there are many women and men [who] are meeting there. Let us make this field a much bigger place. Let us all meet in that field."

"I was well aware of 's very problematic past, from its promotion of meritocracy in place of a management system to the horrible treatment and abuse of its female employees and other people from diverse backgrounds. I myself had experienced harassment on GitHub. As an example, a couple of years ago someone created a dozen repositories with racist names and added me to the repos, so my GitHub profile had racial slurs on it until their support team got around to shutting them down a few days after I reported the incident. I didn't get the sense that the company really cared about harassment."

"As a seasoned developer I have certain quirks, opinions, and common patterns that I fall back on. Having to explain to another person why I am approaching a problem in a particular way is really good for helping me break bad habits and challenge my assumptions, or for providing validation for good problem solving skills."

"is sometimes necessary on a distributed team, but never in my career have I seen it taken to the level that GitHub has. Asynchronous communication is definitely not my strongest area. When I see a text box on screen, I tend to be very terse and direct instead of typing out a wall of text."

"Values that are expressed but that don't change behavior are not really values, they are lies that you tell yourself."

"GitHub has made some very public commitments to turning its culture around, but I feel now that these statements are just PR. I am increasingly of the opinion that in hiring me and other prominent activists, they were attempting to use our names and reputations to convince the world that they took diversity, , and social justice issues seriously. And I feel naive for having fallen for it."

"To begin with, let me state briefly where I was 35 years ago as an almost typical Methodist minister. Then I will try to outline some of the experiences which kept nudging me on toward where I am today. Back then, at 48 years of age, I was doing what I thought I could to promote world peace and human brotherhood. For example, I worked hard to bring about racial integration in the churches I served as pastor... in the early days of church integration, when some Methodist church members thought it their duty to petition their bishop, seeking to get rid of such a radical pastor... But I did not consider myself radical, even on social issues, just not as cautious as some."

"Then in 1980 Benjamin Creme came to Los Angeles for his first lecture here. Though I was not at the meeting, a member of my group was, and he brought me a copy of the first booklet available then about the reappearance of the Christ. At first reading it seemed a bit too far out. But the more I meditated on it and compared it to DK’s teachings, the more convinced I became. So the next time Creme came to town I was right on hand to hear him and to experience the marvelous energies of the overshadowing of him by Maitreya. This left no doubts in my mind about the validity and unparalleled importance of these events, happening and to happen."

"So in summary you can see that in my experience there has been no sudden blast of enlightenment, no blinding light such as Paul of Tarsus experienced on the Damascus road. Rather I have experienced a series of smaller steps, some taken with no hesitation, others with some fear and trembling."

"Is the second coming of the Christ, or His reappearance, about to take place? Is He already here, in physical form, and soon to appear on international television, as some affirm?... Many of these messages predict that He is coming to blast most of humanity, all but an elect few, with dismay, doom and destruction. But fortunately there is also a far different kind of message coming to us ---- one of hope and joy, of goodwill, and peace. Certainly His coming in Palestine at the beginning of our era was heralded with glad tidings of joy and peace, by the heavenly host of angels, as recorded in the gospel of Luke. And we read that the father of John the Baptist looked to His coming, When the day shall dawn upon us from on high, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. (Luke 1:78-9)"

"Some of us dare to believe that He is about to show His face to the whole world, and that again it is to be an occurrence to usher in joy, hope and peace. Even away back in the New Testament we have assurances to this effect..."

"We also are given indication of the sources of what may be the greatest resistance. Consider these statements: ‘‘It is highly improbable that the reactionary churchmen will be the ones to recognize Him. He may appear in a totally unexpected guise; who is to say whether He will come as a politician, an economist, a leader of the people (arising from the midst of them), a scientist, or an artist.’’ [[Alice Bailey Reappearance of the Christ p. 17)"

"This emphasis on sharing, justice, brotherhood, and love is like a powerful refrain, running through His appeal to us, and pointing up another facet of our unique opportunity, another facet of the diamond of our joy, as we begin now to share, and to make known His requirements of sharing, justice, brotherhood and love."

"Why did Christian teaching not bear any obvious information relating to esoteric knowledge, including reincarnation?... the Bible is full of esoteric wisdom. But it may take some insight to discover it. It seems to be the case, especially in the past, that esoteric information, when embodied in literature made available to the public, was veiled beneath exoteric or more obvious interpretations. For if the deep symbolic meanings in biblical literature had been made obvious, on the surface, it is questionable whether the Bible could have survived, especially through the dark ages. It probably would have been discarded as irrelevant. It seems to be an indication of genius on the part of many writers, whose works later were gathered together to make up the Bible, that they produced material which could be interpreted on at least three different levels. The first level is of course a quite literal one. The second is a bit more sophisticated but still subject to interpretation by the concrete mind of the orthodox religionist. The third carries an esoteric meaning."

"If we read the 13th chapter of Matthew with open eyes we find that Jesus' disciples were deeply puzzled as to why he spoke to the curious crowds in these word pictures, with such deeply hidden meanings. So they put the question to Jesus. He replied: This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. But He was planting the good seed deep in their lives to ponder upon, so that hopefully some time it would sprout, grow, and as He suggested bring forth grain, some a hundred fold, some sixty, some thirty.... But to His disciples Jesus said: Blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. As you and I read the Bible let us ask ourselves: How acute is our esoteric vision and hearing? Geoffrey Hodson, a theosophical writer, in his book The Hidden Wisdom in the Holy Bible, Vol. I, gives us excellent clues to the symbolic meanings of the Bible. One of his suggestions is that we look at many biblical passages not for historical information, but that we consider them as happenings within our lives..."

"The initiate Paul gives a number of clues about this hidden wisdom. In writing to the church at Corinth he says: I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it, and even yet you are not ready. (1 Cor. 3:2)... So as we read the Bible let us perceive it with seeing eyes and inner understanding. The Christ indicates that when we do that we will discover the pearl of great price. Can we sense the inner meaning of this? When we make that discovery we will be ready to give up all our accumulated treasures for this One Great Jewel! Are we ready?"

"Journey Into Light and Joy, DeVorss & Company (December 1979)"

"The spirit of our age is fraught with paradox. It is at the same time pragmatic and transcendental. It values both enlightenment and mystery... power and humility ... interdependence and individuality. It is simultaneously political and apolitical. Its movers and shakers include individuals who are impeccably Establishment allied with one-time sign-carrying radicals."

""It" has infected medicine, education, social science, hard science, even government with its implications. It is characterized by fluid organizations reluctant to create hierarchical structures, averse to dogma. It operates on the principle that change can only be facilitated, not decreed. It is short on manifestos. It seems to speak to something very old. And perhaps, by integrating magic and science, art and technology, it will succeed where all the king's horses and all the king's men failed."

"In their sharing of strategies, their linkage, and their recognition of each other by subtle signals, the participants were not merely cooperating with one another. They were in collusion. "It" — this movement — was a conspiracy! At first I was reluctant to use the term. I didn't want to sensationalize what was happening, and the word conspiracy usually has negative associations. Then I came across a book of spiritual exercises in which the Greek novelist, Nikos Kazantzakis, said he wished to signal his comrades, "like conspirators," that they might unite for the sake of the earth... Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau... quoted from a passage in which the French scientist-priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin urged a "conspiracy of love.""

"Conspire, in its literal sense, means "to breathe together." It is an intimate joining. To make clear the benevolent nature of this joining, I chose the word Aquarian."

"Although I am unacquainted with astrological lore, I was drawn to the symbolic power of the pervasive dream in our popular culture: that after a dark, violent age, the Piscean, we are entering a millennium of love and light—in the words of the popular song, "The Age of Aquarius," the time of "the mind's true liberation.""

"Whether or not it was written in the stars, a different age seems to be upon us; and Aquarius, the waterbearer in the ancient zodiac, symbolizing flow and the quenching of an ancient thirst, is an appropriate symbol."

"A leaderless but powerful network is working to bring about radical change in the United States. Its members have broken with certain key elements of Western thought, and they may even have broken continuity with history. This network is the Aquarian Conspiracy. It is a conspiracy without a political doctrine. Without a manifesto. With conspirators who seek power only to disperse it, and whose strategies are pragmatic, even scientific, but whose perspective sounds so mystical that they hesitate to discuss it. Activists asking different kinds of questions, challenging the establishment from within."

"Broader than reform, deeper than revolution, this benign conspiracy for a new human agenda has triggered the most rapid cultural realignment in history. The great shuddering, irrevocable shift overtaking us is not a new political, religious, or philosophical system. It is a new mind — the ascendance of a startling worldview that gathers into its framework breakthrough science and insights from earliest recorded thought. The Aquarian Conspirators range across all levels of income and education, from the humblest to the highest. The Aquarian Conspirators range across all levels of income and education, from the humblest to the highest. There are schoolteachers and office workers, famous scientists, government officials and lawmakers, artists and millionaires, taxi drivers and celebrities, leaders in medicine, education, law, psychology. Some are open in their advocacy, and their names may be familiar. Others are quiet about their involvement, believing they can be more effective if they are not identified with ideas that have all too often been misunderstood."

"Whatever their station or sophistication, the conspirators are linked, made kindred by their inner discoveries and earthquakes. You can break through old limits, past inertia and fear, to levels of fulfillment that once seemed impossible ... to richness of choice, freedom, human closeness. You can be more productive, confident, comfortable with insecurity. Problems can be experienced as challenges, a chance for renewal, rather than stress. Habitual defensiveness and worry can fall away. It can all be otherwise."

"In the beginning, certainly, most did not set out to change society. In that sense, it is an unlikely kind of conspiracy. But they found that their lives had become revolutions. Once a personal change began in earnest, they found themselves re-thinking everything, examining old assumptions, looking anew at their work and relationships, health, political power and “experts," goals and values."

"They have coalesced into small groups in every town and institution. They have formed what one called "national non-organizations." Some conspirators are keenly aware of the national, even international, scope of the movement and are active in linking others. They are at once antennae and transmitters, both listening and communicating. They amplify the activities of the conspiracy by networking and pamphleteering, articulating the new options through books, lectures, school curricula, even Congressional hearings and the national media."

"Others have centered their activity within their specialty, forming groups within existing organizations and institutions, exposing their co-workers to new ideas, often calling on the larger network for support, feedback, back-up information."

"New perspectives give birth to new historic ages, Humankind has had many dramatic revolutions of understanding — great leaps, sudden liberation from old limits. . . A paradigm is a scheme for understanding and explaining certain aspects of reality. . . Usually at the point of crisis, someone has a great heretical idea. A powerful new insight explains the apparent contradictions. It introduces a new principle — a new perspective. New paradigms are nearly always received with coolness, even mockery and hostility. The idea may appear bizarre, even fuzzy, at first because the discoverer made an intuitive leap and does not have all the data in place yet."

"When you understand the basic change taking place in any one major area, it is easier to make sense of the others. This discovery of a new pattern transcends explanation. The shift is qual-itative, sudden, the result of neurological processes too rapid and complex to be tracked by the conscious mind. Although logical explanations can be laid out up to a point, the seeing of a pattern is not sequential but all-at-once. If a new concept does not click into place for you on first encounter, read on. As you move through the book you will come upon many related ideas, connections, examples, metaphors, analogies, and illustrative stories. In time, patterns will emerge, the shifts will occur. From the new perspective, old questions may seem suddenly irrelevant."

"Once you have grasped the essence of this transformation, many otherwise inexplicable events and trends in the immediate environment or in the news may fall into place. It is easier to understand changes in one's family, one's community, the society. In the end we will see many of the darkest events in the context of a brightening historic picture, much as one stands back from a pointillist painting to get its meaning."

"In literature there is a trusted device known as the Black Moment, the point where all seems lost just before the final rescue. Its counterpart in tragedy is the White Moment — a sudden rush of hope, a saving chance, just before the inevitable disaster. Some might speculate that the Aquarian Conspiracy, with its promise of last-minute turnabout, is only a White Moment in Earth's story; a brave, desperate try that will be eclipsed by tragedy — ecological, totalitarian, nuclear. Exeunt humankind. Curtain."

"We stand on the brink of a new age, Lewis Mumford said, the age of an open world, a time of renewal when a fresh release of spiritual energy in the world culture may unleash new possibilities. “The sum of all our days is just our beginning." Seen with new eyes, our lives can be transformed from accidents into adventures. We can transcend the old conditioning, the dirt-poor expectations. We have new ways to be born, humane and symbolic ways to die, different ways to be rich."

"The emergence of the Aquarian Conspiracy in the late twentieth century is rooted in the myths and metaphors, the prophecy and poetry, of the past. Throughout history there were lone individuals here and there, or small bands at the fringes of science or religion, who, based on their own experiences, believed that people might someday transcend narrow “normal" consciousness and reverse the brutality and alienation of the human condition."

"The premonition was recorded, from time to time, that a minority of individuals would someday be yeast enough to leaven a whole society. Serving as a magnet culture, they would attract order around them, transforming the whole. The central idea was always the same: Only through a new mind can humanity remake itself, and the potential for such a new mind is natural."

"These courageous few have been history's radar, a Distant Early Warning System for the planet. As we will see, some of them expressed their insights in a romantic vein, others as intellectual concepts, but all were pointing to a larger view. "Open your eyes," they were saying, "there is more." More depth, height, dimension, perspectives, choices than we had imagined. They celebrated the freedom found in the larger context and warned of the dangerous blindness of the prevailing view. Long before global war, ecological stress, and nuclear crisis struck, they feared for the future of a people without a context."

"Although they themselves moved beyond the dominant ideas of their day, they carried few of their contemporaries with them. Most often they were misunderstood, lonely, even ostracized. Until this century, with its rapid communication, there was little chance for linkage among these scattered individuals. Their ideas, however, served as fuel for future generations."

"Those who had premonitions of transformation believed that future generations might detect the invisible laws and forces around us: the vital networks of relationship, the ties among all aspects of life and knowledge, the interweaving of people, the rhythms and harmonies of the universe, the connectedness that captures parts and makes them wholes, the patterns that draw meaning from the web of the world. Humankind, they said, might recognize the subtle veils imposed on seeing; might awaken to the screen of custom, the prison of language and culture, the bonds of circumstance."

"The themes of transformation have emerged with increasing strength and clarity over time, gathering impetus as communication expanded. At first the traditions were transmitted intimately, by alchemists. Gnostics, cabalists, and hermetics. With the invention of moveable type in the mid-fifteenth century, they became a kind of open secret but were available only to the literate few and were often suppressed by church or state. "..."

"Meister Eckhart, the German churchman and mystic of the fourteenth century; Giovanni Pico della Mirandola in the fifteenth; Jacob Boehme, a German, in the sixteenth and seventeenth; Emanuel Swedenborg in the seventeenth and eighteenth. We are spiritually free, they said, the stewards of our own evolution. Humankind has a choice. We can awaken to our true nature. Drawing fully from our inner resources we can achieve a new dimension of mind; we can see more."

""I see through the eye, not with it," said poet-engraver William Blake, who lived in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The enemy of whole vision, he said, was our reasoning power's divorce from imagination, "closing itself in, as steel." This half-mind was forever making laws and moral judgments and smothering spontaneity, feeling, art. To Blake, his age itself stood as the accuser, characterized by fear, conformity, jealousy, cynicism, the spirit of the machine. Yet this dark force was only a "Spectre," a ghost that could be exorcised from the minds it haunted."

"The Transcendentalists — Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, and Margaret Fuller, along with several dozen others — rebelled against what seemed the dead, dry intellectualism of the day. Something was missing — an invisible dimension of reality they sometimes called the Oversoul. They sought understanding from many sources: experience, intuition, the Quaker idea of the Inner Light, the Bhagavad Gita, the German Romantic philosophers, historian Thomas Carlyle, poet Samuel Coleridge, Swedenborg, the English metaphysical writers of the seventeenth century. Their term for intuition was "transcendental reason." They anticipated the consciousness research of our time in their belief that the brain's other mode of knowing is not an alternative to normal reasoning but a kind of transcendent logic — too fast and complex for us to follow with the step-by-step reasoning powers of our everyday consciousness."

"In Cosmic Consciousness, written in 1901, Richard Bucke, a Canadian physician, described the experience of an electrifying awareness of oneness with all life. Persons who experienced such states of consciousness were becoming more numerous, he said, walking the earth and breathing the air with us, but at the same time walking another earth and breathing another air of which we know little. "This new race is in the act of being born from us, and in the near future it will occupy and possess the earth.""

"In 1902 William James, the great American psychologist, redefined religion not as dogma but as experience — the discovery of a new context, an unseen order with which the individual might achieve harmony. Our ordinary consciousness filters out awareness of this mysterious, enlarged dimension, yet until we have come to terms with its existence we must beware lest we make a "premature foreclosure on reality." Of all the creatures of earth, James said, only human beings can change their pattern. "Man alone is the architect of his destiny. The greatest revolution in our generation is that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.""

"Gradually Western thinkers were beginning to attack the very foundations of Western thought. We were naive in our expectation that mechanistic science would explain the mysteries of life. These spokesmen for a larger worldview pointed out how our institutions were violating nature: Our education and philosophy failed to value art, feelings, intuition."

"In The Open Conspiracy: Blueprints for a World Revolution (1928), novelist-historian H. G. Wells proposed that the time was nearly ripe for the coalescence of small groups into a flexible network that could spawn global change. “All this world is heavy with the promise of greater things," Wells once said, "and a day will come, one day in the unending succession of days, when beings who are now latent in our loins shall stand upon this earth as one stands upon a footstool and shall touch the stars.""

"Carl Jung, the Swiss psychoanalyst, was drawing attention to a transcendent dimension of consciousness usually ignored in the West, the union of the intellect with the intuitive, pattern-seeing mind. Jung introduced an even larger context, the idea of the collective unconscious: a dimension of shared symbols, racial memory, pooled knowledge of the species. He wrote of the “daimon" that drives the seeker to search for wholeness."

"After a visit to the United States in 1931, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin sailed back to China from the San Francisco Bay. Enroute the Jesuit paleontologist framed an essay, "The Spirit of the Earth," inspired by his growing conviction that a conspiracy of individuals from every layer of American society was engaged in an effort "to raise to a new stage the edifice of life." Back in Peking he set forth his major thesis: Mind has been undergoing successive reorganizations throughout the history of evolution until it has reached a crucial point — the discovery of its own evolution. This new awareness — evolving mind recognizing the evolutionary process — "is the future natural history of the world." It will eventually become collective. It will envelop the planet and will crystallize as a species-wide enlightenment he called "Omega Point."...No one can call himself modern who disregards this evolutionary thrust, he said. To our descendants it will be as familiar and instinctive an idea as the third dimension of space is to a baby."

"The Phenomenon of Man was limited to private circulation during Teilhard's lifetime because the church forbade him to publish it. In it, he warned that a mind awakened to this evolutionary concept may experience fear and disorientation. It must create a new equilibrium for everything that had once been tidy in its inner world. “It is dazzled when it emerges from its dark prison.""

"In the late 1930s a Polish count, Alfred Korzybski, pointed out yet another aspect of consciousness — language. Language molds thought, he said, laying out the principles of General Semantics. We confuse it with reality; it creates false certainties. With words we try to isolate things that can only exist in continuity. We fail to see process, change, movement. If we are to experience reality, Korzybski and his followers said, we must acknowledge the limits of language."

"The egg is breaking, the chromosomes are splitting to go forward with a new pattern of life. Those of us who seem most alien . . . are the ones who are going forward to create the life as yet inchoate. We who are affected cannot make ourselves clear... This is the era when apocalyptic visions are to be fulfilled. We are on the brink of a new life, entering a new domain. In what language can we describe things for which there are as yet no new names? And how describe relations? We can only divine the nature of those to whom we are attracted, the forces to which we willingly yield obedience. . . ."

"In a 1940 letter Aldous Huxley said that although he was profoundly pessimistic about collective humanity at the moment, he was "profoundly optimistic about individuals and groups of individuals existing on the margins of society." The British author, living in Los Angeles, was the hub of a kind of pre-Aquarian conspiracy, an international network of intellectuals, artists, and scientists interested in the notion of transcendence and transformation. They disseminated new ideas, supported each other's efforts, and wondered whether anything would ever come of it. Many of Huxley's interests were so advanced that they did not come into their own until the decade after his death. When such ideas were heresies, he was a proponent of consciousness research, decentralization in government and the economy, paranormal healing, the uses of altered awareness, visual retraining, and acupuncture."

"In the mid-1950s psychoanalyst Robert Lindner touched off controversy by his prophetic warning that there was an impending "mutiny of the young": Into them we have bred our fears and insecurities, upon them we have foisted our mistakes and misconceptions. In our stead they are expressing the unrelieved rage, the tension, and the terrible frustration of the world they were born into They are imprisoned by the blunders and delusions of their predecessors, and like all prisoners, they are mutineers in their hearts. Must We Conform? asked the title of a book he wrote in 1956. "The answer is a resounding No! No — not only because in the end we are creatures who cannot . . . but no because there is an alternate way of life available to us here and now. It is the way of positive rebellion, the path of creative protest." The key was enlarged awareness, Lindner said — recognition of how we are crippled by unconscious fears and motives. "I believe profoundly that the tide can be turned.""

"C. S. Lewis, novelist and essayist, described what seemed to him a kind of secret society of new men and women, "dotted here and there all over the earth." One could learn to recognize them, he said, and clearly they recognized each other."

"To make the best of both worlds. Oriental and European, the ancient and modern — what am I saying? To make the best of all the worlds — the worlds already realized within the various cultures and, beyond them, the worlds of still unrealized potentialities."

"Indeed, diverse cultures were impinging on each other more by the day. In his enormously influential Understanding Media (1964), Marshall McLuhan described the coming world as a “global village," unified by communications technology and rapid dissemination of information. This electrified world, with its instant linkage, would bear no resemblance to the preceding and of the human family, a single consciousness?"

"Psychologist Abraham Maslow described an innate human drive beyond basic survival and emotional needs — a hunger for meaning and transcendence. This concept of "self-actualization" rapidly gained adherents. "It is increasingly clear," Maslow wrote, "that a philosophical revolution is under way. A comprehensive system is swiftly developing, like a tree beginning to bear fruit on every branch at the same time." He described a group he thought of as Transcenders, "advance scouts for the race," individuals who far exceeded the traditional criteria for psychological health. He compiled a list of around three hundred creative, intelligent individuals and groups of individuals whose lives were marked by frequent "peak experiences" (a term he coined). This was his Eupsychean Network — literally, "of good soul." Transcenders were irresistibly drawn to each other, he said; two or three such people would find each other in a roomful of a hundred, and they were as likely to be businessmen, engineers, and politicians as poets and priests."

"In 1967 Barbara Marx Hubbard, a futurist moved by Teilhard's vision of evolving human consciousness, invited a thousand people around the world, including Maslow's network, to form a "human front" of those who shared a belief in the possibility of transcendent consciousness. Hundreds responded, including Lewis Mumford and Thomas Merton. Out of this grew a newsletter and later a loose-knit organization, the Committee for the Future."

"Erich Fromm, in Revolution of Hope (1968), foresaw a "new front," a movement that would combine the wish for profound social change with a new spiritual perspective; its aim would be the humanization of a technological world."

"If we look at the reality of the world from the viewpoint of the industrial era, it is clear that there is no hope But there is another way to look at our situation. We can discover the large number of people who have decided to change. ... If we do this, it seems equally impossible that we shall fail to solve our problems."

"George Cabot Lodge, statesman and Harvard business professor, said, "The United States is in the midst of a great transformation, comparable to the one that ended medievalism and shook its institutions to the ground. . . . The old ideas and assumptions that once made our institutions legitimate are being eroded. They are slipping away in the face of a changing reality, being replaced by different ideas as yet ill-formed, contradictory, unsettling.”"

"We are living at a time when history is holding its breath," said Arthur Clarke, author of Childhood's End and 2001 , "and the present is detaching itself from the past like an iceberg that has broken away from its moorings to sail across the boundless ocean."

"Until a few years ago, claims that consciousness can be expanded and transformed rested on subjective evidence. Suddenly, first in the handful of laboratories of a few pioneer scientists, then in thousands of experiments around the world, the undeniable evidence began coming forth. Awakening, flow, freedom, unity, and synthesis are not "all in the mind," after all. They are in the brain as well. Something in conscious functioning is capable of profound change. The subjective accounts have been correlated with concrete evidence of physical change: higher levels of integration in the brain itself, more efficient processing, different "harmonics" of the brain's electrical rhythms, shifts in perceptual ability."

"Many researchers say they have been shaken by their own findings about changes in conscious functioning because of the implications for widespread social change. There are hard facts to face, not just soft speculation."

"The capacity for denial is an example of the body's sometimes short-sighted vision. Some of the body's automatic responses hurt over the long run more than they help. The formation of scar tissue, for example, prevents the nerves in the spine from reconnecting after an accident. In many injuries, swelling causes more damage than the original trauma."

"And it is the body's hysterical overreaction to a virus, rather than the virus itself, that makes us ill."

"Our ability to block our experience is an evolutionary dead end. Rather than experiencing and transforming pain, conflict, and fear, we often divert or dampen them with a kind of unwitting hypnosis. Over a lifetime, more and more stress accumulates. There is no release, and our consciousness narrows. The floodlight shrinks into the slender beam of a flashlight. We lose the vividness of colors, sensitivity to sounds, peripheral vision, sensitivity to others, emotional intensity. The spectrum of awareness becomes ever narrower."

"We have two essential strategies for coping: the way of avoidance or the way of attention."

"In his 1918 diary, Hermann Hesse recalled a dream in which he heard two distinct voices. The first told him to seek out forces to overcome suffering, to calm himself. It sounded like parents, school, Kant, the church fathers. But the second voice—which sounded farther off, like "primal cause"—said that suffering only hurts because you fear it, complain about it, flee it."

"The only way out of our suffering is through it. From an ancient Sanskrit writing: Do not try to drive pain away by pretending that it is not real. If you seek serenity in oneness, pain will vanish of its own accord."

"Conflict, pain, tension, fear, paradox... these are transformations trying to happen. Once we confront them, the transformative process begins."

"Another liberation — freedom from "attachment" — is perhaps for most Westerners the least understood idea in Eastern philosophy. To us "nonattachment" sounds coldblooded, and "desirelessness" sounds undesirable."

"We might more accurately think of nonattachment as nondependency. Much of our inner turbulence reflects the fear of loss: our dependence on people, circumstances, and things not really under our control. On some level we know that death, indifference, rejection, repossession, or high tide may leave us bereft in the morning. Still, we clutch desperately at things we cannot finally hold. Nonattachment is the most realistic of attitudes. It is freedom from wishful thinking, from always wanting things to be otherwise."

"By making us aware of the futility of this wishful thinking, the psychotechnologies help free us from unhealthy dependencies. We increase our capacity to love without bargaining or expectations, to enjoy without emotional mortgages. At the same time, enhanced awareness adds luster to simple things and everyday events, so that what may seem a turn toward a more austere life is often the discovery of subtler, less perishable riches."

"Another discovery: We are not liberated until we liberate others. So long as we need to control other people, however benign our motives, we are captive to that need. Giving them freedom, we free ourselves. And they are free to grow in their own way."

"Another discovery: uncertainty. Not just the uncertainty of the moment, which may pass, but oceanic uncertainty, mystery that washes across our beaches forever."

"Or, as Kazantzakis expressed it, the real meaning of enlightenment is "to gaze with undimmed eyes on all darknesses.""

"In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig described the risk of pressing reason to its furthest reaches, where it turns back on itself. "In the high country of the mind," he observed, "one has to become adjusted to the thinner air of uncertainty, and to the enormous magnitude of the questions asked""

"The more significant the question, the less likely there will be an unequivocal answer."

"Vocation is the process of making one's way toward something. It is a direction more than a goal. Following a peak experience, one of the conspirators, a housewife who later became a filmmaker, said, "I felt as if I'd been called to serve on somebody's plan for mankind." The conspirators typically say they feel as if they are cooperating with events rather than controlling them or suffering them, much as an aikido master augments his strength by aligning himself with existing forces, even those in opposition."

"The individual discovers a new kind of flexible will that helps in the vocation. This will has sometimes been called "intention." It is the opposite of accident, it represents a certain deliberateness, but it doesn't have the iron quality we usually associate with the will."

"To Buckminster Fuller, the commitment is "kind of mystical. The minute you begin to do what you want to do, it's really a different kind of life." Remarking on the same phenomenon, W. H. Murray said that commitment seems to enlist Providence. "All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamt would have come his way.""

"Whose American dream? The dream is a chameleon; it has changed again and again. For the first immigrants, America was a continent to explore and exploit, a haven for the unwanted and the dissenters—a new beginning. Gradually the dream became an ascetic and idealized image of democracy, bespeaking the age-old hope for justice and selfgovernance. All too quickly, that dream metamorphosed into an expansionist, materialist, nationalist, and even imperialist vision of wealth and domination—paternalism, Manifest Destiny. Yet even then, there was a competing Transcendentalist vision: excellence, spiritual riches, the unfolding of the latent gifts of the individual."

"As we shall see, there have always been two "bodies" of the American dream. One, the dream of tangibles, focuses on material well-being and practical, everyday freedoms. The other, like an etheric body extending from the material dream, seeks psychological liberation—a goal at once more essential and more elusive. The proponents of the latter dream have nearly always come from the comfortable social classes. Having achieved the first measure of freedom, they hunger for the second."

"The Original Dream. We have forgotten how radical that original dream was—how bold the founders of the democracy really were. They knew that they were framing a form of government that challenged all the aristocratic assumptions and top-heavy power structures of Western history. The Revolutionaries exploited every available means of communication. They linked their networks by energetic letter writing. Jefferson designed an instrument with five yoked pens for writing multiple copies of his letters. The new ideas were spread through pamphlets, weekly newspapers, broadsides, almanacs, and sermons."

"As historian James MacGregor Burns noted, they also formulated their protests as official appeals to the king "shipped across the Atlantic after suitable hometown publicity.""

"Hardly anyone expected the American uprising to succeed. Thousands of colonists emigrated to Canada or hid in the woods, certain that the king's armies would tear the colonial regiments to shreds. Nor did a majority of the people support the struggle for independence, even in theory. Historians estimate that one-third favored independence, one-third favored retaining British ties, and one-third were indifferent."

"The revolution was in the minds of the people. This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people was the real American Revolution. Long before the first shot is fired, the revolution begins. Long after truce is declared, it continues to overturn lives."

"Although it is rarely noted in histories of the American Revolution, many of the arch-Revolutionaries came from a tradition of mystical fraternity. Except for such traces as the symbols on the reverse side of the Great Seal and the dollar bill, little evidence remains of this esoteric influence (Rosicrucian, Masonic, and Hermetic). That sense of fraternity and spiritual chisement played an important role in the intensity of the Revolutionaries and their commitment to the realization of a democracy."

"A New Order of the Ages Begins, says the reverse side of the Great Seal, and the Revolutionaries meant it. The American experiment was consciously conceived as a momentous step in the evolution of the species. The cause of America is in great measure the cause of all mankind, Thomas Paine said in his inflammatory pamphlet Common Sense (1776)."

"In... Without Marx or Jesus, (1971) Jean-Francois Revel described the United States as the most eligible prototype nation for world revolution. "Today in America—the child of European imperialism—a new revolution is rising. It is the revolution of our time . . . and offers the only possible escape for mankind today." ...[Revel]...described the United States as the most eligible prototype nation for world revolution. Real revolutionary activity, he noted, consists of transforming reality, that is, in making reality conform more closely to one's ideal. When we speak of "revolution" we must necessarily speak of something that cannot be conceived or understood within the context of old ideas."

"The stuff of revolution, and its first success, must be the ability to innovate. In that sense, there is more revolutionary spirit in the United States today, even on the Right, than elsewhere on the Left. The relative freedom in the United States would make it possible for such a revolution to occur bloodlessly, Revel said."

"If that happened, and if one political civilization were exchanged for another, as seemed to be happening, the impact might be felt worldwide by osmosis. This radical transformation would need the simultaneous occurrence of smaller revolutions—in politics, society, international and interracial relations, cultural values, and technology and science."

"There also must be an internal critique of injustices, of the management of material and human resources, and of abuses of political power. Above all, there must be criticism of the culture itself: its morality, religion, customs, and arts. And there must be demand for respect of the individual's uniqueness, with the society regarded as the medium for individual development and for brotherhood."

"Like Transcendentalism, Revel's revolution would encompass "the liberation of the creative personality and the awakening of personal initiative" as opposed to the closed horizons of more repressive societies."

"The perturbation would come from the privileged classes, he said, because that is the way of revolutions. They are launched by those disenchanted with the culture's ultimate reward system."

"If a new prototype of society is to emerge, rather than a coup d'etat, dialogue and debate must occur at the highest levels."

"Recall the model of the paradigm shift introduced by Thomas Kuhn: Every important new idea in science sounds strange at first. As the physicist Niels Bohr put it, great innovations inevitably appear muddled, confusing, and incomplete, only half-understood even by their discoverers, and a mystery to everyone else. There is no hope, Bohr said, for any speculation that does not look absurd at first glance."

"If we stubbornly refuse to look at that which seems magical or incredible, we are in distinguished company. The French Academy announced at one point that it would not accept any further reports of meteorites, since it was clearly impossible for rocks to fall out of the sky. Shortly thereafter a rain of meteorites came close to breaking the windows of the Academy."

"Today we are on the brink of a new synthesis. In the past four centuries western science has experienced a continuous shattering and reforming of its basic concepts. Now the scientific community has begun to recognize striking correlations between their findings and those expressed abstrusely by ancient mystics. This is a convocation of visionary men and women pioneering this new synthesis."

"Mental states such as loneliness, compulsion, anguish, attachment, pain, and faith are not just "all in the head" but in the brain as well. Brain, mind, and body are a continuum. Our thoughts—intention, fear, images, suggestion, expectation— alter the brain's chemistry. And it works both ways; thoughts can be altered by changing the brain's chemistry with drugs, nutrients, oxygen. The brain is hopelessly complex. Biologist Lyall Watson spoke of the Catch-22 of brain research: "If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn't!""

"Science has always tried to understand nature by breaking things into their parts. Now it is overwhelmingly clear that wholes cannot he understood by analysis. This is one of those logical boomerangs, like the mathematical proof that no mathematical system can be truly coherent in itself."

"The Greek prefix syn ("together with"), as in synthesis, synergy, syntropy, becomes increasingly meaningful. When things come together something new happens. In relationship there is novelty, creativity, richer complexity. Whether we are talking about chemical reactions or human societies, molecules or international treaties, there are qualities that cannot be predicted by looking at the components."

"Half a century ago in Holism and Evolution Jan Smuts tried to synthesize Darwin's evolutionary theory, Einstein's physics, and his own insights to account for the evolution of mind as well as matter. Wholeness, Smuts said, is a fundamental characteristic of the universe—the product of nature's drive to synthesize."

"Because we have not understood the brain's ability to transform pain and disequilibrium, we have dampened it with tranquilizers or distracted it with whatever was at hand."

"Because we have not understood that wholes are more than the sum of their parts, we have assembled our information into islands, an archipelago of disconnected data. Our great institutions have evolved in virtual isolation from one another."

"Not realizing that our species evolved in cooperation, we have opted for competition in work, school, relationships. Not understanding the body's ability to reorganize its internal processes, we have drugged and doctored ourselves into bizarre side effects."

"Not understanding our societies as great organisms, we have manipulated them into "cures" worse than the ailments."

"Sooner or later, if human society is to evolve—indeed, if it is to survive—we must match our lives to our new knowledge. For too long, the Two Cultures—the esthetic, feeling humanities and cool, analytical science—have functioned independently, like the right and left hemispheres of a split-brain patient. We have been the victims of our collective divided consciousness."

"There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. Everybody's crew."

"This chapter is about politics in the broadest sense. It is about the emergence of a new kind of leader, a new definition of power, a dynamic power inherent in networks, and the rapidly growing constituency that can make all the difference."

"In the spirit of the Eightfold Path of Buddha, with its injunctions about Right Livelihood, Right Speech, and so on, we might also think in terms of Right Power—power used not as a battering ram or to glorify the ego but in service to life. Appropriate power. p.190"

""The new person creates the new collectivity," said political scientist Melvin Gurtov, "and the new collectivity creates—is— the new politics." The changing political paradigm concedes that you cannot sort out the individual from the society, nor can you separate "politics" from the people who engage in it. The person and society are yoked, like mind and body. Arguing which is more important is like debating whether oxygen or hydrogen is the more essential property of water. Yet the debate has raged on for centuries."

"The Crisis: Our institutions—especially our governing structures—are mechanistic, rigid, fragmented. The world isn't working."

"The Prescription: We must face our pain and conflict. Until we quit denying our failures and muffling our uneasiness, until we confess our bewilderment and alienation, we can't take the next and necessary steps. The political system needs to be transformed, not reformed."

"According to Confucian writings, wise individuals, wanting good government, looked first within, seeking precise words to express their hitherto unvoiced yearnings, "the tones given off by the heart." Once they were able to verbalize the intelligence of the heart they disciplined themselves. Order within the self led first to harmony within their own households, then the state, and finally the empire."

"The discovery of freedom, for instance, means little if we are not empowered to act, to be free for something, not just from something. As fear falls away, we are less afraid of power's Siamese twin, responsibility."

"There is less certainty about what is right for others. With an awareness of multiple realities, we lose our dogmatic attachment to a single point of view. A new sense of connection with others promotes social concern. A more benign view of the world makes others seem less threatening; enemies disappear."

""He had won the victory over himself," says the concluding line of George Orwell's grim novel, 1984. "He loved Big Brother." Just as hostages sometimes become fond of their abductors, we become attached to the factors that imprison us: our habits, customs, the expectations of others, rules, schedules, the state. Why do we give away our power or never claim it at all? Perhaps so that we can avoid decisions and responsibility. We are seduced by pain-avoidance, conflict avoidance."

"In Colin Wilson's science-fiction novel, The Mind Parasites, the protagonist and his associates discover that human consciousness has been victimized, dragged down, and intimidated by a strange parasite that has been feeding on it, sapping its power, for centuries. Those who become aware of the existence of these mind parasites can get rid of them—a dangerous, painful undertaking, but possible. Free of the mind parasites, they are the first truly free human beings, elated and enormously powerful."

"Just so, our natural power is sapped by the parasites of the centuries: fear, superstition, a view of reality that reduces life's wonders to creaking machinery. If we starve these parasitic beliefs they will die."

"Just as scientists inevitably come across facts that contradict the existing paradigm, so individuals within a society begin to experience anomalies and conflicts: an unequal distribution of power, an abridgement of freedoms, unjust laws or practices... If this conflict is too intense or focused to be suppressed, a revolution eventually occurs in the form of a social movement. The old consensus is broken, and freedoms are extended."

"A political paradigm shift might be said to occur when the new values are assimilated by the dominant society. These values then become social dogma to members of a new generation, who marvel that anyone could ever have believed otherwise."

"Generation after generation, humankind fights to preserve the status quo, maintaining "better the devil you know than the devil you don't know," a bit of folk cynicism that assumes the unknown to be dangerous. p. 197"

"Gandhi carried the concept of the powerful committed minority into the twentieth century, first gaining recognition of the rights of Indians living in South Africa and then achieving India's independence from British domination. "It is a superstitious and ungodly thing to believe that an act of a majority binds a minority," he said. "It is not numbers that count but quality.... I do not regard the force of numbers as necessary in a just cause.""

"The revolutionary principle introduced by Gandhi resolves the paradox of freedom. He called it satyagraha, "soul force" or "truth force." Satyagraha was essentially misunderstood in the West, described as "passive resistance," a term Gandhi disavowed because it suggests weakness, or "non-violence," which was just one of its components."

"Satyagraha derives its power from two apparently opposite attributes: fierce autonomy and total compassion. It says, in effect: I will not coerce you. Neither will I be coerced by you. If you behave unjustly, I will not oppose you by violence (bodyforce) but by the force of truth—the integrity of my beliefs. My integrity is evident in my willingness to suffer, to endanger myself, to go to prison, even to die if necessary. But I will not cooperate with injustice."

"Satyagraha is the strategy of those who reject solutions that compromise the freedom or integrity of any participant. Gandhi always said it is the weapon of the strong because it requires heroic restraint and the courage to forgive. He turned the whole idea of power upside down. When he visited the mountain hideout of Indian militants and saw their guns, he said, "You must be very frightened." p. 200"

"The new political awareness has little to do with parties or ideologies. Its constituents don't come in blocs. Power that is never surrendered by the individual cannot be brokered. Not by revolution or protest but by autonomy, the old slogan becomes a surprising fact: Power to the people. One by one by one. p. 240"

"Something we were withholding made us weak Until we found it was ourselves."

"The hope for real social transformation need not rest on circumstantial evidence. One major arena, health care, has already begun to experience wrenching change. The impending transformation of medicine is a window to the transformation of all our institutions. Here we can see what happens when consumers begin to withdraw legitimacy from an authoritarian institution. We see the rise of the autonomous health seeker, the transformation of a profession by its leadership, the impact of the new models from science, the way decentralized networks are effecting wide geographic change."

"The autonomy so evident in social movements is hitting the old assumptions of medicine hard. The search for self becomes a search for health, for wholeness—the cache of sanity search for health, for wholeness—the cache of sanity and wisdom that once seemed beyond our conscious reach. p. 241"

"Within a few short years, without a shot's being fired, the concept of holistic health has been legitimized by federal and state programs, endorsed by politicians, urged and underwritten by insurance companies, co-opted in terminology (if not always in practice) by many physicians, and adopted by medical students. Consumers demand "holistic health," a whole new assortment of entrepreneurs promise it, and medical groups look for speakers to explain it. p. 242"

"We have been alienated by costs that soared beyond the means of all but the well-insured or wealthy; by specialization and the cold, quantifying approach that brushes past human concerns, and by the growing despair that comes from spending without regaining health. p. 244"

"Health care (including medical insurance) is now the third largest industry in the United States; medical costs are roughly 9 percent of the Gross National Product. Federal health costs are over fifty billion dollars. Neighboring hospitals duplicate expensive equipment, doctors order unnecessary laboratory tests to protect themselves from malpractice suits ("defensive medicine"). Even a simple office call now represents a major expenditure to the average person. Runaway costs, especially hospital charges, have made it all but impossible to enact any sort of national health plan. p. 244"

"If we respond to the message of pain or disease, the demand for adaptation, we can break through to a new level of wellness."

"For all its reputed conservatism, Western medicine is undergoing an amazing revitalization. Patients and professionals alike are beginning to see beyond symptoms to the context of illness: stress, society, family, diet, season, emotions. Just as the readiness of a new constituency makes a new politics, the needs of patients can change the practice of medicine."

"Everything of importance is already known, a sage said—the only thing is to rediscover it. Much of the current excitement about healing is a kind of collective remembering, a homecoming to the old wives and old doctors."

"Scientific discoveries about the richness and complexity of nature reveal the poverty of our usual approaches to health, especially our efforts to deal externally, forcefully, and invasively with systems whose delicate balance can only be corrected if the inner physician is recruited. Just as outer reforms have limited effect on the body politic, external treatments are insufficient to heal the body if the spirit is in conflict."

"In many instances traditional ways are being re-adopted, not out of nostalgia but because we recognize that our "modern" approaches have been an aberration, an attempt to impose some sort of clumsy order on a nature far more ordered than we can imagine."

"The twentieth century gave us four-hour bottle feedings of infants, induced labor of childbirth and Caesarian-section deliveries for the convenience of hospitals and doctors, birth and death segregated into isolated, sterile environments empty of human consolation. p. 269"

"A healing state of mind has specific benefits for the healer, however, and for the rapport between therapist and sufferer. A British scientist has observed a particular configuration of brain rhythms in most of the spiritual healers he has tested. (England has thousands of licensed healers, and they are permitted to work in hospitals.) One anxious physician wired to the brainwave device did not show that pattern. Finally the sympathetic researcher said, "Imagine you are about to treat a patient. You have no medicine, no equipment. You have nothing to give but your compassion." Suddenly the physician's brainwave activity shifted into the "healing state" pattern. p. 277"

"We are in the early morning of understanding our place in the universe and our spectacular latent powers, the flexibility and transcendence of which we are capable."

"If our memories are as absorbent as research has demonstrated, our awareness as wide, our brains and bodies as sensitive; if we can will changes in our physiology at the level of a single cell; if we are heirs to such evolutionary virtuosity—how can we be performing and learning at such mediocre levels? If we're so rich, why aren't we smart? p. 279"

"This chapter is about learning in its broadest sense. It's about our surprising capacities, new sources of knowledge, mastery, creativity. It's about the learner within, waiting to be free. And it's about how the learner came to be unfree... about our culture's great learning disability, an educational system that emphasizes being "right" at the expense of being open. p. 280"

"We begin to see the unease and disease of our adult lives as elaborate patterns that emerged from a system that taught us young how to be still, look backward, look to authority, construct certainties. The fear of learning—and transformation—is the inevitable product of such a system."

"You can only have a new society, the visionaries have said, if you change the education of the younger generation. Yet the new society itself is the necessary force for change in education."

"It's like the old dilemma: You can't get a job without experience, but you can't get experience because no one will give you a job."

"Schools are entrenched bureaucracies whose practitioners do not compete for business, do not need to get re-elected or to attract patients, customers, clients. Those educators who would like to innovate have relatively little authority to change their style."

"Of the Aquarian Conspirators surveyed, more were involved in education than in any other single category of work. They were teachers, administrators, policymakers, educational psychologists. Their consensus: Education is one of the least dynamic of institutions, lagging far behind medicine, psychology, politics, the media, and other elements of our society."

"There are heroes in education, as there have always been heroes, trying to transcend the limits of the old structure; but their efforts are too often thwarted by peers, administrators, parents. Mario Fantini, former Ford consultant on education, now at the State University of New York, said bluntly, The psychology of becoming has to be smuggled into the schools."

"Yet there are reasons for optimism. Our error has been in assuming that we had to start with the schools. Schools are an effect of the way we think—and we can change the way we think."

"Another strong force for change: crisis. All the failures of education, like a fever, signal a deep struggle for health."

"The business of the Aquarian Conspiracy is calm diagnosis of that illness—to make it clear that synthesis is needed—paradigm change rather than pendulum change."

"If the streambed of education is being enlarged, one formidable force altering its contours is competition. Learning is where you find it: on "Sesame Street," in inner games of tennis and the Zen of everything, in teaching and learning cooperatives, in computers, on FM radio, in self-help books, in magazines... and television documentaries."

"The most potent force for change, however, is the growing recognition of millions of adults that their own impoverished expectations and frustrations came, in large measure, from their schooling."

"If we are not learning and teaching we are not awake and alive. Learning is not only like health, it is health. p. 282"

"Long before Thomas Kuhn observed that new ideas may have to wait for a new generation's acceptance, folk wisdom made this bittersweet point. A Hebrew proverb warns, Do not confine your children to your own learning, for they were born in another time. Karl Pribram once commented that a new generation will learn about paradox in the early grades and will grow up understanding concepts of primary and secondary levels of reality. p. 321"

"A junior-high student, John Shimotsu of Los Angeles, tried his hand at interpreting for his fellow eighth graders the holographic model of reality proposed by Pribram and physicist David Bohm. In conclusion, he said: Why can't you perform actions that we consider paranormal? I think it is because you do not think you can. You may say you wish to, or may sincerely want to, but that will not change what you subconsciously think. Our culture says that those actions would not be possible, so that is what you think is real. To change your reality, you would have to alter your innermost thoughts. The holographic idea is fascinating. What is theory today may be fact tomorrow."

"All over the world, children and young people are being exposed, via the communications revolution, to such ideas. They are not limited to the parochial beliefs of a single culture. p. 321"

"If education cannot be mended, perhaps it can metamorphose. As someone pointed out, trying to explain the difference between reform and transformation, we have been trying to attach wings to a caterpillar. Our interventions in the learning process to date have been almost that crude. It is high time we freed ourselves of attachment to old forms and eased the flight of the unfettered human mind. p. 321"

"Making a life, not just a living, is essential to one seeking wholeness. Our hunger turns out to be for something different, not something more. p. 323"

"Buying, selling, owning, saving, sharing, keeping, investing, giving—these are outward expressions of inward needs. When those needs change, as in personal transformation, economic patterns change."

"Spending is an opiate to many people, a balm to disappointments, frustrations, emptiness. If the individual transforms that inner distress, there is less need for drugs and distractions."

"Inner listening makes clearer to us what we really want, as distinct from what we have been talked into, and it might not have a price tag. We may also discover that "ownership" is in some sense an illusion, that holding on to things can keep us from freely enjoying them. Greater awareness may give us new appreciation for simple things."

"If work becomes rewarding, not just obligatory, that also reorders values and priorities. We will look at the evidence for a new paradigm, based on values, which transcends the old paradigm of economics, with its emphasis on growth, control, manipulation."

"The shift to the values paradigm is reflected in changing patterns of work, career choice, consumption... evolving lifestyles that take advantage of synergy, sharing, barter, cooperation, and creativity. . . the transformation of the workplace, in business, industry, professions, the arts... innovations in management and worker participation, including the decentralization of power . . . the rise of a new breed of entrepreneurs . . . the search for "appropriate technology" . . . the call for an economics congruent with nature rather than the mechanistic views that have propelled us into our present crises."

"Because the economy is such a political issue it is propagandized, rationalized, lied about. Because our beliefs about the economy affect it, as in the "confidence index," business and government try to buffer the reaction of investors and consumers to unnerving economic news. And because divergent viewpoints are loudly argued, you can choose whom to believe"

"There are illusions of rescue by technology, by the reshuffling of moneys and resources. But our temporary easing of this chronic illness—scarcities, dislocated markets, unemployment, obsolescence—is as dangerous as the medical treatment of symptoms when the cause of disease is unknown. Our intervention in the body economic, like intervention by drugs and surgery, often leads to severe side effects requiring further and deeper intervention."

"The crisis is evident in the chronic nature of unemployment and underemployment: the technological obsolescence that has overtaken millions of specialized skilled workers, increasing numbers of the highly educated vying for too few white-collar jobs, increasing numbers of teenagers and women trying to enter the work force."

"Our best hope now is to pay attention, to recognize the ways in which our lives and livelihood have been influenced, even run, by outmoded structures. Our ideas about work, money, and management grew out of an old stable social order irrelevant to present flux and were based on a view of humankind and nature long since transcended in science. The real world turns on different principles than those imposed by our partial economic philosophies."

"Rather than debating whether capitalism is right in its emphasis on opportunities for the individual or socialism in its concern for the collective, we should reframe the question: Is a materialistic society suited to human needs? Both capitalism and socialism, as we know them, pivot on material values. They are inadequate philosophies for a transformed society."

"In synthesis may be our salvation—the path between right and left Aldous Huxley called "decentralism and cooperative enterprise, an economic and political system most natural to spirituality.""

"Just as health is vastly more than medicine, just as learning transcends education, so a system of values is the context for the workings of any economy. Whatever our priorities—self aggrandizement, efficiency, status, health, security, recreation, human relationships, competition, cooperation, craftsmanship, material goods—they are reflected in the workings of the economy. p. 326"

"In the nineteenth century John Stuart Mill saw past the early materialist promises of the Industrial Age: No great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible until a great change takes place in their mode of thought. In the 1930s historian Arnold Toynbee spoke of "etherealization"—the development of higher, intangible riches as the ultimate growth of a civilization. There seems to be growing sympathy, if not a mandate, for reversing the materialist trend. p. 330"

"The true source of wealth, Eugen Loebl concluded while brooding about economics during his fifteen years as a political prisoner in Czechoslovakia, is not its productivity, its Gross National Product, its tangible assets. Creative intelligence is the wealth of a modern society. If we see gain as a function of man's ability to think, and if we recognize the importance of the intellectual level on which the economy is based, then our prime interest will be oriented toward the development of this level. . . . We can change our reality toward the goals we desire. p. 360"

"On his historic visit to the United States, Tocqueville sailed down the Ohio River. On one hand was Ohio, a free state; on the other Kentucky, a slave state. On the Ohio side of the river he observed industrious activity, rich harvests, handsome homes. The Ohioan could enter any path fortune might open to him. He might become a sailor, a pioneer, an artisan, a laborer. On the Kentucky side Tocqueville saw only indolence. Not only were the slaves half-hearted in their labors, but the masters themselves were enslaved. They could not work their own land because that would demean their status."

"For too long, like the Kentucky slaveholders, we have turned our best energies toward the pursuit of secondary excitement, hoping to find in such distractions the reward that comes only from vocation. But we have a choice; now we can emigrate to a freer state, finding there new heart, new enterprise, and values that match our deepest needs."

"Spiritual or mystical experience, the subject of this chapter, is the mirror image of science—a direct perception of nature's unity, the inside of the mysteries that science tries valiantly to know from the outside. This way of understanding predates science by thousands of years. Long before humankind had tools like quantum logic to describe events that ordinary reason could not grasp, individuals moved into the realm of paradox through a shift in consciousness. And there they know that what cannot be is."

"Millions living today have experienced transcendent aspects of reality and have incorporated this knowledge into their lives. A mystical experience, however brief, is validating for those attracted to the spiritual search. The mind now knows what the heart had only hoped for. But the same experience can be deeply distressing to one unprepared for it, who must then try to fit it into an inadequate belief system. p. 362"

"By radically altering one's values and perceptions of the world, mystical experience tends to create its own culture, one with wide membership and invisible borders. This parallel culture seems to threaten the status quo; as Alexander Solzhenitsyn said, Western society is outraged if an individual gives his soul as much daily attention as his grooming."

"Critics call them narcissistic, not knowing the thoughtful nature of their inward search; self-annihilating, not knowing the spaciousness of the Self they join; elitist, not knowing how desperately they want to share what they have seen; irrational, not realizing how much further their new worldview goes toward resolving problems, how much more coherent it is with everyday experience."

"The spiritual quest begins, for most people, as a search for meaning."

"Zbigniew Brzezinski, ...spoke of an "increasing yearning for something spiritual" in advanced Western societies where materialism has proven unsatisfying. People are discovering, he said, that 5 percent per annum more goods is not the definition of happiness. Traditional religion, he conceded, does not provide a substitute: This is why there is a search for personal religion, for direct connection with the spiritual.... Ultimately, every human being, once he reaches the stage of self-consciousness, wants to feel that there is some inner and deeper meaning to his existence than just being and consuming, and once he begins to feel that way, he wants his social organization to correspond to that feeling.... This is happening on a world scale. p. 364"

"Contemporary mystical experiences from many individuals and many parts of the world have centered in recent years on a collective and intensifying vision, the sense of an impending transition in the human story: an evolution of consciousness as significant as any step in the long chain of our biological evolution."

"The consensual vision, whatever its variations, sees this transformation of consciousness as the moment anticipated by older prophecies in all the traditions of direct knowing—the death of one world and the birth of a new, an apocalypse, the "end of days" period in the Kabbalah, the awakening of increasing numbers of human beings to their godlike potential."

"The seed of God is in us, Meister Eckhart said. "Pear seeds grow into pear trees, nut seeds into nut trees, and God seed into G o d ."

"The instruction booklet for Stargate, a contemporary symbolic game relating to consciousness, opens: The turning about is upon us, the turning of mind, the expansion of eyes... the light that shapes from within."

"Always, the vision of evolution toward the light. Light is the oldest and most pervasive metaphor in spiritual experience. We speak of enlightenment, the city of light, the Light of the World, children of light, the "white-light experience.""

"L i g h t . . . light, wrote T. S. Eliot, visible reminder of invisible light."

"To Honore de Balzac, it seemed that humankind was on the eve of a great struggle; the forces are there, he insisted: I feel in myself a life so luminous that it might enlighten a world, and yet I am shut up in a sort of mineral."

"In The Reflexive Universe Arthur Young, inventor of the Bell helicopter, offered in speculative scientific terms an idea as old as myth and Plato: We represent a "fall" into matter from light, and the lightward ascent has begun again. p. 385"

"The dream of light and liberation is poetically expressed in an apocryphal contemporary Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ. For too long, it says, our temples have been the tombs of the hidden things of time. Our temples, crypts, and caves are dark. We have been unable to see the patterns. "In light there are no secret things.... There is no lonely pilgrim on the way to light. Men only gain the heights by helping others gain the heights.... We know that the light is coming over the hills. God speed the light. p. 386"

"The personal paradigm shift is like a sea-crossing to the New World. The immigrant, try as he might, cannot persuade all his friends and loved ones to make the journey. Those who stay behind cannot understand why the familiar did not hold the immigrant. Why did he abandon his accustomed homeland? Saddest of all, how could their affections not hold him?"

"Ongoing personal transformation moves one away from the Old World—sometimes abruptly, more often over years. As we have seen in an earlier chapter, people change jobs, even vocations, in the wake of shifting perceptions."

"Many old friendships and acquaintances fall away; new friendships, even a whole new support network, take their place. Based as they are on shared values and a shared journey, these new relationships are perhaps more intense."

"Relatives, colleagues, friends, and marriage partners, understandably threatened by these changes, often exert pressure on the individual...These pressures only widen the gap. You don't stop an immigrant by trying to revive his hopes for the Old World."

"Relationships are the crucible of the transformative process. They are bound to alter, given the individual's greater willingness to risk, trust in intuition, sense of wider connection with others, recognition of cultural conditioning. p. 387"

"The wider paradigm of relationships and family transcends old group definitions. The discovery of our connection to all other men, women, and children joins us to another family. Indeed, seeing ourselves as a planetary family struggling to solve its problems, rather than as assorted people and nations assessing blame or exporting solutions, could be the ultimate shift in perspective."

"If we consider that any child being abused is our child, the problem changes. When we see our culture, our social conditioning, or our class as an artifact rather than a universal yardstick, our kinship expands. We are no longer "ethnocentric," centered in our own culture. p. 402"

"A society in flux will have to create its families in new ways. The new family is emerging from networks and communities, experimental and intentional groups, friendships. The American Home Economics Association redefined the family in 1979 as two or more persons who share resources, share responsibility for decisions, share values and goals, and have commitment to one another over time. The family is that climate that one 'comes home to,' and it is this network of sharing and commitments that most accurately describes the family unit, regardless of blood, legal ties, adoption, or marriage."

"Human beings have a kind of optical illusion, Einstein once said. We think ourselves separate rather than part of the whole. This imprisons our affection to those few nearest us."

"I have seen the truth, Dostoevski said. It is not as though I had invented it with my mind. I have seen it, seen it, and the living image of it has filled my soul forever.... In one day, one hour, everything could be arranged at once! The chief thing is to love."

"Love and fraternity, once part of an ideal, have become crucial to our survival. Jesus enjoined his followers to love one another. Teilhard added, "or you perish." Without human affection, we become sick, frightened, hostile. Lovelessness is a broken circuit, loss of order."

"The worldwide quest for community typified by the networks of the Aquarian Conspiracy is an attempt to boost that attenuated power. To cohere. To kindle wider consciousness."

"In this time of uncertainty, when all our old social forms are crumbling, when we cannot easily find our way, we can be lights to each other. p. 403"

"Victor Hugo prophesied that in the twentieth century war would die, frontier boundaries would die, dogma would die—and man would live. "He will possess something higher than these—a great country, the whole earth... and a great hope, the whole heaven.""

"Today there are millions of residents of that "great country, the whole earth." In their hearts and minds, war and boundaries and dogma have indeed already died. And they possess that large hope of which Hugo wrote. They know each other as countrymen. The Whole Earth is a borderless country, a paradigm of humanity with room enough for outsiders and traditionalists, for all our ways of human knowing, for all mysteries and all cultures. p. 405"

"At first glance, it may seem hopelessly Utopian to imagine that the world can resolve its desperate problems. Each year fifteen million die in starvation and many more live in unrelenting hunger; every ninety seconds the nations of the world spend one million dollars on armaments; every peace is an uneasy peace; the planet has been plundered of many of its nonrenewable resources. Yet there have been remarkable advances as well. Just since the end of World War II, thirty-two countries with 40 percent of the world's population have overcome their problems of food scarcity; China is becoming essentially self-sufficient and has controlled its once-overwhelming population growth; there is a net gain in world literacy and in populist governments; concern for human rights has become a stubborn international issue."

"We have had a profound paradigm shift about the Whole Earth. We know it now as a jewel in space, a fragile water planet. And we have seen that it has no natural borders. It is not the globe of our school days with its many-colored nations. p.407"

"All countries are economically and ecologically involved with each other, politically enmeshed. The old gods of isolationism and nationalism are tumbling, artifacts like the stone deities of Easter Island."

"We are learning to approach problems differently, knowing that most of the world's crises grew out of the old paradigm— the forms, structures, and beliefs of an obsolete understanding of reality. Now we can seek answers outside the old frameworks, ask new questions, synthesize, and imagine. Science has given us insights into wholes and systems, stress and transformation."

"The greatest single obstacle to the resolution of great problems in the past was thinking they could not be solved—a conviction based on mutual distrust. Psychologists and sociologists have found that most of us are more highly motivated than we think each other to be!"

"If we see each other as obstacles to progress, our assumption is the first and greatest obstacle. Mistrust is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Our old-paradigm consciousness has guaranteed its own dark expectations; it is our collective negative self-image."

"The shift for which we have waited, a revolution of appropriate trust, is beginning. Instead of enemies, we are looking for allies everywhere. When an international conference, "The Future of the West," convened at the University of Southern California, the authorities agreed firmly on one point: The conference had been misnamed. The West, they said, can have no future apart from the East."

"The global village is a reality. We are joined by satellite, supersonic travel, four thousand international meetings each year, tens of thousands of multinational companies, international organizations and newsletters and journals, even an emergent pan-culture of music, movies, art, humor."

"For millennia...we have lived under the power paradigm, a belief system based on independence and domination. Yet it has always existed alongside the components for a peace paradigm: a society based on creativity, freedom, democracy, spirituality. To foster a global shift...we can now create "a web of reinforcement": leadership comfortable with uncertainty, heightened public awareness of the contradictions in the power paradigm, exciting models of new lifestyles, appropriate technology, techniques for expanded consciousness and spiritual awakening."

"Once these ideas coalesce into a coherent new paradigm grounded in transformation, we will see that humanity is both a part of creation and its steward as well, "a product of evolution and an instrument of evolution.""

"We need not wait for a leadership. We can begin to effect change at any point in a complex system: a human life, a family, a nation. One person can create a transformative environment for others through trust and friendship. A warm family or community can make a stranger feel at ease. A society can encourage growth and renewal in its members."

"We can begin anywhere—everywhere. "Let there be peace," says a bumper sticker, "and let it begin with me." Let there be health, learning, relationship, right uses of power, meaningful work.... Let there be transformation, and let it begin with me."

"Because human choice remains sacrosanct and mysterious, none of us can guarantee a transformation of society. Yet there is reason to trust the process. Transformation is powerful, rewarding, natural. It promises what most people want...The new world is the old—transformed."

"Historically, movements for social change have all operated in much the same way. A paternal leadership has convinced people of the need for change, then recruited them for specific tasks, telling them what to do and when to do it. The new social movements operate on a different assumption of human potential: the belief that individuals, once they are deeply convinced of a need for change, can generate solutions from their own commitment and creativity. The larger movement inspires them, it supports their efforts and gives them information, but its structure cannot direct or contain their efforts. p. 413"

"The Hunger Project assumes that solutions do not reside in new programs or more programs. According to the best informed authorities and agencies, the expertise to end hunger within two decades already exists. Hunger persists because of the old-paradigm assumption that it is not possible to feed the world's population... The Hunger Project does not compete with older hunger organizations; rather, it publicizes their activities and urges enrollees to support them."

"The Aquarian Conspiracy is also working to ease hunger—for meaning, connection, completion. And each of us is "the whole project," the nucleus of a critical mass, a steward of the world's transformation."

"In this century we have seen into the heart of the atom. We transformed it—and history—forever. But we have also seen into the heart of the heart."

"We know the necessary conditions for the changing of minds. Now that we see the deep pathology of our past, we can make new patterns, new paradigms. "The sum of all our days is just our beginning....""

"Transformation is no longer lightning but electricity. We have captured a force more powerful than the atom, a worthy keeper of all our other powers."

"The nations of the world, Tocqueville once said, are like travelers in a forest. Although each is unaware of the destination of the others, their paths lead inevitably toward meeting in the center of the forest. In this century of wars and planetary crisis, we have been lost in the forest of our darkest alienation. One by one the accustomed strategies of nation-states— isolation, fortification, retreat, domination—have been cut off. We are pressed ever more deeply into the forest, toward an escape more radical than any we had imagined: freedom with—not from—each other... the end of winter, the watering of deserts, the healing of wounds, light after darkness—not an end to troubles but an end to defeat."

"Awakening brings its own assignments, unique to each of us, chosen by each of us. p. 417"

"Reagan was on the rise, the anti-war movement had sunk to a low ebb, and the New Age was barely christened when The Aquarian Conspiracy appeared in 1980. Overnight Marilyn Ferguson’s book became famous and sold in the millions. I was a young doctor who had just learned to meditate when I picked up a dog-eared paperback copy at a Catskill spiritual retreat. Ferguson’s message shot through me like electricity: a “benign conspiracy” was bringing about the greatest shift in consciousness in the twentieth century. In one stroke Ferguson unified a movement that seemed like small, isolated outposts on the fringes of respectable society. Ferguson was a uniter and a futurist. By showing feminists what they shared with environmentalists, New Age spiritual seekers with peace activists, her book inspired a movement that didn’t define the future in terms of technology. She was a one-woman movement for hope. She promised every voice in the wilderness that there were a thousand other voices like theirs."

"Marilyn Ferguson is the best reporter today on the farther reaches of investigation into the life and human sciences. She represents a new kind of investigative journalist—not a sleuth after the corruptions of a politician but one tracking the spoor of a new research idea in all its windings; following it to its sources and its affinities in allied fields, its conclusions, its implications for the whole spectrum of human thought and consciousness."

"Nietzsche talked of philosophy as the gaya science, the joyful science, and to Marilyn Ferguson the area of knowledge she has staked out for her reporting and synthesizing is a joyful science. She describes with excitement the world of those who have strained to see past the blinders on the human spirit and have thrown them off, and she matches her own mood to their sense of optimism. "I bring you good news" is her message. It is news that we are in the midst of a knowledge revolution that shows signs of breakthrough: that researchers in the human sciences are moving independently in converging lines toward common targets; that they are discarding traditional models of the cosmos and ourselves—of the nature of nature and the nature of human nature—and reaching for new ones..."

"The reader will meet a number of key concepts on these pages—paradigms and paradigm shifts, entropy and syntropy, holism, holographs, the uncertainty principle, dissipative structures, punctuated evolution. This is not a "popularization" that reduces the essence of these concepts in any way. It is, rather, the humanizing of the research and discoveries that have heretofore been beyond the reach of all but the initiates... Amidst the prevailing gloom the news the author brings us is of an open human nature in an open universe. Like the work of the people it describes, this is a book drenched in sunlight."

"A million-plus readers have followed Natalie's bold plunge into the world of words. "Just dive in," urges Natalie, teaching, "Begin where you are." […] "Keep your hand moving," she commands. "Don't cross out, don't worry about spelling, punctuation, and grammar, lose control, don't think, don't get logical, go for the jugular." "Include original detail," Natalie urges her students."

"You tell the truth and you depict it in detail."

"I went home with the resolve to write what I knew and to trust my own thoughts and feelings and to not look outside myself. I was not in school anymore: I could say what I wanted."

"Learning to write is not a linear process. There is no logical A-to-B-to-C way to become a good writer. One neat truth about writing cannot answer it all. There are many truths. […] Some techniques are appropriate at some times and some for other times. Every moment is different. Different things work. One isn't wrong and the other right. In class we try different techniques or methods."

"First, consider the pen you write with. Think, too, about your notebook. […] A cheap spiral notebook lets you feel that you can fill it quickly and afford another. Also, it is easy to carry."

"The basic unit of writing practice is the timed exercise. 1. Keep your hand moving. 2. Don't cross out. 3. Don't worry about spelling, punctuation, grammar. 4. Lose control. 5. Don't think. Don't get logical. 6. Go for the jugular. […] That is the discipline: to continue to sit."

"This is the practice school of writing. Like running, the more you do it, the better you get at it. […] You practice whether you want to or not. Through practice you actually do get better. Sit down with the least expectation of yourself; say "I am free to write the worst junk in the world." You have to give yourself the space to write a lot without a destination."

"It is a good idea to have a page in your notebook where you jot down, as they come to you, ideas of topics to write about. […] Add to the list any time you think of something. Then when you sit down to write, you can just grab a topic from that list and begin. Making a list is good. It makes you start noticing material for writing in your daily life, and your writing comes out of a relationship with your life and its texture. [...] Naturally, once you begin writing you might be surprised where your mind takes the topic. That's good. You are not trying to control your writing. You are stepping out of the way. Keep your hand moving."

"Don't worry about your talent or capability: that will grow as you practice. […] If you want to write a novel, write a novel. If it's essays you want or short stories, write them. In the process of writing them, you will learn how. You can have the confidence that you will gradually acquire the technique and craft you need. […] We learn writing by doing it. That simple."

"Of course, you can sit down and have something you want to say. But then you must let its expression be born in you and on the paper. Don't hold too tight; allow it to come out how it needs to rather than trying to control it."

"Use original detail in your writing. Life is so rich, if you can write down the real details of the way things were and are, you hardly need anything else."

"In a rainstorm, everyone quickly runs down the street with umbrellas, raincoats, newspapers over their heads. Writers go back outside in the rain with a notebook in front of them and a pen in hand. They look at the puddles, watch them fill, watch the rain splash in them."

"Writers move with grace in and out of many worlds."

"Read a lot, listen well and deeply, and write a lot. […] If you read good books, when you write, good books will come out of you."

"Be specific. "Don't say "fruit". Tell what kind of fruit. Learn the names of everything: birds, cheese, tractors, cars, buildings."

"As writers we have to walk in the world in touch with that present, alert part of ourselves, that animal sense part that looks, sees, and notices - street signs, corners, fire hydrants, newspaper stands."

"The world isn't always black and white. A person may not be sure if she can go some place, but it is important, especially for a beginning writer, to make clear, assertive statements. "This is good." "It was a blue horse." Not "Well, I know it sounds funny but I think it was a blue horse." […] After I read the article, I went home and looked at a poem I had just written. I made myself take out all the vague, indefinite words and phrases. […] It made the poem much better."

"If you want a room to write in, just get a room. Don't make a big production out of it. If it doesn't leak, has a window, heat in the winter, then put in your desk, bookshelves, a soft chair, and start writing."

"Writers write about things that other people don't pay much attention to. […] A writer's job is to make the ordinary come alive, […] When we live in a place for too long, we grow dull. We don't notice what is around us. That is why a trip is so exciting. We are in a new place and see everything in a fresh way."

"Just write. Just write. Just write. [...] When we are in the heart of writing it doesn't matter where we are. We can write anyplace."

"Push yourself beyond when you think you are done with what you have to say. […] It is beyond the point when you think you are done that often something strong comes out."

"What is important is not just what you do - "I am writing a book" - but how you do it, how you approach it, and what you come to value. […] There are many realities. We should remember this when we get too caught in being concerned about the way the rest of the world lives or how we think they live."

"Wait until you are hungry to say something, until there is an aching in you to speak. Then come back. Don't worry. You won't have lost time. Your energy will be more direct and less wasted."

"See the big picture. You are committed to writing or finding out about it. Continue under all circumstances. Don't be rigid though."

"But last night we started to work with the Samurai. Tom brought in a loosely finished piece, xeroxed copies, and we went over it. First of all, we looked for where there was energy. It was mainly in the third paragraph. William Carlos Williams said to Allen Ginsberg: "If only one line in the poem has energy, then cut the rest out and leave only that one line." That one line is the poem. Poetry is the carrier of life, the vessel of vitality. Each line should be alive. Keep those parts of a piece; get rid of the rest. […] it's where our writing is burning through to brilliance that it finally becomes a poem or prose piece. And anyone can hear the difference. Something that comes from the source, from first thoughts, wakes and energises everyone. I've seen it many times in a writing group. When someone reads a really hot piece, it excites everyone. Be willing to look at your work honestly. If something works, it works. If it doesn't, quit beating an old horse. Go on writing. Something else will come up. There's enough bad writing in the world. Write one good line, you'll be famous. Write a lot of lukewarm pieces, you'll put people to sleep."

"As you reread, circle whole sections that are good in your notebooks. They often glow off the page and are obvious. […] Naturally, there should be a place for editing and revision, but when we hear the word editor, we think, "Okay. I let the creator in me go wild, but now I'm going to get back to the proper, conventional, rational state of mind and finally get things in order." We bring out the man or woman in a tweed suit from the East Coast with a doctorate in literature who is critical of everything. Don't do that. That person in the tweed suit is just another disguise for the ego that is trying to get control of things any way it can. […] Instead, when you go over your work, become a Samurai, a great warrior with the courage to cut out anything that is not present."

"Anything we fully do is an alone journey. […] You are alone when you write a book. Accept that and take in any love and support that is given to you, but don't have expectations of how it is supposed to be."

"We give a lot of names to our excuses, to the reasons we don't want to write or we're afraid to. Finally, if you want to write, you have to just shut up, pick up a pen, and do it. I'm sorry there are no true excuses. Shut up and write. […] It's pretty nice to be talented. If you are, enjoy, but it won't take you that far. Work takes you a lot further. […] In writing I have confidence. Because I say I'm going to do it and I do it. That's all. Writing is the one thing in my life I continually show up for. I have given 100 percent to writing practice. That's what builds confidence. […] Don't be tossed away by your monkey mind. … These little voices are constantly going to be nagging at us. If you make a decision to do something, you do it. Don't be tossed away. … Don't be thrown off by yourself or anyone else. Let your big mind move forward."

"We’re here as citizens of the planet, as victims of the pollution that’s been carelessly dumped into our land, air and sea for generations, and as children whose rights are being violated. Today we are fighting back. 30 years ago the world made a promise to us. Virtually every country in the world agreed that children have rights that must be protected. And those countries that signed the 3rd Optional Protocol on Communication have committed to allowing us to appeal to the United Nations when those rights are being violated. So that’s exactly what we’re doing here today. Each one of use had our rights violated and denied. Our futures are being destroyed."

"I see more of the structures that society has put in place. And that’s why my generation has been so impactful with the climate movement. We’re organizing outside of the structures that adults work in. Since getting involved, I just see how the system is broken, and it’s one of the things that needs to change."

"My name is Alexandria Villaseñor. I’m 14 years old. I’m from New York. And I am here because 30 years ago the world signed a contract between generations that the present world would leave a world worth inheriting to the future. And today I want to tell the world, you are defaulting on that contract, and we’re here to collect."

"Eighty years from now, our grandchildren can yell, 'Hey Zoomers.""

"Alexandria Villasenor is a powerhouse in the climate change world — and she’s not even old enough to vote.... when she learned that rising temperatures caused by climate change are making wildfires more commonplace and destructive than ever — and that the world must cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 to avoid disastrous, irreversible consequences of an overheated planet — Villasenor knew she had to act fast."

"She took the stage at Battery Park on Friday before a crowd of two hundred and fifty thousand climate strikers. “Hi, everyone!” she hollered, a huge smile on her face. She told the story of how she started striking, then introduced Thunberg. “She is an icon of our time, and has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize,” Villaseñor said. “And now she’s here with us today. What I want to tell you about Greta Thunberg, though, is that she is the nicest, kindest, most humble person I ever met.” As Thunberg walked onstage, she gave Villaseñor a big hug."

"Many people in the US aren't aware of the youth climate movement that was started by 16-year-old Swede Greta Thunberg in August 2018 and has inspired students in countries all across the world to come together to protest for climate action weekly. But the fact that Fridays for Future (FFF) is less well known stateside doesn't mean that young activists in the US are less passionate... A couple of hours north of the Capitol, Alexandria Villasenor was striking in New York City. The 14-year-old moved to the big apple from Davis, California, last August. In November 2018 she was back in California for a visit and experienced the raging Paradise wildfire first hand. "The smoke was so bad I had to go back to New York early," the middle schooler, who suffers from asthma, said. "Then I learned about the connection between the wildfires and the climate crisis. It made me angry." She also runs her own organization, Earth Uprising. How does she balance all of that with her school work and regular student life? "I can do pretty much anything when I get enough food and five hours of sleep," Villasenor said with a laugh."

"…I had to be in a different frame of mind to be able to deal with those families who were grieving, and a lot of emotions. But the rule was that I wasn't allowed to cry or be emotional regardless of what I saw on a day-to-day basis. So if it was a baby, if it was a homicide, if there was someone who died naturally, a cute, little old lady, I wasn't allowed to cry."

"In urban culture, funeral directors have a certain level of prestige. They're right up there with preachers and politicians. They wear suits and drive Cadillacs and Lincolns. In the era of segregation, running a funeral home was one of the only ways that African-American men could legally make money and rise up…"

"The hardest lesson that I learned is that “rejection is protection”. Rejection never feels good, but as artists I think we tend to take rejection so personally. It can cause us to doubt our work or talent. However, rejection isn’t always someone saying we don’t like your work or you’re not talented. Sometimes it’s someone else recognizing that they can’t give you what you need to fly. It’s a venue saying this is not quite the right fit for you right now. That doesn’t mean that you won’t find home for your work. That doesn’t mean that venue won’t come looking for you one day. It means you have to keep working hard until you find the perfect fit and when the time is right it will work itself out."

"Youth can be a great asset. When you’re young, if you have what is called a ‘crazy’ dream, no one is going to question it...Instead, if you are sincere and willing to do the work that prepares the way for your journey, others will often be inspired by you and partner with you to help you achieve your dreams."

"You can always find a shock of beauty or meaning in what life you have left."

"Let death be what takes us, not lack of imagination."

"People think you're Jesus because you've gone through something special. They treat you like you've got special knowledge, or they treat you a little bit like Frankenstein. Of course, those two responses are related. Neither of them is accurate. But that's the kind of vibe you can get — a lot of us who have disabilities know very well."

"Leaning into the subject of suffering, leaning into the subject of mortality, was directly therapeutic for me. It wasn’t an intellectual interest or a recreational thought...Getting through my day required me to lean into it, and that’s where I just saw all this beauty that comes from it."

"By facing mortality, it seems to inform how you live. So, the secret is that facing death has a lot to do with living well…"

"We make something normal, we call it a problem, we pathologize it, and then we go to war with it. Sometimes that works pretty well, and oftentimes it works not at all. In the case with end of life and death, it's a mix. Medical science and our understanding of health has advanced, and we are able to live longer, and we have pushed back on nature in all sorts of ways that I'm happy for…But the bad news is we just keep orphaning this subject of death, and it becomes less and less familiar and then more and more surprising and gets harder and harder than it needs to be."

"The animal agriculture industry is one of the most powerful industries on the planet. I think most people in this country are aware of the influence of money and industry on politics, and we really see that clearly on display with this industry in particular. Most people would be shocked to learn that animal rights and environmental activists are the number one domestic terrorism threat according to the FBI. … It’s a difficult question to answer, why these groups are at the top of the FBI’s priorities. I think a big part of it is that they, more than really any other social movements today, are directly threatening corporate profits. When we try to find out how factory farms and how animal agriculture is polluting the environment, they try to claim exemptions to that information, either under "national security terms" or "public safety", "trademark issues", "it’s a business secret". We've seen all these attempts to keep people in the dark about what they’re actually doing."

"We simply cannot ignore the devastating environmental impact of our diet any longer. The good news—yes, there is good news—is that we make a difference at every meal."

"When you take the animal out, you also take the greenhouse gas issue out. And you take the food safety issues out. And you take some of other externalities related to food scarcity out. But one thing that’s amazing is I think you put our values back in. You put values like compassion, and integrity, and kindness. Values that are natural to human beings, you put that in. You build that back into the story of our food. And I think, as this begins to progress, I think it also helps people to pause before they eat that egg, before they eat that steak, before they eat that chicken nugget. And ask themselves, is that really what they want? Or do they actually want something more?"

"It is only in the cracks of division that corruption can seep in and pollution can spew out."

"Civil Rights are Human Rights and human rights are Environmental Rights… NOW IS THE TIME TO ACT."

"My message to him, my message to President Trump, would be that there is no more time to continue to accept money from the fossil fuel industry. There’s no more time to continue to be bought off and paid for, because this is our lives that we’re fighting for. We’re fighting for our children. We’re fighting for our sisters and brothers. We’re fighting for people that are drowning."

"I founded OneMillionOfUs to empower, educate, and register one million young people to vote in the 2020 elections and beyond. As a great and honorable president once said, “We are the ones we have been waiting for.” We are no longer waiting, we are acting."

"I am here on behalf of young people worldwide. For the young girl in Guatemala starving because of drought; for the young boy in Sumatra whose entire rainforest community is set ablaze for the extraction of palm oil; for the mother in Beijing who attended her 3-year-old daughter’s funeral because she breathed in the toxic air of the city. I speak for the millions suffering at the destructive hands of the fossil fuel industry."

"When I interned for the American Hero, the Honorable John Lewis, I learned that this will be a tough fight, yet we must be determined to stand against injustice. Civil Rights are Human Rights and human rights are Environmental Rights… NOW IS THE TIME TO ACT."

"History shows that voting is the sword that cuts through all injustice."

"One person, one vote is the great equalizer of humanity."

"My mission is to show that we have the power to create a more just democracy that represents all of us."

"Because we fear the responsibility for our actions, we have allowed ourselves to develop the mentality of slaves. Contrary to the stirring sentiments of the Declaration of Independence, we now pledge ‘our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor’ not to one another for our mutual protection, but to the state, whose actions continue to exploit, despoil, and destroy us."

"If, on one occasion, a police officer brutalizes a harmless individual, does that mean that a police-state has arisen? No, but intelligent minds should recognize that such totalitarian consequences are implicit in such an act, and should respond accordingly. I am reminded of that powerful scene at the end of the movie, Judgment at Nuremberg. Judge Haywood (played by Spencer Tracy) has been called to the jail cell of the Nazi judge (played by Burt Lancaster) who has just been given a life sentence for his crimes. The convicted judge tells Judge Haywood: ‘Those people, those millions of people. . . I never knew it would come to that.’ Judge Haywood replies: ‘it ‘came to that’ the first time you sentenced a man to death you knew to be innocent.’"

"To Toto fell the task of exposing the humbuggery that manipulated both the institutional machinery and followers. Because he did not share his companions’ trembling reverence for established wizardry, this free-spirited, tagalong mutt was able to approach the screen that separated the leaders from the followers. In knocking over that screen, however, Toto did far more than simply reveal the systematic bamboozlement of the Ozians. He also made it possible for his companions to discover that the personal qualities they had labored to earn as institutionally-bestowed rewards, were qualities that had always been within themselves. In believing that the virtues they sought lay outside themselves, and that some institutional alchemy could convert their leaden instincts to golden conduct (to paraphrase Herbert Spencer), they had set themselves up to be manipulated and exploited for the benefit of institutional interests."

"We offset the pursuit of our well-being with notions of altruism, and temper our happiness with feelings of guilt. In the vernacular of pop psychology, we speak of being ‘self-alienated’ people who have learned to reject our very selves. Whatever other advantages flow to us from our institutionalized world, the personal disadvantages carry a prohibitive price tag."

"We delude ourselves with the beliefs that the establish order suffers from only from policy or style defects, and that the new leadership or legislation or organization reforms are sufficient to overcome any problems. We can tinker with the machinery, but dare not think of doing without it. We may be willing to believe that the emperor is naked, but certainly not the empire itself."

"[I]nstitutions are the principle means by which conflict is produced and managed in society. Peace is incompatible with institutional activity. Stated in another way, the success of institutions depends upon the creation of those conditions in which personal and social conflict will flourish."

"We have allowed our lives to be taken over and monopolized by variety of political, religious, educational, economics, and social agencies over which we have little, if any, influence. These entities have helped us to construct the barriers that not only restrain us, but keep us separated from one another and serve as the boundary lines for the intergroup struggles of which we are a part. Through these groupings, we have helped to institutionalize conflict, to make it a seemingly permanent and necessary feature of human society."

"Every institution is a racket. Whether we are considering political, religious, economic, ideological, or educational institutions, each is a formal, elaborate system designed for one purpose: to control people. Each seeks to persuade or compel individual to divert their energies from the pursuit of private, personal objectives, and to dedicate themselves to organizational purposes."

"One cannot be devoutly religious, or patriotic, or moral, without differentiating oneself from the ungodly, the disloyal, or the immoral. To be for one’s own group, or nation, or race requires that one be against strangers."

"The history of institutionalized society has been principally one of the organization and management of conflict. Do institutions not encourage the duality in our thinking that promotes the practices of projecting good and bad characteristics onto others? Do they not encourage and exploit both scapegoating and authority worship, continually reminding us of the presence of some object of fear or hared, or some other source of conflict, and consoling us that they, alone, can make our lives secure?"

"Almost all of us have been raised in the belief that political institutions are necessary to provide order and harmony in society. In fact, we have been taught that the political State is synonymous with society itself; that the political State energizes and organizes society, creates and protects human rights, and make economic and social life possible."

"We have learned to project onto politicians our capacities for favorably directing our lives, and have come to identify political action as our most effective attribute. If governments are strong, it is because we are weak."

"The State has encouraged us to develop expectations of other people, and promised to compel the fulfillment of those expectations. It has persuaded us that others are the cause of our failures, and that others should be responsible for our happiness and well-being. It has offered to save us the effect of developing self-discipline, convincing us of the superiority of institutionally-imposed discipline in providing for social order. It has pandered to our worst fears about ourselves and others, concocting bogeymen and perilous threats from which it has promised protection."

"Firms with established market positions wanted to reduce the impact of such competition and employed voluntary methods (such as mergers, pooling, trade association ‘codes of ethics,’ and other agreements) in efforts to stabilize competitive relationships. When such voluntary means failed due to lack of effective enforcement, influential corporate leaders, having found a condition of unrestrained competition and decision-making unacceptable to their interests, helped promote the enactment of legal restraints upon trade practices."

"The attraction of so many business leaders to systems of government-enforced trade practice standards reflected a continuing institutionalization of economic life. The systemwide benefits of maintaining openness in competition—with no legal restrictions on freedom of entry into the marketplace or on the terms and conditions for which parties could contract with one another—were being rejected by business organizations more concerned with the survival of individual firms and industries. As a consequence, business leaders expressed an increasing desire for the maintenance of conditions of equilibrium that would help preserve the positions of existing firms. Free and unrestrained competition demanded a continuing resiliency in responding to market changes. The innovation in products, services, and business methods that made economic life creative and vibrant came to be seen as a threat to the survival of firms unable or unwilling to respond. Concerns for security and stability began to take priority over autonomy and spontaneity in the thinking of most business leaders."

"In such a volatile climate, change became one of the few constants upon which businessmen could rely. Economic survival often depended upon innovative resiliency; firms with higher unit costs and prices had to either be- come more efficient or drop out of the race. Instability and turnover were continuing threats with which firms had to contend. The severity of the competitive struggle was best reflected in the automobile industry: of the 181 firms manufacturing cars at some time during the years 1903 to 1926, 83 remained in business as of 1922, while 20 managed to survive through 1938."

"In furtherance of the war effort, the WIB centralized the economic life of America into a highly structured bureaucracy under the effective direction and control of leading business interests. Matters relating to the production, pricing, and allocation of strategic goods and services were handled not by the impersonal forces of the marketplace, but by the quite personal direction of businessmen armed with governmental authority. American industry had, in short, become ‘mobilized’ in the most literal, military sense of the word. Depending upon how one viewed the practice, American businesses found themselves subject to political ‘coordination’ or ‘regimentation’ in furtherance of collective goals."

"As the historian Robert Himmelberg has pointed out, many businessmen were not only desirous of modifying the antitrust laws in order to permit trade agreements among competitors but of continuing the WIB in order to protect industries from postwar price adjustments. In connection with such an objective, Bernard Baruch recommended to [Woodrow Wilson |President Wilson]] that the board be continued in existence, an action that Baruch felt Wilson could take as part of his general war powers. Wilson declined."

"The 1920s are part of that critical period discussed by the historian James Gilbert in his study of the development of collectivist thinking, a phenomenon he relates to the emergence of ‘a new industrial civilization in which the giant business organization was the dominant force.’ As Gilbert has demonstrated, the architects of twentieth century American collectivism had patterned their ideas on the industrial corporation as the central organizational tool. Any form of collectivism is, after all, ‘conservative’ in nature, being premised on the establishment of static, rigidly structured social relationships designed to restrain any influences that would pose the threat of substantial change. A symbiotic relationship thus developed between the forces of "social reform" and those advocating the conservation of existing economic institutions and relationships. In twentieth-century ‘ liberalism, declared the historian James Weinstein, many business leaders saw ‘a means of securing the existing social order.’"

"The failure of the voluntary methods—whether in the form of codes of ethics or appeals to business ‘cooperation’—to effectively restrain such competitive conditions as price reduction, aggressive sales promotions, and challenges to a competitor's existing markets and clientele caused business leaders to turn to political methods to accomplish their objectives. Recalling Mancur Olson's analysis, where large groups are involved, ‘coercion’ or some other ‘special device’ is necessary to cause individuals to conform their behavior to what is in the interests of the group. It was recognized that the lack of effective means for enforcing restrictive agreements in the marketplace could be overcome by having trade practice standards enforced by political agencies that possessed the requisite coercive machinery."

"There prevails a highly romanticized view of the small, independent retailer as the paladin for a system of free and open competition. An examination of the evidence, however, reveals few trades with a better track record than independent retailers at getting to the political arena with programs for depriving somebody of a competitive advantage. Virtually every innovation in retailing has met with the organized and vocal opposition of retailers who were unwilling to adjust their own selling methods to meet the competition, and who responded with legislative proposals to preserve the status quo."

"During the years 1918-38, notions of economic autonomy and self-regulating market behavior confronted the forces of industrial concentration. Free competition-with attendant low prices and aggressive trade practices—was identified with the older, unstructured forms of organization characterized by smaller, self-governing business firms. An unrestrained marketplace brought with it the specter of incessant change, a condition that was unacceptable to those charged with the responsibilities of managing and preserving the assets and market positions of business organizations. In the confrontation between ‘individualism’ and ‘instituti6nalism,’ competition came to be identified with the decentralized, unstructured practices representing the past. Individual self-interest, with its decentralizing tendencies, had to be suppressed in favor of the emerging institutional order. The attack on autonomy was a defense of the new order: the institutionally dominant, centrally directed, collective society."

"Businessmen came to embrace the industrial theology of ‘responsibility,’ and learned a new set of cartelizing catechisms. The campaign to reform trade practices and promote ‘fair’ competition had little, if anything, to do with business ethics, efficiency, ‘justice,’ ‘fairness,’ the elimination of waste, or any of the other rationalizations employed on behalf of ‘industrial self-rule.’ It was, instead, part of a strategy designed to secure the political supervision indispensable to the group domination of industry members. Only in the structuring of economic behavior, it came to be thought, could the status quo be maintained against the inconstancies and uncertainties of the marketplace."

"For our world to be predictable and controllable, it must be mechanistic and linear in nature. But, the illusions of the behaviorists to the contrary notwithstanding, there is nothing less mechanistic and linear in nature than the human mind, whose intricacies and capacities have yet to be matched by even the most sophisticated computers."

"The efforts of one organism to live at the expense of another is, when confined to members of the same species, a form of cannibalism."

"The belief that order must be intentionally generated and imposed upon society by institutional authorities continues to prevail. This centrally-directed model is premised upon what F.A. Hayek called ‘the fatal conceit,’ namely, the proposition ‘that man is able to shape the world according to his wishes,’ or what David Ehrenfeld labeled ‘the arrogance of humanism.’ That such practices have usually failed to produce their anticipated results has generally led not to a questioning of the model itself, but to the conclusion that failed policies have suffered only from inadequate leadership, or a lack of sufficient information, or a failure to better articulate rules. Once such deficiencies have been remedied, it has been supposed, new programs can be implemented which, reflective of this mechanistic outlook, will permit government officials to ‘fine tune’ or ‘jump start’ the economy, or ‘grow’ jobs, or produce a ‘quick fix’ for the ailing government school system."

"Even as modern society manifests its collapse in the form of violent crime, economic dislocation, seemingly endless warfare, inter-group hostilities, the decay of cities, a growing disaffection with institutions, and a general sense that nothing ‘works right’ anymore, faith in the traditional model continues to drive the pyramidal systems. Most people still cling to the belief that there is something that can be done by political institutions to change such conditions: a new piece of legislation can be enacted, a judicial ruling can be ordered, or a new agency regulation can be promulgated. When a government-run program ends in disaster, the mechanistic mantra is invariably invoked: ‘we will find out what went wrong and fix it so that this doesn’t happen again.’ That the traditional model itself, which is grounded in the state’s power to control the lives and property of individuals to desired ends, may be the principal contributor to such social disorder goes largely unexplored."

"Modern society is in a state of turbulence brought about, in large part, by political efforts to maintain static, equilibrium conditions; practices that interfere with the ceaseless processes of change that provide the fluctuating order upon which any creative system—such as the marketplace—depends. Institutions, being ends in themselves, have trained us to resist change and favor the status quo; to insist upon the certain and the concrete and to dismiss the uncertain and the fanciful; and to embrace security and fear risk. Life, on the other hand is change, is adaptation, creativity, and novelty. But creativity has always depended upon a fascination with the mysterious, and an appreciation for the kinds of questions that reveal more than answers can ever provide. When creative processes become subordinated to preserving established interests; when the glorification of systems takes priority over the sanctity of individual lives, societies begin to lose their life-sustaining vibrancy and may collapse."

"As the creators of sophisticated technologies, we have made ourselves increasingly machine-like; robotic servants of institutional systems we have been conditioned to revere, whose purposes we neither understand nor control, and of which we are afraid to ask questions. Our corporate-state world plunders, enslaves, controls and destroys us, all in the name of advancing our liberty and material well-being. Most of us are dominated by an unfocused fear of uncertainty, a longing for the security of emptiness."

"The hubris that attends all political programs of central planning is fueled by an ignorance of the forces of chaos."

"Western Civilization is in the crisis it is because we have sacrificed more profound values than the immediate and quantifiable consequences we tend to associate with the pursuit of our material interests. Among these are peace; liberty; respect for property, contracts, and the inviolability of the individual; truthfulness and the development of the mind; integrity; distrust of power; a sense of spirituality; and philosophically-principled behavior. But when our culture becomes driven by material concerns, these less tangible values recede in importance, and our thinking becomes dominated by the need to preserve the organizational forms that we see as having served our interests."

"The origins of any productive system seem to be traceable to conditions in which the self-interest driven purposes of individuals are allowed expression. These include the respect for autonomy and inviolability of personal boundaries that define liberty and peace and allow for cooperation for mutual ends. Support for such an environment has led to the flourishing of human activity not only in the production of material well-being, but in the arts, literature, philosophy, entrepreneurship, mathematics, spiritual inquiries, the sciences, medicine, engineering, invention, exploration, and other dimensions that fire the varied imaginations and energies of mankind."

"The problem with all of this, as historians advise us, is that the institutionalization of the systems that produce the values upon which a civilization depends, ultimately bring about the destruction of that civilization. Arnold Toynbee observed that a civilization begins to break down when there is ‘a loss of creative power in the souls of creative individuals,’ and, in time, the ‘differentiation and diversity’ that characterized a dynamic civilization, is replaced by ‘a tendency towards standardization and uniformity.’ The emergence of a ‘universal state,’ and increased militarism, represent later stages in the disintegration of a civilization."

"Is an alleged ‘common good’ intended to convey the idea of a universal good, one that is applicable to everyone? If so, the only value I have found to which all persons would seem to subscribe, is this: no one wants to be victimized. I have yet to find an individual to which this proposition would not apply. No one chooses to have his or her person or other property interests trespassed upon by another. The failure to recognize both this fact and the fact that all of our values are subjective in nature, has given rise to the silly notion of altruism, the idea that one could choose to act contrary to his or her perceived interests."

"It is this institutional group-think that now finds itself threatened by new technologies that do not lend themselves to centralized controls. The Internet and other unstructured tools will continue to destabilize the herds that the institutional order has worked so feverishly to keep confined to their assigned pastures."

"The benefits of maintaining openness in competition—with no legal restrictions on freedom of entry, product design, or on the terms and conditions for which parties could contract with one another—have long been rejected by major business organizations more concerned with the survival of individual firms and industries. The phrases ‘laissez-faire’ and ‘invisible hand’ that once articulated an awareness of the conditions under which prosperity might prevail, have been replaced by the dogma ‘too big to fail,’ that have allowed modern governments to ‘bail out’ failing firms with gifts of hundreds of billions of dollars!"

"The mainstream media and high-ranking government officials feigned righteous indignation over city officials in Bell, California, who paid themselves gargantuan salaries—one as high as $800,000 per year, and with retirement pay nearing $1,000,000 annually. What is most upsetting to such critics, however, is not the enormity of their racket, but that these local officials failed to conform themselves to established methods for the looting of taxpayers. Like Captain Renault in the movie, Casablanca, who informs Rick that he is ‘shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on’ in his business—as he receives his gambling payoff from the croupier—the town government of Bell will receive a selective criticism of its behavior."

"The pyramid expresses the essence of a world premised on vertical power, in which interpersonal relationships are yoked together in systems of domination and subservience. No more poignant image of a top-down world—one in which institutional violence operates as a kind of ersatz gravitational force—exists than this. Members of the institutional hierarchy—who long ago learned that they could more readily benefit by coercing their fellow humans than by trading with them—have seen to it that others be inculcated in a belief in the necessity of pyramidalism. Our entire institutionalized world—from the more violent political organizations to more temperate ideologies—is premised on the shared assumption that only in vertically-structured institutionalized authority can mankind find conditions of peace, liberty, and order."

"How foolishly we cling to the belief that the state, for instance, exists to protect our lives, liberty, and property interests, even as it continues to slaughter millions of people, restrain their liberties, and despoils their wealth. The life system, itself, constantly pushes the fallacy of pyramidal thinking into our unconscious and often conscious mind. As we look around our communities and the rest of the world and discover how much better decentralized systems perform in providing what political agencies only promise, faith in the pyramid collapses. Not willing to allow its violence-based interests to decompose due to a change in human consciousness, the state—along with the corporate interests that have long benefited as politically-created parasites—desperately reacts to shore up its crumbling foundations."

"Those who do not understand the Amish often imagine that their resistance to new technologies arises from a sense of ‘evil’ they see in such tools. But this is not the case. The Amish do employ tools, but if someone wants to consider bringing a new technology into the community, the Amish study it with this thought in mind: will acceptance of this technology make us dependent upon the external world, such that we will be tempted to change our ways? An automobile, for instance, would make the Amish have to rely on parts manufacturers, tire and battery sellers, and petroleum companies to keep it operative."

"Please do not let Judas drive you away from Jesus. Your pain is real, your hurt is tangible and it demands justice — which it will be granted. But don't be overcome by the waves."

"To all the rest of my fellow Catholics, stand up and fight for the truth. You want to know the will of God for your lives, you want to know how to get to Heaven in these monstrously evil times, this is how. You fight against this evil with every ounce of strength in your mind heart and soul. You stand in the breach and defend the glory of our Holy Mother, the Church. And you protect and shield the innocent, the weak. And whatever happens to you in the process doesn't matter. You were created for greatness. Live up to your calling. You were made for combat."

"Anyone who dies without enemies led a purposeless life, totally selfish, concentrating all their effort at never committing to anything sufficiently to earn them enemies — gliding through life concerned about nothing more than human respect. But all of this goes much further than that. It's not just getting enemies that matter, but that you acquire the correct enemies. And we recall, Our Blessed Lord had an extensive list of correct enemies — they crucified Him. If you don't have enemies owing to your faith and zeal and love of Our Lord, then you don’t have enough faith, zeal or love. In our go-along, never-give-offense-type culture, the most detestable thing in the judgment of men is to give offense — wrong. The most detestable, un-manly thing you can do is to never give offense."

"One of the most persistent, yet devastating myths is that slavery ended in 1865—persistent because it is so pervasive in the current of United States history and devastating because it establishes a benchmark from which African American progress is supposedly made."

"Enslaved workers transferred the legacy of poverty and oppression to their descendants because their status did not allow the acquisition of wealth. Moreover, the ability to share equitably in the nation’s wealth was stifled by laws that disavowed the historical reality that the status of the “enslaved workers” affected the status of their descendants. The use of the law as a tool to demand redress has not advanced the right of African Americans to that wealth because the legal technicalities of sovereign immunity, the statute of limitations, and other devices have worked to prevent African Americans from gaining access to it."

"Donald Trump is America’s first wartime president in the Culture War. During wartime, things like “dignity” and “collegiality” simply aren’t the most essential qualities one looks for in their warriors."

". A lot of people aren’t really liberals, they’re conservatives. They’ve just never heard what a conservative believes from a conservative. All I ever knew was what liberals said conservatives believed. I knew that Democrats like peace and Republicans like war. Well, I like peace. I must be a Democrat. Democrats like air and water. I like air and water. I must be a Democrat."

"[About what to do to counter hypocrisy in academia:] The first order of business, if a stream is being polluted, you have to stop the pollution at the source. The wrong way to think about it is 'Let's clean up the stream.' The right way to think about it is 'Let's stop polluting the stream.' You have to stop donating to your alma mater. First order of business. [...] This should be the easiest ask on planet Earth. [...] Give it to anybody, but don't give it to university. Because when you give it to your university, you're supporting an indoctrination mill, you're supporting an institution whose very values are antithetical to Western liberal democracy, so you have to stop."

"[About homelessness:] Some people on the far left don't want that problem solved because they look at the manifestation of homelessness as indicative of a problem with the system. And as long as we can keep homelessness there, we can see that the system is corrupt and then we can incentivize people to rip down the system because we want social justice. [...] We want to remediate these larger economic problems that we know the source of these are the capitalist structure."

"I'm worried about 33 trillion in debt. [...] I'm worried about the fact that one third of the taxes collected last year went to pay the interest on the debt. I'm worried that nobody really gives a hoot about it. I'm worried about the national divorce talk. I'm worried about wide-scale ideological capture of our institutions, particularly legacy media and legacy institutions. I'm worried about the geopolitical situation. [...] I'm worried about the Israeli Palestinian problem [...]. I'm worried about Chinese militarization of Taiwan, the semiconductor industry. I'm not worried about rogue [artificial intelligence] [...], but I'm worried that we have lost an understanding of what makes America great. [...] I'm worried that we have forgotten why freedom matters, why it's important, that's what I'm worried about. And unless we start to care about those things then we can't reconstruct reason; we can't reconstruct a civil society."

"Faith taints or at worst removes our curiosity about the world, what we should value, and what type of life we should lead. [...] Faith immutably alters the starting conditions for inquiry by uprooting a hunger to know and sowing a warrantless confidence."

"Inquiry and wonder must replace dogmatism and certainty. The long-term goal is to create conditions that turn the dispositions of inquiring and wondering into culturally trumpeted values."

"The thrust of our message must be that there are things we don't know and it's okay not to know— even in death. Not claiming to know something you don't know isn't a character flaw, it is a virtue."

"To argue that people need faith is to abandon hope, and to condescend and accuse the faithful of being incapable of understanding the importance of reason and rationality. There are better and worse ways to come to terms with death, to find strength during times of crisis, to make meaning and purpose in our lives, to interpret our sense of awe and wonder, and to contribute to human well-being— and the faithful are completely capable of understanding and achieving this."

"A criticism of an idea is not the same as a criticism of a person. [...] Ideas don't deserve dignity; people deserve dignity."

"Give faith-based justifications no countenance. [...] Let the utterer know that faith is not an acceptable basis from which to draw a conclusion that can be relied upon."

"Don't complain, apologize, or mumble in the defense of reason. [...] Tell people exactly what you think and why you think it."

"Most basic elements of civil discussion, especially over matters of substantive disagreement, come down to a single theme: making the other person in a conversation a partner, not an adversary. To accomplish this, you need to understand what you want from the conversation, make charitable assumptions about others' intentions, listen, and seek back-and-forth interaction (as opposed to delivering a message)."

"Know when to walk away, even when the conversation is going well. Putting pressure on your partner to continue a discussion beyond their comfort level shuts down listening, encourages defensiveness, and turns the conversation into a frustrated rehearsal of why one of you is correct and the other dense."

"What it means to hold a belief based on evidence is, by definition, that one is open to the possibility that evidence might be discovered that would change one's mind. If no evidence would change one's mind, then one is not forming one's beliefs on the basis of evidence."

"The most difficult thing to accept for people who work hard at forming their beliefs on the basis of evidence is that not everyone forms their beliefs in that way. [...] Many people believe what and how they do precisely because they do not formulate their beliefs on the basis of evidence-- not because they're lacking evidence."

"Here's a heresy: "How do you know that?" is a powerful question for helping people think, but it's not the best question. The best question is, "How could that belief be wrong?""

"When your conversation partner is getting angry, the single best thing you can do in most circumstances is to stop whatever else you're doing and listen. It's very difficult to remain angry with someone who is patiently and earnestly listening, and if you break the cycle of frustrating dialogue early by switching to listening and learning, you can halt a great deal of your partner's mounting anger before it starts."

"Seemingly impossible conversations typically have one thing in common: they're about moral beliefs rooted in one's sense of identity, but they play out on the level of facts (or assertions, name-calling, grandstanding, threats, etc.). [...] The most difficult conversations, then, masquerade as discussions about something other than morality, but they are actually about what qualities, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors individuals believe make them good people or bad people and why it is important to hold the right views among those."

"Peter Boghossian's techniques of friendly persuasion are not mine, and maybe I'd be more effective if they were. They are undoubtedly very persuasive — and very much needed."

"All great achievers are given multiple reasons to believe they are failures. But in spite of that they persevere."

""The best leaders are those who understand that their power comes not from their position, but from their ability to empower others." The 5 Levels of Leadership" (2011) page 21"

""Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts." Sometimes You Win--Sometimes You Learn" (2013) page 13"

""A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way." The Leadership Handbook" (2011), page 17"

""The greatest danger to most organizations is not external threats, but internal weaknesses." The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership" (1998) page 145"

""Leadership is not about titles, positions, or flowcharts. It is about one life influencing another." Book: "The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership" (1998) page 12"

"when one perceives that the saloon is not the cause that menaces the safety and welfare of society, that it is not the cause of poverty and crime, one must, if honest with one's self, and if possessed of a truly revolutionary spirit, transfer activities to other fields."

"For a number of years I also believed that political bondage was the cause of many of the ills endured by those of my own sex; until I discovered that the man without a job was about as badly off as the woman without a ballot. In fact, a little worse, for we can live without voting but we cannot live without eating."

"The real antagonism is not that which exists or is supposed to exist between the sexes; but between the capitalist class and the proletariat. Women are victims of class distinctions more than of sex distinctions and when I perceived this fact, I changed my course of action and whatever revolutionary spirit there is in me finds expression today in the Socialistic movement."

"During the summer of 1903, the Chief of Police of San Francisco took it into his head to stop the Socialist speaking on the streets. Comrade Holmes was the first to be arrested. His case was tried and dismissed. Upon the strength of this we proceeded to hold a meeting at the same corner where he had been arrested. Hardly had I spoken ten minutes when a couple of policemen came up and ordered me to move on. I refused to do so and was at once placed under arrest. This of course broke up the meeting and I was taken to the police station."

"The tendency of some people to confound the woman question with the sex question evidences a lack of a scientific knowledge and appreciation of the fundamental principles of the two problems."

"Biological facts cannot be overthrown, but mental viewpoints are largely affected and determined by the economic processes in life, and if we probe deep enough we will find a material basis or ground for all social and mental concepts."

"The introduction and establishment of the institution of private property completely changed the status of woman in society."

"When the pioneer woman suffrage workers began their work for equal rights the most popular argument brought against them was that they were "immoral women." Only a short time ago we celebrated the centennial anniversary of the birth of the man who first admitted women as clerks in his store in the State of Maine. This man was boycotted and the women employed by him were considered by "respectable" people of that day as "bad" women. Every effort on the part of women to break away from the narrow life determined by her sex or maternal functions is met by bitter opposition."

"The ethics of capitalism will disappear with the passing of the institution of private property."

"The Co-operative Commonwealth will give us a new and a higher standard of morality."

"Two hundred years ago one could find but few workingmen who could read or write."

"the new industrial processes which the capitalist system gave the world necessitated the education and mental training of the workers in order that they might be fit and efficient wealth producers. Capitalism therefore created the economic or material reasons far the need of the great mass of the workers to be educated: It "democratized" education."

"While economic and material benefits have accrued to the master class through the education of the workers; while large profits were only possible through a trained and skilled laboring class, yet in this very thing which makes for the triumph of the master class financially, we see a potent and powerful factor in bringing about the political and industrial supremacy of the working class."

"Only as the workers have knowledge and intelligence can they solve the problem of their own political and industrial freedom."

"The capitalist masters have educated the workers to their advantage to-day, but for their undoing tomorrow. The thing that makes for the triumph of capitalism ultimately makes for its own downfall."

"Education of the workers for the benefit of the capitalist class means gain and profit only for the few, the upper class of to-day. Education of the workers for the benefit of the working class means gain and profit for the working class and ultimately for the whole human race."

"The future victories of the working class lie not so much in their numbers (the workers have always been in the vast majority), but in the knowledge they possess and the ability to intelligently organize and act together on the political and economic fields."

"Let us ever remember that knowledge is power!"

"I believe that Labor should have a directing voice in the economic, political and social life of the nation. I believe that political and industrial changes should be brought about by democratic methods and policies."

"(I) have been an interested student of the labor and Socialist movements for more than 30 years."

"My membership in the Socialist party began in April 1902 and ended March 1st 1936, when it became a party of dictators and lost its democratic soul. I have now cast my political lot with the Peoples Party affiliated with the American Labor Party."

"During my years of membership in the Socialist Party, I have covered every state in the union except Mississippi in organization and educational work. From 1912 to Nov. 1917 excepting for the winter months of 1912-3 I spent in Alaska. During that time I organized the Alaska Territorial Socialist Party. Had charge of the Delegate to Congress campaign in 1912 and in 1916 was the candidate myself. In many of the mining camps I received the largest vote of any of the candidates. The winter of 1916 and 17 I served as vice-president of the Alaska Labor Union in Anchorage...It fell to my lot to serve as Acting President a good deal of the time. A membership of more than 3200 with some score or more nationalities required skill in handling the meetings and often interpreters were needed to explain what was said to the various language groups. In 1920 had charge of the Debs campaign in the Northwest and looked after the work of placing the tickets on the ballot in Washington and Oregon. In 1932 managed the Socialist campaign in Salt Lake City and also campaigned that year in Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Idaho. Served as State Secretary of California Socialist Party from 1925 to 1930 and from 1925-31 inclusive was managing editor of the Labor World, official organ of the Socialist Party of California. In 1926 ran for Lieut. Governor in California and polled 10,506 votes more than Upton Sinclair who was the head of the ticket. As candidate for the U.S. Senate, I ran ahead of Norman Thomas-Presidential candidate-nearly 8,000 votes. I made a vigorous campaign for the whole ticket but apparently profited most thereby. Had a very active part in the campaign of 1924 and spoke for the LaFollette and Wheeler ticket in Michigan, Ill., Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska, Idaho and California. During periods covering time from 1922 to spring of 1924 was in New York City and served for a while as organizer for the Umbrella Workers Union. Also assisted in the work of the Paper Box workers Union and helped in their strike... Was the first woman elected to membership on the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party and served from 1907 to 1912. Was elected by the party membership to serve as a delegate to the International Labor and Socialist Congress in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1910 and addressed a number of meetings in various parts of England enroute the Congress and return. Was active in the Leage of Women Voters when in San Francisco."

"Prohibition has not reduced the sale of liquor, but if the ruling classes can succeed in cutting down drinking by liquor legislation, will it speed the coming revolution? Most assuredly!"

"Sobriety means efficiency, and "efficiency" movements have in all ages been the incubators in which revolutions were hatched."

"The ruling class has always desired more efficient slaves. They bred them to be more efficient, and then found that efficiency in producing wealth also produced a desire on the part of the slave to enjoy more. In order to secure more, the slaves revolted."

"When that efficient worker has built a world of beauty, comfort and luxury, he will not stop at the puny gates of private property with which the ruling class would shut him out of the Paradise he has created, but he will use the same efficiency with which he built the gates to hammer them down again."

"A man whose brain is pickled in whiskey is of little value to the ruling class, and he is of inestimable less value to the working class. Efficiency oils the wheels of revolution."

"Of course John D. Rockefeller does not realize the fact, but it is true nevertheless that the Hookworm Commission he is supporting in the South is doing more for the revolutionary awakening in Dixie than anything else."

"we Socialists know that hookworms in the tummy and revolutionary thoughts in the brain cannot exist in the same man at the same time."

"An efficient man is a rebellious man. And anything that raises the efficiency of the working class will speed the revolution."

"Get busy, you middle class foes of booze! We guarantee that if you can keep them sober, we will organize them for revolution."

"For eighteen months the very atmosphere of the nation has been surcharged with the roaring, shricking shouts of Americanism, then in a single day a thunderous silence descended upon us and we felt the stunned scene of unreality that fell upon the soldiers in the trenches when the signing of the armistice suddenly stopped the roar and bedlam of war."

"Max Eastman, one of the foremost writers and teachers of the country, went to Fargo, North Dakota, to deliver a lecture on "Democracy." A great crowd evidently interested in the thing we were fighting to make the world safe for, gathered in the court to listen to what he had to say. A drunken mob, led by a judge and a "very respectable" attorney, invaded the "temple of justice" and would have murdered Max Eastman but for the sublime heroism and unflinching courage of a woman. An attempted murder of Max Eastman was flaunted as an exhibition of the "spirit of Americanism.""

"there was written into the history of our country the most shameful story of abject cowardice on the part of elected officials that has ever blackened the pages of human history the so-called "espionage act.""

"By the enactment of certain parts of this one act a way was opened by which we as people lost rights secured by hundreds of years of ceaseless struggle, rights that had been bought and paid for in the blood and suffering of our fathers, religious liberty, the very ideal that sent the Puritan forefathers to this savage land, was destroyed overnight. In the land whose constitution guarantees religious liberty, by the misuse of this act, scores of men were sent to prison for ten and twenty years for circulating a book that stated in the mildest, gentlest language that wars were contrary to the teaching of Jesus. Thousands of young men whose religious convictions made it impossible for them to bear arms or kill their fellow men were forced by the most brutal methods into uniforms, dragged like felons to training camps, subjected to tortures that vie with the horrors of the Inquisition, and that sent many of them to an untimely grave."

"Under the operation of the "espionage act" it was not necessary to really commit the crime of having an opinion of the administration; it was not necessary to do anything at all, or to be responsible for any results. Hundreds of people are now behind prison bars whom the administration never charged with any overt act; they merely were found guilty for having an "intent," and that "intent" was sufficient to call down upon their heads punishment far more severe than is dealt out to thieves, bank wreckers, white slaves and murderers. No white slaver who has made traffic in human flesh for the profits of vice in this country has ever been sentenced to five, ten or twenty years in prison, as Rose Pastor Stokes, Eugene V. Debs and others have been sentenced for having an "intent" that never accomplished any purpose whatever."

"I saw in the tombs in New York City a tiny, half-starved scrap of girlhood that should have been in a grade school, who was sentenced to twenty years at hard labor for saying that President Wilson was a hypocrite, and that girl is now serving this monstrous sentence with Stars and Stripes the emblem of freedom, justice, and democracy, flying over the hell-hole in which she is imprisoned."

"Soon the country was overrun by spies, seeking not German vandals but Americans who held ideas and beliefs differing from the administration. Soon every vicious element in our society was hot on the trail of every man or woman who had ever stood for social justice and industrial democracy, and found it an easy matter to railroad them to prison. It was only necessary to cry "disloyal," "seditious," "pro-German," "un-American," and like the witches of old the leaders of the working class were hounded, imprisoned and murdered."

"We have learned by long and bitter experience that when the "kept press" assails a thing, that it must be something very beneficial to the working class; that when the newspapers slander and villify an individual or movement may be serving the masses and endangering the privileged classes."

"Bolshevism is a new word, but the charges brought against it and its supporters have a strangely familiar sound-we seem to remember them of old. Privilege is so sterile of ideas; so barren of imagination, that it has not been able to think of one new lie; to concoct one fresh slander; to turn one new trick or say one new thing about Bolshevism that has not already been worn to tatters in the assaults upon abolition of slavery, trade unionism, woman's suffrage, Socialism, the Non-Partisan League and the I. W. W."

"Bolshevism may cause the goose-flesh of abject terror to prickle the spine of the "powers that prey," but it has no terrors for the working class."

"Socialism is coming, and it seems poetic justice that it should be thrust upon the world by its most bitter enemies. Industrial and political autocracy run mad plunged the whole world into war, and then the world, in order to save itself from utter destruction, was compelled to turn to Socialism for salvation. The warring nations did not make the long strides towards industrial democracy because they loved the Socialists, or wanted Socialism, but because it is the only thing that can meet the situation and save the world from utter chaos and ruin."

"The want of a biscuit, a beefsteak and a job has caused more revolutions than all the flags that ever waved"

"Looking back over twenty years, I am content. I gave to the service of the working class all that I had and all that I was, and no one can do more."

"If there is any institution in our social organism which needs the light of intelligent study, rational understanding and sane revolution, it is our criminal laws; their administration and systems of punishment."

"April added another political, Mrs. Kate Richards O'Hare, to our company... She had been convicted under the Espionage Law, but she was emphatic that the Supreme Court would reverse the verdict, and that in any event she would not serve time in our place. Soon we politicals-Kate, Ella, and I-were nicknamed "the trinity." We spent much time together and became very neighbourly. Kate had the cell on my right, and Ella was next to her. We did not ignore our fellow-prisoners or deny ourselves to them, but intellectually Kate and Ella created a new world for me, and I basked in its interests, its friendship and affection."

"Kate Richards O'Hare, as I have described, was a prominent and extremely effective Socialist speaker."

"Kate Richards O'Hare, a tall Irish woman, was arrested in North Dakota for opposing the war and came to our house before the trial. She had taken a children's march to Washington after their fathers were arrested in Oklahoma for what came to be known as the Green Corn Rebellion. They had hidden with their hunting rifles in the tall corn rather than go to the war, until the militia shot them out when the corn withered. She walked with these children across the country, fed by the farmers on the way. To the horror of President Wilson they stood before the White House in their hunger and rags and asked for amnesty for their fathers."

"Charlotte Perkins Gilman put her feminism before her socialism; Kate Richards O'Hare, who served on the National Committee of the Socialist Party of America and worked closely with Eugene Debs, reversed that pattern. Although O'Hare supported women's suffrage, her feminist argument nevertheless differed in important respects from Gilman's. For example, O'Hare was not convinced that an emancipated, economically productive womanhood was an essential precondition for a socialist society. Not opposed to working women per se (no good socialist could be), O'Hare nevertheless emphasized the importance of female domesticity. Although she expected that a socialist society both would alter the conditions of work and provide support systems such as communal kitchens and laundries, she was far less radical then Gilman in her conception of woman's place. For example, she suggested that the care of children under socialism would rest primarily with the mother, who during the period when her children were growing up would not engage in outside work...She forcefully expressed her domestic predilections in her lament that young women had lost the art of homemaking because "we insist that our girls be educated. We provide teachers for them in art and science but entirely ignore the greatest art known to man, that of making a house a home, and giving life to well-born children." While she claimed that she was not denigrating intellectual or artistic education for women, she still insisted that girls had "an inalienable right to a "domestic" education as well. One suspects that her priorities would not have changed drastically after the revolution. O'Hare did argue that men should participate more actively in the process of raising children, that they should be educated "for the duties of fatherhood" and must learn "to be helpers and sustainers" within the domestic circle. Given the overall character of her argument, it seems probable that O'Hare's conception of fatherhood was simply an extension of Catharine Beecher's view that the home should serve as the focal point of human activity for both sexes. O'Hare was not anticipating the argument of some late-twentieth-century feminists that since women have the right to participate completely in what used to be called "man's world," men ought similarly to enter fully into the joys and responsibilities of childrearing."

"Despite O'Hare's prominent position in the Socialist Party, on the whole the party itself paid little attention to developing a feminist stance. Its leaders actively discouraged specific women's activities until 1907, when the International Congress of Socialists formally endorsed woman suffrage. After that the American Socialist Party's neglect of women's needs became a point of controversy. The Socialist Woman (later the Progressive Woman) resulted from the awakened interest."

"Kate Richards O'Hare was arrested and served 14 months of a five-year sentence for an anti-war speech in which she said women should refuse to breed sons to fertilize the soil. I visited her in the Missouri State Penitentiary at Jefferson City, and found she had to sew a daily quota of heavy duck overalls for the prisoners."

"It is said we can conquer without emancipation. The rebellion is almost crushed — our armies are pressing southward — the end approaches, when all things will be restored as of old. The South, having been deceived in regard to Mr. Lincoln and the aims of the Republican party, went to war to protect slavery. Now, perhaps, they are beginning to see that Mr. Lincoln is not so far from a slave-catcher, after all. The loyalty of the South is a myth. It will of course grow, as our armies advance, because between hanging and loyalty the advocates of a sinking cause can have but one choice"

"We may beat their armies everywhere, take every city and seaport: what then? Subjugated, are they subdued? They would rise in sixty days again, should the military arm be withdrawn. Success cannot gild our banners while the shadow of the blacks obscures it."

"Kentucky, which fished the halter for liberty in the person of John Brown (abolitionist), has strangled her again, through her representative in the Presidential chair!"

"In the field, Gen. Mitchell rejects the bondmen who flee to him for protection. everywhere those who bring us the most important intelligence are liable to be thrust back into slavery, there to be whipped, tortured, burned to death."

"What are our sufferings to those of the slave girl, or the slave mother, lashed from the embrace of her children? Has your purity no feeling for purity outraged? — your parental affections no sympathy for the lacerated love of the slaves? Can you hesitate to speak the word — Be free? God has put slavery into our hands to choke it. He alone should be able to take it out again alive. Let us storm the slave system, as Smith took Fort Donelson. If the President will not give us the order, let us go ourselves."

"The march of events has at length brought us face to face with the question which cannot be said to be one of public expediency and of military necessity. To-day the question presented to us is one of abstract right and wrong. The republican party must proclaim as its watchword universal liberty if it ever hopes to win, and if it ever repudiates that watchword it must die."

"Slavery is a poor school teacher. No one denies that these men must, to a great extent, are in the condition of the prisoners of St. Mark, who, after being long imprisoned in the dark and filthy dungeons for months and years, ten, twenty and thirty years, when brought into the great square of St. Mark, and standing in the sunshine so long shut out from their eyes, they stood stricken blind for ever. It is not strange that these slaves, freed from the dungeons and caverns of slavery, brought into the full blaze of light, into the bright sunlight of liberty should be dazzled and lose their eyesight at least for a little time, and confound friends with foes. T"

"Our history, the history of our fathers, who to a man loved liberty yet sustained slavery, who prayed that justice might be established in the time to come yet secured the oppression of the present, and who said the men who come after us will secure it."

"All we want to-day is to have the temple erected to liberty perfect and entire. There is but one way for the right to go, that is straight ahead, whatever may stand in our way."

"Anna Dickinson, in the Philadelphia Mint, working for a pittance and making impassioned speeches on various occasions for the enslaved black man, was regarded as a nuisance. But Anna Dickinson on the platform, with impassioned speech and fervid moral earnestness, pleading the cause of the slave and receiving $100 and $200 a night for the service; Anna Dickinson in the Connecticut and New Hampshire Republican campaigns, thrilling both States with her eloquent utterances, the acknowledged power that won the victory in both for the Republican party, became the heroine of the hour, and was hailed as the Joan d’Are of the nineteenth century."

"Owls are not like other birds. I suppose one could say this about any avian tribe, but owls are particularly unlike, with layered dimensions of dissimilarity."

"In my experience, birds are as fine and appropriate a lens through which to assimilate life as anything else."

"Mayr became a mentor for many promising young men with an interest in birds. He urged them to pick a bird, to follow and study it, to learn the secrets of its breeding life, its winter habits, to take in small details that no one else knew because no one else had ever watched so closely. Mayr argued against a stream of ornithologists who hoped to make the science entirely academic, feeling that serious amateurs could make valuable contributions to the field of ornithology if they watched birds seriously and well."

"Cormorants are hated. In one popular anti-cormorant treatise, the bird is blamed for its very existence: “A war is being waged between the interests of sport fishermen and a predatory bird that has no local natural enemy. The bird’s sole purpose is to reproduce and eat fish.” Of course, obtaining food and reproducing are two primary goals of any species, including our own."

"I suppose it might be argued that, for the amateur watcher seeking a meaningful connection with birds, this attention to remote detail is just another form of scientific reductionism, that harried foe of poetry and wonder. In my experience, it is so much the opposite. The tinier the details I come to comprehend, the more bewildered I become, the richer, it seems, the more inspiring of awe, is the biological life I manage to encounter. The minutiae offer a focus that bridges the aesthetic and scientific worlds."

"At first, when you push beyond your perceived capability your mind won't shut the fuck up about it. It wants you to stop so it sends you into a spin cycle of panic and doubt, which only amplifies your self-torture. But when you persist past that to the point that pain fully saturates the mind, you become single-pointed. The external world zeroes out. Boundaries dissolve and you feel connected to yourself, and to all things, in the depth of your soul. That's what I was after. Those moments of tiotal connection and power, which came through me again in an even deeper way as I reflected on where I'd come from and all I'd put myself through."

"At forty-three, my wildland firefighting career is just getting started. I love being part of a team of hard motherfuckers like them, and my ultra career is about to be born again too. I'm just young enough to bring the hell on and still get out there and get after it. I'm running faster now than I ever have, and I don't need any tape or props for my feet. When I was thirty-three I ran at an 8:35 per mile pace. Now I'm running 7:15 per mile very comfortably. I'm still getting used to this new, flexible, fully functioning body, and getting accustomed to my new self."

"My passion still burns, but to be honest, it takes a bit longer to channel my rage. It's not camped out on my home screen anymore, a single unconscious twitch from overwhelming my heart and head. Now I have to access it consciously. But when I do, I can still feel all the challenges and obstacles, the heartbreak and hard work, like it happened yesterday. That's why you can feel my passion on podcasts and videos. That shit is still there, seared into my brain like scar tissue. Tailing me like a shadow that's trying to chase me down and swallow me whle, but always drives me forward. Whatever failures and accomplishments pile up in the years to come, and there will be plenty of both I'm sure, I know I'll continue to give it my all and set goals that seem impossible to most. And when those motherfuckers say so, I'll look them dead in the eye and respond with one simple question. What if?"

"Most people live their whole lives without ever contemplating what it means to be great. To them, greatness looks like Steph Curry, Rafael Nadal, Toni Morrison, Georgia O'Keeffe, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, or Amelia Earhart. They put all the greats on a pedestal but think of themselves as mere mortals. And that's exactly why greatness eludes them. They turn it into some untouchable plane, impossible for almost anybody to reach, and it never even crosses their mind to aim for it. No matter what I'm doing or which arena I'm engaging in, I will always aim for greatness because I know that we are all mere mortals and greatness is possible for anyone and everyone if they are willing to seek it out in their own soul. In Gogglish terms, greatness is a state of letting go of all your faults and imperfections, scavenging every last bit of strength and energy, and putting it the fuck to use to excel at whatever you set your mind to. Even if some motherfucker out there told you it was impossible. It is a feeling pursued by those rare souls willing to extend themselves beyond reason and pay the cost."

"I don't jump to earth from outer space, but I know that atmospheric line between blue and black. It is the glimmer of greatness that runs right through the human soul. We all have it. Most of us will never see it because to get there requires a willingness to extend yourself to the limit without any guarantee of success."

"Just as words can be redefined, never doubt that we can redefine ourselves. It can feel impossible at times because we live in a world filled with arbitrary boundaries and fixed social lines that are as thick as the walls around a fortress. Worse, we allow those walls to limit us in too many ways. The brainwashing starts early, and it starts at home. The people we grow up with and the environments we grow up in define who we think we are and what we think life is all about. When you're young, you can only know what you see, and if all you are ever exposed to are lazy people, content with mediocrity or who convince you of your own worthlessness, greatness will remain a fantasy. If you live in the ghetto or in a dying industrial or farming town, where buildings are boarded up, addiction runs rampant, and the schools are a mess, that will factor into the possibilities others envision for you and you envision for yourself. But even privileged people can feel shackled by their circumstances. The vast majority of parents don't know what greatness looks like, so they are ill-equipped and afraid to encourage big dreams. They want their children to have security and don'r want them to experience failure. That's how limited horizons get passed down from generation to generation."

"There are no prerequisites to becoming great. You could be raised by a pack of wolves. You could be homeless and illiterate at thirty years old and graduate from Harvard at forty. You could be one of the most accomplished motherfuckers in the country and still be hungrier and work harder than everybody else you know as you attempt to conquer a new field. And it all starts with a commitment to looking beyond your known world. Beyond your street, town, state, or nationality. Only then can true self-exploration begin. After that comes the real work. Fighting those demons every morning and all day long is maddening. Because they only ever want to break you down. They don't encourage you or make you feel good about yourself or your long odds as you fight through all the toxic mold and curst that is self-hate, doubt, and loneliness. They want to limit you. They want you to quit before you get to pliability, where the sacrifice, hard work, and isolation that felt so heavy for so long become your haven. Where after struggling to visualize greatness for years, it is effortless. That's when momentum will gather like an updraft and send you airborne and spiraling toward the outer limits of your known world. It's time to level-up and seek out that blue-to-black line. The line that separates good from great. It is within each of us. #GreatnessIsAttainable #NeverFinished"

"I wish I could more fully express what it's like to defy the medical mind to parachute into wildfires at forty-seven years old. I find the sensation almost impossible to describe. All I can say is that I hope you and everyone else get to feel this one day because to overcome all obstacles and bump up against the outer reaches of your capabilities is the pinnacle. In those rare, fleeting moments when you are washed in the sense of infinite possibility and overwhelmed with glory, everything they ever did to you or put in front of you- all the knockdowns, breakdowns, and fuck-yous and every bit of the pain, doubt, and humiliation- is fucking worth it. But the only way to get there is to continually seek greatness and always be willing to try one more time. I never needed to be the hardest motherfucker in the world. That became a goal because I knew it would bring out my best self. Which is what this fucked-up world needs from all of us: to evolve into the very best version of ourselves. That's a moving target, and it isn't a one-time task. It is a lifelong quest for more knowledge, more courage, more humility, and more belief. Because when you summon the strength and discipline to live like that, the only thing limiting your horizons is you."

"David Goggins is a Retired Navy SEAL and the only member of the U.S. Armed Forces to complete SEAL training, Army Ranger School, and Air Force Tactical Air Controller training. Goggins has completed more than seventy ultra-distance races, often placing in the top five, and is a former Guiness World Record holder for completing 4,030 pull-ups in seventeen hours. A sought-after public speaker, he's traveled the world sharing his philosophy on how to master the mind. When he's not speaking, he works as an Advanced Emergency Technician in a big city Emergency Room and, during the summer, as a wildland firefighter in British Columbia."

"One must never stop learning and growing and working for the People."

"Only the People’s full participation can bring true victory. And the People are real individual human beings, like me—with brains, desires, fears, angers, dreams, etc."

"Revolution is learning how to bring a large variety of personalities together into a powerful harmony. This harmony must lay down some general direction and get work done. It’s never easy. It’s struggle. It takes a lot of skill."

"Because of the totally racist, genocidal dynamic within this Babylonian Empire, the understood that we must primarily look to ourselves to free ourselves."

"Nationalism and statism are different because nationalism can be anti-state. But they can have commonalities in that nationalism may only be against a particular kind of state, such as a Racist State, or a Fascist State."

"Anarchist theory and practice cannot take the form of a mere adherence to the founding fathers and canonical practices, such as Kropotkin, Bakunin, and the Spanish Civil War. Tired of hearing it! Anarchism HERE in Babylon must reflect our unique problems and possibilities for struggle. Our struggles are not just against capitalism. Too simple. Our struggles are not just against racism. That’s also too simple. There are all kinds of negative “isms” we are fighting against and, just as important, all kinds of worlds we are fighting for. That’s why the whole idea and practice of “convergences” and “spokescouncils” are so important to activists in general to learn from and enhance because they are about making space for all “Voices” to be heard and factored into the decision-making so that whatever activities comes forth from it prefigures the kind of new worlds we truly want."

"Through the Imagination, All is possible."

"When old strategies don’t work, you need to look for other ways of doing things to see if you can get yourself unstuck and move forward again."

"What does it say about you, if you allow someone to set themselves up as your leader and make all your decisions for you? What anarchism helped me see was that you, as an individual, should be respected and that no one is important enough to do your thinking for you."

"I tried to figure out how this applies to me. I began to look at Black history again, at African history, and at the histories and struggles of other people of color. I found many examples of anarchist practices in non-European societies, from the most ancient times to the present. This was very important to me: I needed to know that it is not just European people who can function in an anti-authoritarian way, but that we all can. I was encouraged by things I found in Africa—not so much by the ancient forms that we call tribes—but by modern struggles that occurred in Zimbabwe, Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau. Even though they were led by organizations, I saw that people were building radical, democratic communities on the ground. For the first time, in these colonial situations, African peoples where creating what was the Angolans called “popular power.” This popular power took a very anti-authoritarian form: people were not only conducting their lives, but also transforming them while fighting whatever foreign power was oppressing them. However, in every one of these liberation struggles new repressive structures were imposed as soon as people got close to liberation: the leadership was obsessed with ideas of government, of raising a standing army, of controlling the people when the oppressors were expelled. Once the so-called victory was accomplished, the people—who had fought for years against their oppressors—were disarmed and instead of having real popular power, a new party was installed at the helm of the state. So, there were no real revolutions or true liberation in Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe because they simply replaced a foreign oppressor with an indigenous oppressor."

"The people themselves have to create structures in which they articulate their own voice and make their own decisions. I didn’t get that from other ideologies: I got that from anarchism."

"Some of our ideas about who we are as a people hamper our struggles. For example, the Black community is often considered a monolithic group, but it is actually a community of communities with many different interests. I think of being Black not so much as an ethnic category but as an oppositional force or touchstone for looking at situations differently. Black culture has always been oppositional and is all about finding ways to creatively resist oppression here, in the most racist country in the world. So, when I speak of a Black anarchism, it is not so tied to the color of my skin but who I am as a person, as someone who can resist, who can see differently when I am stuck, and thus live differently."

"One of the most important lessons I also learned from anarchism is that you need to look for the radical things that we already do and try to encourage them. This is why I think there is so much potential for anarchism in the Black community: so much of what we already do is anarchistic and doesn’t involve the state, the police, or the politicians. We look out for each other, we care for each other’s kids, we go to the store for each other, we find ways to protect our communities. Even churches still do things in a very communal way to some extent. I learned that there are ways to be radical without always passing out literature and telling people, “Here is the picture, if you read this you will automatically follow our organization and join the revolution.” For example, participation is a very important theme for anarchism and it is also very important in the Back community. Consider jazz: it is one of the best illustrations of an existing radical practice because it assumes a participatory connection between the individual and the collective and allows for the expression of who you are, within a collective setting, based on the enjoyment and pleasure of the music itself. Our communities can be the same way. We can bring together all kinds of diverse perspectives to make music, to make revolution."

"How can we nurture every act of freedom? Whether it is with people on the job or the folks that hang out on the corner, how can we plan and work together? We need to learn from the different struggles around the world that are not based on vanguards. There are examples in Bolivia. There are the . There are groups in Senegal building social centers. You really have to look at people who are trying to live and not necessarily trying to come up with the most advanced ideas. We need to de-emphasize the abstract and focus what is happening on the ground."

"Oppositional thinking and oppositional risks are necessary. I think that is very important right now and one of the reasons why I think anarchism has so much potential to help us move forward. It is not asking of us to dogmatically adhere to the founders of the tradition, but to be open to whatever increases our democratic participation, our creativity, and our happiness."

"Not just our communities of color, but in every community there is a need to stop advancing ready-made plans and to trust that people can collectively figure out what to do with this world. I think we have the opportunity to put aside what we thought would be the answer and fight together to explore different visions of the future. We can work on that. And there is no one answer: we’ve got to work it out as we go."

"We are not going to get through some of our internal dynamics that have kept us divided unless we are willing to go through some really tough struggles. This is one of the other reasons why I say there is no answer: we’ve just got to go through this."

"Our struggles here in the United States affect everybody in the world. People on the bottom are going to play a key role and the way we relate to people on the bottom is going to be very important. Many of us are privileged enough to be able to avoid some of the most difficult challenges and we will need to give up some of this privilege in order to build a new movement. The potential is there. We can still win—and redefine what it means to win—but we have the opportunity to advance a richer vision of freedom than we have ever had before. We have to be willing to try."

"Struggle is very tough and when you cross that line, you risk going to jail, getting seriously hurt, killed, and watching your comrades getting seriously hurt and killed. That is not a pretty picture, but that is what happens when you fight an entrenched oppressor. We are struggling and will make it rough for them, but struggle is also going to be rough for us too. This is why we have to find ways to love and support each other through tough times. It is more than just believing that we can win: we need to have structures in place that can carry us through when we feel like we cannot go another step. I think we can move again if we can figure out some of those things. This system has got to come down. It hurts us every day and we can’t give up. We have to get there. We have to find new ways."

"Anarchism, if it means anything, means being open to whatever it takes in thinking, living, and in our relationships—to live fully and win. In some ways, I think they are both the same: living to the fullest is to win. Of course we will and must clash with our oppressors and we need to find good ways of doing it. Remember those on the bottom who are most impacted by this. They might have different perspectives on how this fight is supposed to go. If we can’t find ways for meeting face-to-face to work that stuff out, old ghosts will re-appear and we will be back in the same old situation that we have been in before. You all can do this. You have the vision. You have the creativity. Do not allow anyone to lock that down."

"Every action you take is a vote for the person you wish to become"

"Breakthrough moments are often the result of many previous actions, which build up the potential required to unleash a major change"

"Many people begin the process of changing their habits by focusing on what they want to achieve. This leads us to outcome-based habits. The alternative is to build identity-based habits. With this approach, we start by focusing on who we wish to become"

"Your actions reveal how badly you want something. If you keep saying something is a priority but you never act on it, then you don’t really want it. It’s time to have an honest conversation with yourself. Your actions reveal your true motivations."

"It is so easy to overestimate the importance of one defining moment and underestimate the value of making small improvements on a daily basis."

"I knew that if things were going to improve, I was the one responsible for making it happen"

"Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement"