Orators From The United States

"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?"

"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)"

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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.""

"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 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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"[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."

"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."

"Just a few minutes."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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 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."

"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."

"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."