Quotable quotes
Other Quotes
http://www.swans.com/library/dossiers/ipquotes.html
http://xymphora.blogspot.com/2007/08/quotes-from-zionists.html
"Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing." Arundhati Roy
The arc of the moral universe is long, But it bends toward justice. -Abolitionist Theodore Parker, c. 1850's
"Your reason and your passion are the rudder and the sails of your sea faring soul. If either your sails or your rudder be broken, you can but toss and drift, or else be held at a standstill in mid-seas�" K. Gibran
"Hardly anyone in the world believes territorial discrimination to be as evil as racial or religious discrimination. But it is. Nationalism, at the expense of another nation, is just as wicked as racism at the expense of another race. In other words, good patriots are not nationalists. A nationalist is a bad patriot".----William Sloane Coffin
'Today, in a world convulsed by violence and unbelievable brutality the lines between 'us' and 'the terrorists' have been completely blurred� We don't have to choose between Imperialism and Terrorism, we have to choose what form of resistance will rid us of both. What shall we choose? Violence or non violence? �We have to choose knowing that when we are violent to our enemies, we do violence to ourselves. When we brutalize others, we brutalize ourselves. And eventually we run the risk of becoming our oppressors'. Arundhati Roy
"If you are religious, then remember that this bomb is man's challenge to God. It's worded quite simply: We have the power to destroy everything you have created. If you're not religious, then look at it this way. This world of ours is four thousand, six hundred million years old. It could end in an afternoon." Arundhati Roy
"To solve our problems, then, we certainly need to learn, but what we need to learn is not so much new knowledge as new actions- new, more cooperative, wiser ways of living. Above all we need to learn how to resolve our conflicts in more just, humane, and nationally cooperative ways." Nicholas Maxwell, Wanted: a new way of thinking, in New Scientist 14 May 1987 (author of "From knowledge to Wisdom")
"Most of my family came from Poland and many of my relatives were killed in the death camps during the Holocaust. When I walk in what was left from the Warsaw Ghetto I can�t stop thinking about the people of Gaza who are not only locked in an open air prison but are also being bombarded by fighter jets, attack helicopters and drones, flown by people whom I used to serve with. I am also thinking about the delegations of young Israelis that are coming to see the history of our people but also are subjected to militaristic and nationalistic brainwashing on a daily basis. Maybe if they see what we wrote here today they will remember that oppression is oppression, occupation is occupation, and crimes against humanity are crimes against humanity, whether they have been committed here in Warsaw or in Gaza". Yonatan Shapira former Israeli Air Force captain and now refusnik and BDS activist
"All oppression creates a state of war.� ~Simone de Beauvoir
It is necessary to dial out the falsehoods of propaganda, the double game and hysterical language of politics, the vanity and self-righteousness of public communiqu�s from cranks in order to eventually sift through one's own conflicted thoughts. -Elvis Costello -
In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
Mark Twain: �Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.�
"If we throw strategy to the wind and end our hope for victory, then we are free to be faithful. ~Marc Ellis
�A Jew must honour conscience and truthfulness above tribal identities should these conflict�. ~Richard Falk
"I am not only a pacifist, but a militant pacifist. I am willing to fight for peace. Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war." ~Albert Einstein
"How many people can you love before it's too much? she said & I said I didn't think there was any real limit as long as you didn't care if they loved you back." ~ "Real Limit" from StoryPeople
"Walk gently, breathe peacefully, laugh hysterically." ~ Nelson Mandela
"A sense of humor is a measurement of the extent to which you realize that you are trapped in a world almost entirely devoid of reason. Laughter is how you release the anxiety you feel at this knowledge." ~ Dave Barry
Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements.
~Napoleon Hill
"I rebel, therefore we exist." ~ Albert Camus
"Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original virtue". ~ Oscar Wilde
"Cowardice asks the question - is it safe? Expediency asks the question - is it politic? Vanity asks the question - is it popular? But conscience asks the question - is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take it because it is right." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself." ~ Thomas Paine
The 2006 statement by Dov Weisglass, the adviser to Ehud Olmert, then Israeli Prime Minister during a meeting with senior generals and officials including Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, the army chief of staff and the director of the Shin Bet. Weisglass described tightening the blockade in Gaza as �The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger . . . It's like an appointment with a dietician. The Palestinians will get a lot thinner, but won't die," The description elicited laughter from his colleagues.
"My aim is to agitate & disturb people. I'm not selling bread, I'm selling yeast." ~ Unamuno, wall graffiti from Paris, May 1968
"To think deeply in our culture is to grow angry and to anger others; and if you cannot tolerate this anger, you are wasting the time you spend thinking deeply. One of the rewards to deep thought is the hot glow of anger at discovering a wrong, but if anger is taboo, thought will starve to death. " ~ Jules Henry
"We must transfer our anger to the brutalities of our time." ~Howard Zinn
"A scholar without activism is only a mercenary of knowledge. An activist without knowledge is just a mercenary of charity. Beware, it is neither knowledge nor charity, but justice that brings the kingdom." ~ Santiago Slabodsky
"Words matter. Yes - actions must support words to lend them truth, but the words alone - they matter. Words breathe conscience into actions, and in their absence, we are robbed of meaning." ~Shayne Julius (my daughter)
"To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonoured. That is government; that is it's justice; that is it's morality."
~ Pierre Proudhon
�We must always think about things, and we must think about things as they are, not as they are said to be.�
- George Bernard Shaw -
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance...it is the illusion of knowledge." - Stephen Hawking -
�Rational thought and spoken words mean little without action� Mazin Qumsiyeh
In giving one receives more than he gives.
Greatness is for those who never lose a child's heart
�To pity distress is human, to relieve it is God Like" Horace Mann
Dalil Aqlo qoolo we dalil aslu fi'3lu
Illi ma bihmil ham ennas, whowa mish min aen nas
alhaml itha tfaraq binshal
alhaml ala ktaf al-ajaweed khafif
amal min ghayr amal sharara bala thmar
"I disagree with what you have to say but will fight to the death to protect your right to say it." Voltaire, 1694-1778, writer, philosopher
"it's well known that the "national institutions" - the Jewish Agency and Jewish National Fund - primarily exist to enable institutional discrimination based on ethnicity while clearing the state from accusations that it deviates from universal norms common to liberal democracies." Ha'aretz, Israel's leading newspaper, June 29, 2006
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=732551
How the Jewish Reform movement can reclaim its heritage: It can reemphasize its 1885 platform: "We recognize, in the modern era of universal culture of heart and intellect, the approaching of the realization of Israel's great Messianic hope for the establishment of the kingdom of truth, justice, and peace among all men. We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community, and therefore expect neither a return to Palestine, nor a sacrificial worship under the sons of Aaron, nor the restoration of any of the laws concerning the Jewish state. We recognize in Judaism a progressive religion, ever striving to be in accord with the postulates of reason. We are convinced of the utmost necessity of preserving the historical identity with our great past. Christianity and Islam, being daughter religions of Judaism, we appreciate their providential mission, to aid in the spreading of monotheistic and moral truth. We acknowledge that the spirit of broad humanity of our age is our ally in the fulfillment of our mission, and therefore we extend the hand of fellowship to all who cooperate with us in the establishment of the reign of truth and righteousness among men." http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/pittsburgh_program.html
"Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness -- and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we're being brainwashed to believe. The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling -- their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability. Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them." Arundhati Roy
"The teaching of Confucius has a strong point; i.e., self-improvement of personal virtue. Jesus' Bible has a strong point; i.e., noble altruism. Marxism has a strong point; i.e., a dialectical working method. Ton Dat Tun's doctrine has a strong point; i.e., their policies are suited to conditions in our country. Do Confucianism, Jesus, Marx and Ton Dat Tun share common points? Yes. They all pursued a way to bring happiness to human beings and benefit to society. If they were still alive today, and if they were grouped together, I believe they would live in harmony, like close friends. I try to become their pupil." Ho Chi Minh, 1949
"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis." Dante
"Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice...The critrerion for the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability" (Karl R. Popper, Connjecture and refutation: The growth of scientific knowledge, 4th ed, Routledge and Kegan Paul. Lonndon, 1972, pp33-27
"Chance is perhaps the pseudonym of God when He did not want to sign" Anatole France
"The pleasure of criticizing robs us of the pleasure of being moved by very fine things:" Jean De La Bruyere
"I assure you that a learned fool is more foolish than an ignorant fool" Moliere
�During 1980 and 1981, the IDF engaged in preparations for a more comprehensive offensive. The Mossad's relations with the Christians enabled the senior IDF brass, including the commanders of the forces in the field, to reconnoiter as far as Beirut, and to receive the necessary intelligence. The IDF's battle plans were also based on the Christians' participation. �.The agreement at the Camp David summit to establish Palestinian autonomy made things very difficult for then prime minister Menachem Begin. In the IDF's initiative toward an all-out war, he saw a chance of eliminating the Palestinian problem in Lebanon. In September 1981, he was also positively disposed to entering Beirut, as the IDF commanders had proposed. During 1981, on the eve of Ariel Sharon's appointment as defense minister in the summer of that year, preparations for an extensive operation known as Operation Pines were completed. This eventually turned into Operation Peace for the Galilee. �.Then an excuse that would "justify" the action was needed. This happened only in June 1982 with the attempted assassination of Israeli ambassador Shlomo Argov in London. The Christian leadership in Lebanon, however, was not prepared to jump on the bandwagon of the IDF's operation. Nonetheless, Bashir Gemayel, the commander of the Lebanese Forces, supported all of our plans and enabled the IDF to carry out preparations for any and all actions�� Ex-spymaster: First Lebanon War was Mossad success, despite Sabra and Chatila By Nachik Navot (was deputy head of the Mossad in charge of Lebanon relations) Haaretz, 22/2/2009 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1065945.html
Some signs and symptoms of inner peace
http://www.expressionsofspirit.com/symptoms.htm
Reading the metaphor in terms of the denotation instead of the connotation" Joseph campbell, the Power of Myth
Wisdom is long, violence is short" Car; Van Doren
"Great Achievement require relatively few ideas and even less men" Michael Uhrin
"There is nothing permanent except change" Heraclitis
"Nature gave man two ends, one to sit on and one to think with. Ever since then man's success or failure has been dependent on the one he used most" George R. Kirkpatrick
" Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and in-human to impose the Jews on the Arabs. What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct. The mandates have no sanction but that of the last war. Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home. The nobler course would be to insist on a just treatment of the Jews wherever they are born and bred. The Jews born in France are French in precisely the same sense that Christians born in France are French. If the Jews have no home but Palestine, will they relish the idea of being forced to leave the other parts of the world in which they are settled? Or do they want a double home where they can remain at will? This cry for the national home affords a colourable justification for the German expulsion of the Jews.....And now a word to the Jews in Palestine. I have no doubt that they are going about it the wrong way. The Palestine of the Biblical conception is not a geographical tract. It is in their hearts. But if they must look to the Palestine of geography as their national home, it is wrong to enter it under the shadow of the British gun. A religious act cannot be performed with the aid of the bayonet or the bomb. They can settle in Palestine only by the goodwill of the Arabs. They should seek to convert the Arab heart...." Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi (November 1938)
"To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places - and there are so many - where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory." Howard Zinn (You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A personal history of our times, p. 208)
I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection. " Martin Luther King Jr Letter from Birmingham Jail
"To be grateful for the good things that happen in our lives is easy, but to be grateful for all of our lives, the good as well as the bad, the moments of joy as well as the moments of sorrow, the successes as well as the failures, the rewards as well as the rejections, that requires hard spiritual work. Still, we are only truly grateful people when we can say thank you to all that has brought us to the present moment. As long as we keep dividing our lives between events and people we would like to remember and those we would rather forget, we cannot claim the fullness of our beings as a gift of God to be grateful for. Let us not be afraid to look at everything that has brought us to where we are now and trust that we will soon see in it the guiding hand of a loving God." Henri Nouwen, The Work of Christmas
"The righteous is not innocent of the deeds of the wicked"
"No Man can reveal to you ought but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge"
Asks the Possible of the Impossible, "Where is your dwelling-place?" "In the dreams of the Impotent," comes the answer.
-Rabindranth Tagore
"The Old Ones have always said that no matter who despises or ignores you, no matter who keeps you from entering their circles, it is right to pray for them because the are like us, too."
--Larry P. Aitken, CHIPPEWA
"The most important event I experienced in the 20th Century was the launching by the USSR of the first satellite that circled the earth - SPUTNIK. Because it showed that human beings can free themselves from enslavement to the force of Gravity. If we can free ourselves from enslavement to the force of Gravity we can free ourselves from enslavement to any other force." Daud Turki, 1928-2009, Palestinian
The aspiration to create and preserve a stable Jewish majority in the unified capital of the State of Israel has been the dream of the Jewish people over many generations. A Jewish majority has existed in Jerusalem since the latter half of the nineteenth century. The main consideration guiding the decision makers was to take control over the maximum area with a minimal Arab population and to prevent the possibility of the city�s partition in the future. David Kroyenker, Jerusalem: Structure and Looks (Zmora-Bitan, 1988), p. 58.(http://jcpa.org/text/Jerusalem-Master-Plan.pdf )
Merit consists in the virtue of love alone, flavored with the light of true discretion, without which the soul is worth nothing.�St. Catherine of Siena
"I must not fear. Fear is the mindkiller,...I will face my fear.I will permit my fear to pass over me and through me...Where the fear has gone...Only I will remain." Frank Herbert, Dune
"It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first of these is that there is no Zionism, colonialization, or Jewish State without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands." Ariel Sharon, Agence France Presse, November 15, 1998.
Seventy six years ago: A Statement to the 1919 Peace Conference by prominent U.S. Jews (including one Congressman):
"We raise our voices in warning and protest against the demand of the Zionists for the reorganization of the Jews as a national unit, to whom, now or in the future, territorial sovereignty in Palestine shall be committed. This demand not only misrepresents the trend of the history of the Jews, who ceased to be a nation 2000 years ago, but involves the limitation and possible annulment of the larger claims of Jews for full citizenship and human rights in all lands in which those rights are not yet secure. For the very reason that the new era upon which the world is entering aims to establish government everywhere on principles of true democracy, we reject the Zionistic project of a �national home for the Jewish people in Palestine.� ...As to the future of Palestine, it is our fervent hope that what was once a "promised land" for the Jews may become a "land of promise" for all races and creeds, safeguarded by the League of Nations which, it is expected, will be one of the fruits of the Peace Conference to whose deliberations the world now looks forward so anxiously and so full of hope. We ask that Palestine be constituted as a free and independent state, to be governed under a democratic form of government recognizing no distinctions of creed or race or ethnic descent, and with adequate power to protect the country against oppression of any kind. We do not wish to see Palestine, either now or at any time in the future, organized as a Jewish State" Quoted in Roselle Tekiner, Samir Abed-Rabbo and Norton Mezvinsky, eds., Anti-Zionism: Analytical Reflections, (New York: Amana Books, 1988).
"My awareness of the essential nature of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish state with borders, an army, and a measure of temporal power, no matter how modest. I am afraid of the inner damage Judaism will sustain - especially from the development of a narrow nationalism within our own ranks, against which we have already had to fight strongly, even without a Jewish state." Albert Einstein http://globalwebpost.com/farooqm/writings/other/einstein.htm
"Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our time is the Emergence in the newly created state of Israel of the "Freedom Party" (Tnuat Haherutprecursor to the Likud-MQ), a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties. It was formed out of the membership and following of the former Irgun Zvai Leumi, a terrorist, right-wing, chauvinist organization in Palestine. The current visit of Menahem Begin, leader of this party to the United States is obviously calculated to give the impression of American Support for his party in the coming Israeli elections, and to cement political ties with conservative Zionist elements in the United States." From a letter signed by prominent Jews including Einstein published in the NY Times Dec. 2, 1948 http://www.qumsiyeh.org/einsteinetalonbegin/)
When approached to sign a petition to condemn the Arab revolt in Palestine and to support the settlement of Jews Sigmund Freud wrote in response: "I cannot do as you wish. I am unable to overcome my aversion to burdening the public with my name, and even the present critical time does not seem to me to warrant it. Whoever wants to influence the masses must give them something rousing and inflammatory and my sober judgment of Zionism does not permit this....I concede with sorrow that the baseless fanaticism of our people is in part to be blamed for the awakening of Arab distrust. I can raise no sympathy at all for the misdirected piety which transforms a piece of a Herodian wall into a national relic, thereby offending the feelings of the natives. Now judge for yourself whether I, with such a critical point of view, am the right person to come forward as the solace of a people deluded by unjustified hope."
Freud's Letter to Dr. Chaim Koffler Keren HaYassod, Vienna: 26 February 1930; posted at the Freud Institute in UK website: http://www.freud.org.uk./education/blog/40082/the-arab-israeli-conflict/
"I notice their (Palestinians) sullen hostility toward us. I see how tormented, how exhausted, how humiliated they are, but I'm supposed to make no regret or remorese about it. I guess I sometimes feel we are Nazis... I felt that I was behaving like an animal towards these arabs. They are oppresse4d" Helna Goldotsky, Israeli soldier in interview published by Yediot Aharonot 10 August 2001.
"Oslo 2 is ultimately the creation of a new psychological reality in the West Bank. After initial celebrations, Palestinians will find themselves confined to a certain degree of cantonization." Dore Gold Jerusalem Post 6 October 1995 (Gold was a Oslo negotiator)
�The quality of a person's life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor" Vincent Lombardi
"Every Christian who is not a revolutionary lives in mortal sin." Camillo Torres, a Jesuit priest killed in Columbia by US funded troops
"The tragedy of the people of Palestine is that their country was�given� by a foreign power to another people for the creation of a new state. The result was that many hundreds of thousands of innocent people were made permanently homeless. With every new conflict their numbers increased. How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty? It is abundantly clear that the refugees have every right to the homeland from which they were driven, and the denial of this right is at the heart of the continuing conflict. No people anywhere in the world would accept being expelled en masse from their country; how can anyone require the people of Palestine to accept a punishment which nobody else would tolerate? A permanent just settlement of the refugees in their homeland is an essential ingredient of any genuine settlement in the Middle East". Message from Bertrand Russell to the International Conference of Parlimentarians in Cairo, February 1970." Reprinted in The New York Times, Feb. 23, 1970.
"Only if we respect ourselves as Arabs and understand the true dignity and justice of our struggle, only then can we appreciate why, almost despite ourselves, so many people all over the world, including Rachel Corrie and the two young people wounded with her from ISM, Tom Hurndall and Brian Avery, have felt it possible to express their solidarity with us. I conclude with one last irony. Isn't it astonishing that all the signs of popular solidarity that Palestine and the Arabs receive occur with no comparable sign of solidarity and dignity for ourselves, that others admire and respect us more than we do ourselves? Isn't it time we caught up with our own status and made certain that our representatives here and elsewhere realize, as a first step, that they are fighting for a just and noble cause, and that they have nothing to apologize for or anything to be embarrassed about? On the contrary, they should be proud of what their people have done and proud also to represent them." Edward Said
http://www.counterpunch.org/said09252003.html
"He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it." Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
"A 'No' uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a 'Yes' merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble." Gandhi
"The tragedy of the people of Palestine is that their country was�given� by a foreign power to another people for the creation of a new state. The result was that many hundreds of thousands of innocent people were made permanently homeless. With every new conflict their numbers increased. How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty? It is abundantly clear that the refugees have every right to the homeland from which they were driven, and the denial of this right is at the heart of the continuing conflict. No people anywhere in the world would accept being expelled en masse from their country; how can anyone require the people of Palestine to accept a punishment which nobody else would tolerate? A permanent just settlement of the refugees in their homeland is an essential ingredient of any genuine settlement in the Middle East". Message from Bertrand Russell to the International Conference of Parlimentarians in Cairo, February 1970." Reprinted in The New York Times, Feb. 23, 1970.
"My awareness of the essential nature of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish state with borders, an army, and a measure of temporal power, no matter how modest. I am afraid of the inner damage Judaism will sustain - especially from the development of a narrow nationalism within our own ranks, against which we have already had to fight strongly, even without a Jewish state." Albert Einstein http://globalwebpost.com/farooqm/writings/other/einstein.htm
Caminante, no hay camino. Se hace el camino al andar. (Searcher, there is no road. One makes the road by walking.) Antonio Machado
"an apartheid regime (in the occupied Palestinian areas) is worse than the one that existed in South Africa." South African law professor John Dugard, special rapporteur for the United Nations on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, in a report to the UN General Assembly. http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/468744.html
"Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law" (From Preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to which Israel is a signatory)
"The best jihad is when a person speaks the truth before a tyrant ruler." --The Noble Hadith (sayings and doings of the prophet Muhammad, PBUH)
Goethe's Faust: "In the end, we still depend upon creatures of our own making" (Am Ende haengen wir doch ab/Von Kreaturen, die wir machten.)
Bishop Desmond Tutu taken from and describing the book: "Speaking the Truth About Zionism and Israel" (edited by Rev. Michael Prior, Melisende, 2004): "In our struggle for justice and peace in South Africa we had to learn to speak - and listen to - hard truths. Our experience should encourage all who strive for justice and peace in the Holy Land. My visits to the Holy Land remind me so much of South Africa: apartheid is back, complete with the "Separation Wall" and bantustans. History, it seems, repeats itself. Yet, if peace could come to South Africa, surely it can come also to the Holy Land. I welcome this book that exposes some of the hardest truths about Israel-Palestine. The distinguished contributors - from Israel, Palestine, the US, the UK and Ireland, women and men, Jews, Christians and Muslims - speak their Truth. Reconciliation will follow later."
�O you who believe! Stand out firmly for justice, as witnesses to Allah, even as against yourselves, or your parents, or your kin, and whether it be (against) rich or poor: for Allah can best protect both. Follow not the lusts (of your hearts), lest you swerve, and if you distort (justice) or decline to do justice, verily Allah is well-acquainted with all that you do.� Holy Quran, 4:135
�Whoever among you sees something abominable should rectify it with his hand; and if he has not strength to do so; then he should do it with his tongue; and if he has not strength to do so, then he should (abhor it) from his heart, and that is the least of Faith.� Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him), Sahih Muslim
Israeli artist declaration 2002: "If the state of Israel aspires to perceive itself as a democracy, it should abandon once and for all, any legal and ideological foundation of religious, ethnic, and demographic discrimination. The state of Israel should strive to become the state of all its citizens. We call for the annulment of all laws that make Israel an apartheid state, including the Jewish law of return in its present form"
"I claim a right to live on my land and accord you the privilege to return to yours." Native American Chief Joseph Nez Perce
"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor" - Bishop Desmond Tutu
"The most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well."
Baron Pierre de Courbertin (1863-1931), French founder of the International Olympic Committee and the man who single handedly revived the Olympic Games
"I cannot do everything, but still I can do something and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do."
Edward Everett Hale
"Every Christian who is not a revolutionary lives in mortal sin." Camillo Torres, a Jesuit priest killed in Columbia by US funded troops
"Years ago, I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free." Eugene V. Debs, 1918
"You must be the change you wish to see in the world." "Use truth as your anvil, nonviolence as your hammer, and anything that does not stand the test when it is brought to the anvil of truth, reject it." Mohandas Karamchand 'Mahatma' Gandhi
'Recall the face of the poorest and most helpless person whom you may have seen and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him, will he be able to gain anything by it? Will it restore him to control over his life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to swaraj, self-rule for the hungry and also spiritually starved millions of our countrymen? Then you will find your doubts and your self melting away.' Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
The error arises from the learned jurists deceiving themselves and others, by asserting that government is not what it really is, one set of men banded together to oppress another set of men, but, as shown by science, is the representation of the citizens in their collective capacity. They have so long been persuading other people of this that at last they have persuaded themselves of it; and thus they often seriously suppose that government can be bound by considerations of justice. But history shows that from Caesar to Napoleon, and from Napoleon to Bismarck, government is in its essence always a force acting in violation of justice, and that it cannot be otherwise. Justice can have no binding force on a ruler or rulers who keep men deluded and drilled in readiness for acts of violence � soldiers, and by means of them control others. And so governments can never be brought to consent to diminish the number of these drilled slaves, who constitute their whole power and importance (Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within You p. 64)
http://www.nonresistance.org/docs_pdf/Tolstoy/The_Kingdom_Of_God_Is_Within_You.pdf
"If we make peaceful revolution impossible, we make violent revolution inevitable." John Fitzgerald Kennedy
"Manifest plainness, embrace simplicity, reduce selfishness, have few desires." Lao Tsu, 'Tao Te Ching'
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." Anthropologist Margaret Mead
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing that it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only love can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that." Martin Luther King, Jr.
"He who fights monsters should see to it that he does not become a monster in the process. And when you stare persistently into an abyss, the abyss also stares into you." Friedrich Nietzsche, 'Beyond Good and Evil' 1886 (Fourth Part: 'Maxims and Interludes')
"We must learn that we can be agents of change, that we are part of the problem and that together, we are also part of the solution. The actual danger is not "out there". The real dangers, as well as the potential solutions, lie within us. Our personal behavior is just about the only thing in this world over which we have 100 percent control, and so we must take responsibility for it." Petra Kelly, co-founder of the German Green Party, from her book 'Nonviolence Speaks to Power'
"Every time anyone says that Israel is our only friend in the Middle East, I can't help but think that before Israel, we had no enemies in the Middle East." Fr. John Sheehan of the Jesuit order
"You cannot defeat Jews, you maneuver them; they maneuver you. I would say it's endless maneuvers." PM Ariel Sharon in an interview with James Bennet of the NY Times. Bennet concludes as follows: "Because it scorns negotiation and agreement, Sharon's long-term interim arrangement is an acceptance of, and maybe a goad to, enduring conflict -- almost surely at a lower level, but sustained. As this conflict grinds on, Israel will no doubt remain morally alert -- morally conflicted, as demonstrated by the soldiers who refuse to serve in the territories -- but it will also remain morally compromised in the eyes of the world. Its back to the rest of the Middle East, its face to the Mediterranean, Israel could become ''the largest ghetto in modern Jewish history,'' in the words of Ezrahi. Sharon may be right. This could be the only way to secure Israel's survival as a Jewish haven. But it may mean a poignant legacy for this indomitable, secular Jew born into the Middle East: an Israel that is increasingly religious, walled off from its neighbors, simultaneously yearning after and fearing a Western community of nations that sees it as more and more foreign."
"The enemy aggressor is always pursuing a course of larceny, murder, rapine and barbarism. We are always moving forward with high mission, a destiny imposed by the Deity to regenerate our victims while incidentally capturing their markets, to civilise savage and senile and paranoid peoples while blundering accidentally into their oil wells." John Flynn, 1944
"The formula for the parameters of unilateral solution are: To maximize the number of Jews; minimize the number of Palestinians; not to withdraw to the 1967 border and not to divide Jerusalem.� (Ehud Olmert, 5 December 2003)
�The Court is not convinced that the construction of the wall along the route chosen was the only means to safeguard the interests of Israel against the peril which it has invoked as justification for that construction.� (International Court of Justice, July 2004)
�You don�t simply bundle people onto trucks and drive them away�I prefer to advocate a positive policy, to create, in effect, a condition that in a positive way will induce people to leave.� (Ariel Sharon, 24 August 1988)
"Apparently the Israeli public is accepting a situation in which military activity in Palestinian towns is accompanied by indiscriminate killing." (Haaretz editorial writer, 29 January 2004)
"It is clear that the present government of Israel simply does not tell the truth." (Arthur Hertzberg, 7 January 2004)
"� it's utterly hypocritical for Israelis to wonder aloud why Palestinians don't pursue a non-violent strategy. One obvious reason is that, whenever they have, Israel brutally represses it." (Norman G. Finkelstein, 11 September 2003)
"The Israeli government seemingly cultivates this fear of existential threat." (Amira Hass, 24 March 2004)
�Settlements can be built, but there is no need to talk about it and come out dancing every time a building permit is given. Let them build but without talking.� (Ariel Sharon, 22 June 2003)
"Sharon certainly does have a plan: to protect Eretz Yisrael, avoid returning any territories and make sure the settlements stay where they are. Everything else is tactics." (Aluf Benn, 18 September 2003)
"We walked outside, Ben-Gurion accompanying us. Allon repeated his question, What is to be done with the Palestinian population?' Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture which said 'Drive them out!'" (Yitzhak Rabin, 23 October 1979)
"If I was an Arab leader I would never make peace with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country." (David Ben Gurion, The Jewish Paradox, 1978, p. 99)
"How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to." (Golda Meir, 8 March 1969)
"The United Nations is under no more of a legal obligation to maintain Zionism in Israel than it is to maintain apartheid in South Africa." (William Thomas Mallison, 1986)
"Zionist colonialism inhabits the space between two extinct models -- those provided by South Africa and French practice in Algeria. It is not a blend of the two, but rather a distillation of the worst in each." (Azmi Bishara, 8 January 2004)
�The Court has reached the conclusion that the construction of the wall by Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is contrary to international law�� (International Court of Justice, July 2004)
"The settlement of the Land of Israel is the essence of Zionism. Without settlement, we will not fulfill Zionism. It's that simple.� (Yitzhak Shamir, 21 February 1997)
�The significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process . . . . Effectively, this whole package called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda . . . . All with a presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress." (Dov Weisglass, October 2004)
�It would be better to drown these prisoners in the Dead Sea if possible, since that�s the lowest point in the world.� (Avigdor Lieberman, 7 July 2003)
�No settlement can be just and complete if recognition is not accorded to the right of the Arab refugee to return to the home from which he has been dislodged�� (UN Mediator for Palestine, Count Folk Bernadotte, 1948)
�Ariel Sharon keeps goats and sheep. He puts a fence around them and closes them in with a gate. He decides if they come in or go out. This is now what he is doing to us.� (Palestinian from Sur Bahir)
�If we are evacuated, we�ll return the night after and establish 10 new outposts.� (Yehoshua Mor-Yosef, 10 June 2003)
"Everybody has to move, run and grab as many hilltops as they can to enlarge the settlements because everything we take now will stay ours... Everything we don't grab will go to them." (Ariel Sharon, 15 November 1998)
"We consider these settlements to be contrary to the Geneva Convention, that occupied territory should not be changed by establishment of permanent settlements by the occupying power." (President Carter, 13 June 1980)
"The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies." (Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949)
"While politicians talk about peace, Israeli settlements continue to expand rapidly on Palestinian land. Settlements have nearly doubled during the Oslo period- -- under both Labour and Likud governments." (Anthony Arnove & Ahmed Shawki, 20 August 2001)
"We declare openly that the Arabs have no right to settle on even one centimeter of Eretz Israel... Force is all they do or ever will understand. We shall use the ultimate force until the Palestinians come crawling to us on all fours." (Rafael Eitan, April 1983)
"It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist." (Golda Meir, 15 June 1969)
"The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiques are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. It is a disgrace to our imperial record, and may soon be too inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are today not far from a disaster... Our unfortunate troops, British and Indian, under hard conditions of climate and supply, are policing an immense area, paying dearly every day in lives for the willfully wrong policy of the civil administration in Baghdad."T. E. Lawrence, "A Report on Mesopotamia," Sunday Times (London), August 22, 1920.
"Why of course the people don't want war ... But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship ...Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger." Hermann Goering, Nazi leader, at the Nuremberg Trials after World WarII
"First they came for the communists but I was not a communist so I kept quiet. Then they came for the socialists and the trade unionists but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew, so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." Martin Niemoller, after being released from Dachau, 1945
"Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but has liberators..." General F. S. Maude, Commander of British Forces, Baghdad, March 19, 1917
"Unlike many armies in the world, you came not to conqueor, not to occupy, but to liberate, and the Iraqi people know this." Donald Rumsfeld, US Secretary of Defense, Baghdad, April 29, 2003
"I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government.... There is something strangely inconsistent about a nation and a press that would praise you when you say, 'Be nonviolent toward Jim Clark,' but will curse and damn you when you say, 'Be nonviolent toward little brown Vietnamese children!' There is something wrong with that press...." -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
"The target suffered a terminal illness before a firing squad in Baghdad." CIA officer testifying to US Senate hearing, after bloody CIA aided Baa'th Party coup overthrew Iraqi Prime Minister Abdel Kassem, 1963
"It was an operation where all the "t"s were really crossed. It was a great victory." James Critchfield, former head of the CIA's Middle East Desk, describing their involvement in the Ba'athist coup, 1963, quoted in 'Out of the Ashes' by Andrew and Patrick Cockburn
"Covert operations should not be confused with missionary work." Henry Kissinger describing why US betrayal of the Kurds, 1975
"There is a huge gap between us (Jews) and our enemies not just in ability but in morality, culture, sanctity of life, and conscience. They are our neighbors here, but it seems as if at a distance of a few hundred meters away, there are people who do not belong to our continent, to our world, but actually belong to a different galaxy." Israeli president Moshe Katsav. The Jerusalem Post, May 10, 2001
"The Palestinians are like crocodiles, the more you give them meat, they want more" Ehud Barak, Prime Minister of Israel, August 28,2000. Jerusalem Post August 30, 2000
(The Palestinians are) beasts walking on two legs."Menachem Begin, speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, "Begin and the Beasts," New Statesman, 25 June 1982.
"The Palestinians would be crushed like grasshoppers .... heads smashed against the boulders and walls." Yitzhak Shamir, Israeli Prime Minister, in a speech to Jewish settlers New York Times April 1, 1988
"When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about itwill be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle." Raphael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defence Forces, New York Times, 14 April 1983.
"How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to." Golda Meir, Israeli Prime Minister, March 8, 1969.
"There was no such thing as Palestinians, they never existed." Golda Meir, Israeli Prime Minister, June 15, 1969
"The thesis that the danger of genocide was hanging over us in June 1967 and that Israel was fighting for its physical existence is only bluff, which was born and developed after the war." Israeli General Matityahu Peled, Ha'aretz, 19 March 1972.
"If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?" David Ben Gurion (the first Israeli Prime Minister), quoted by Nahum Goldmann in "Le Paraddoxe Juif" ("The Jewish Paradox"), pp121.
"We must do everything to insure they (the Palestinians) never do return." Assuring his fellow Zionists that Palestinians will never come back to their homes. "The old will die and the young will forget." David Ben Gurion, 1948
"Every time we do something you tell me America will do this and will do that . . . I want to tell you something very clear: Don't worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it." Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon to Shimon Peres, October 3, 2001, as reported on Kol Yisrael radio. (Certainly the FBI's cover-up of the Israeli spy ring/phone tap scandal suggests that Mr. Sharon may not have been joking.)
"We declare openly that the Arabs have no right to settle on even one centimeter of Eretz Israel... Force is all they do or ever will understand. We shall use the ultimate force until the Palestinians come crawling to us on all fours. Rafael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defense Forces, Gad Becker, Yediot Ahronot 13 April 1983; New York Times 14 April 1983.
"We must do everything to ensure they the Palestinian refugees never do return" David Ben-Gurion, in his diary, 18 July 1948, quoted in Michael Bar Zohar's "Ben-Gurion: The Armed Prophet," Prentice-Hall, 1967, p. 157.
". we should prepare to go over to the offensive with the aim of smashing Lebanon, Trans-jordan and Syria... The weak point in the Arab coalition is Lebanon for the Moslem regime is artificial and easy to undermine. A Christian state should be established... When we smash the Arab Legions strength and bomb Amman, we will eliminate Transjordan, too, and then Syria will fall. If Egypt still dares to fight on, we shall bomb Port Said, Alexandria, and Cairo." David Ben-Gurion, May 1948, to the General Staff. From "Ben-Gurion, A Biography," by Michael Ben-Zohar, Delacorte, New York 1978.
"We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population." Israel Koenig, "The Koenig Memorandum"
"Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushua in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not a single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population."
Moshe Dayan, address to the Technion, Haifa, Haaretz, April 4, 1969
"We walked outside, Ben-Gurion accompanying us. Allon repeated his question, What is to be done with the Palestinian population?' Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture which said 'Drive them out!'" Yitzhak Rabin, leaked censored version of Rabin memoirs, New York Times, 23 October 1979.
"We shall reduce the Arab population to a community of woodcutters and waiters" Rabin's description of the conquest of Lydda, after the completion of Plan Dalet. Uri Lubrani, PM Ben-Gurion's special adviser on Arab Affairs, 1960. quoted in "The Arabs in Israel" by Sabri Jiryas.
"There are some who believe that the non-Jewish population, even in a high percentage, within our borders will be more effectively under our surveillance; and there are some who believe the contrary, i.e., that it is easier to carry out surveillance over the activities of a neighbor than over those of a tenant. I tend to support the latter view and have an additional argument:... the need to sustain the character of the state which will henceforth be Jewish...with a non-Jewish minority limited to 15 percent. I had already reached this fundamental position as early as 1940 and it is entered in my diary."
Joseph Weitz, head of the Jewish Agency's Colonization Department. From "Israel: an Apartheid State" by Uri Davis, p.5.
"Everybody has to move, run and grab as many hilltops as they can to enlarge the settlements because everything we take now will stay ours... Everything we don't grab will go to them."
Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of militants from the extreme right-wing Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, November 15, 1998.
"It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first of these is that there is no Zionism, colonialization or Jewish State without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands." Yoram Bar Porath, Yediot Aahronot, 14 July 1972.
"Spirit the penniless population across the frontier by denying it employment... Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly."
Theodore Herzl, founder of the World Zionist Organization, speaking of the Arabs of Palestine, "Complete Diaries," June 12, 1895 entry.
"One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail." Rabbi Yaacov Perrin, Feb. 27, 1994 New York Times, Feb. 28, 1994, p. 1
"We will establish ourselves in Palestine whether you like it or not... You can hasten our arrival or you can equally retard it. It is however better for you to help us so as to avoid our constructive powers being turned into a destructive power which will overthrow the world."
Chaim Weizmann, Published in "Judische Rundschau," No. 4, 1920
"In the next voyage of the Mayflower, after she carried the Pilgrims, she was employed in transporting a cargo of slaves from Africa." Nathaniel Hawthorne
"The US must carry out some act somewhere in the world which shows its' determination to continue to be a world power." Henry Kissinger, post-Vietnam blues, as quoted in The Washington Post, April 1975
"The American system is the most ingenious system of control in world history. With a country so rich in natural resources, talent and labour power the system can afford to distribute just enough wealth to just enough people to limit discontent to a troublesome minority. It is a country so powerful, so big, so pleasing to so many of its' citizens that it can afford to give freedom of dissent to the small number who are not pleased. There is no system of control with more openings, apertures, flexibilities, rewards for the chosen. .. There is none that disperses its' control more complexly through the voting system, the work situation, the church, the family, the school, the mass media none more successful in mollifying opposition with reforms, isolating people from one another, creating patriotic loyalty." Howard Zinn, from A People's History of the United States, first published 1981
"If Kuwait grew carrots, we wouldn't give a damn." Lawrence Korb, former US Assistant Secretary of Defence, January 1991
"Many of the targets were chosen only secondarily to contribute to the military defeat of Iraq. ... Military planners hoped the bombing would amplify the economic and psychological impact of international sanctions on Iraqi society. ....Because of these goals, damage to civilian structures and interests, invariably described by briefers during the war as 'collateral' and unintended, were sometimes neither. ....They deliberately did great harm to Iraq's ability to support itself as an industrial society." from 'Allied Air War Struck Broadly in Iraq; Officials Acknowledge Strategy Went Beyond Purely Military Targets,' Article by Barton Gellman, The Washington Post, 23rd June 1991. Over half a million Iraqi Children under the age of 5 died as a result.
"In the most lackadaisical and morally laid back way, we are killing people,.small, brown children beyond the reach of our shrivelled imaginations." Edward Pearce, Journalist, article in "The Guardian" entitled "Death and Indecency in a time of Cholera," 25th October 1991
"The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it." - Albert Einstein
�Wooden-headedness, the source of self-deception, is a factor that plays a remarkably large role in government. It consists in assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring or rejecting any contrary signs. It is acting according to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts. It is epitomized in a historian's statement about Phillip II of Spain, the surpassing wooden-head of all sovereigns: No experience of the failure of his policy could shake his belief in its essential excellence � Barbara Tuchman The March of Folly. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1984.
Laqaman recommendations to his son
You will never regret staying silent
Do not be excessive in either drinking or sleeping
A well that you drink from, do not through stones in
There is nothing better than a heart and tongue that are good and nothing worse than a heart and tongue that are spoilt
Two things you should never mention: how others have wronged you and how you have helped others
�And ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hours of separation.� Kalil Gibran, The prophet
�A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices� William James
�The time is always right to do what is right.� Martin Luther King, Jr.
�Though the wind they create may push me south-east-west-north.. my soul.. remains planted like that olive tree they stole.� Anonymous displaced Palestinian
�If you want peace, work for justice.� Pope Paul VI
�Wisdom is ofttime nearer when we stoop than when we soar.� William Wordsworth
�Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.� Frederick Douglass
"Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar." Julius Caesar
"Is there any man, is there any woman, let me say any child here, that does not know that the seed of war in the modern world is industrial and commercial rivalry?" Former US President Woodrow Wilson, 1919
"The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it." Albert Einstein
"The ultimate measure of a person is not where one stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where one stands in times of challenge and controversy". MLK
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent". Thomas Jefferson
"Any people that would give up liberty for a little temporary safety deserves neither liberty nor safety". Benjamin Franklin
"It does not take a majority to prevail . . but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men." Samuel Adams, American revolutionary.
"If one remains neutral in situations of injustice, then one is complicit in that injustice. If an elephant has his foot on the tail of a mouse, and you remain neutral, the mouse is not going to appreciate your neutrality." Desmond Tutu
"What does it matter to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?" Mahatma Gandhi
"(I advocate) using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes and against recalcitrant Arabs as an experiment. (I do not understand) the squeamishness about the use of gas ... We cannot in any circumstamstances acquiesce in the non-utilisation of any weapons which are available to procure a speedy termination of the disorder which prevails on the frontier." Winston Churchill, then Secretary of State at the British War Office, authorising RAF Middle East Command to attack rebelling Iraqis with chemical weapons, 1919
"Israel may have the right to put others on trial, but certainly no one has the right to put the Jewish people and the State of Israel on trial."
"The efficiency of the truly national leader consists mainly of preventing the people's attention from becoming divided, and of always concentrating it on a single enemy." Adolp Hitler, 'Mein Kampf' 1924
"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws our country."-- Thomas Jefferson, 1816
"Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few." James Madison
"Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched." Guy de Maupassant
"We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people." Martin Luther King, Jr.
"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor."
Archbishop Desmond Tutu
"The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today - my own government."
Martin Luther King Jr., April 4th 1967, exactly one year before he was assassinated
"I tremble for my fellow man when I remember that God is Just." Thomas Jefferson
�Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; Indeed, it�s the only thing that ever has� Margaret Mead
"The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well." - Joe Ancis
"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored." - Aldous Huxley
"An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes in a very narrow field." - Neils Bohr
"I'd like to know god's thoughts...the rest are details." - Albert Einstein
"Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people." - Unknown
"Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils." - Unknown
�The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing." Edmund Burke
"You will find, as you look back upon your life, that the moments that stand out are the moments when you have done things for others." Henry Drummond
�To know and not to do is not to know. � Chinese proverb
"Truth is not determined by majority vote."-Doug Gwyn
"Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness."-Chinese Proverb
"I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him."-Booker T. Washington
"One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar."-Helen Keller
"I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves. Be on your guard against men; they will hand you over to the local councils and flog you in their synagogues."Matthew 10:16-17
"Thus says the Lord God of Israel: You shed blood, yet you would keep possession on the land? You rely on your sword, you do abominable things...yet you would keep possession of the land?." (Ezekiel 33:25-28)
"I may not be totally perfect, but parts of me are excellent."-Ashleigh Brilliant
"Some people are always grumbling because roses have thorns. I am thankful that thorns have roses."-Alphonse Karr
"We learn the rope of life by untying its knots."-Jean Toomer
"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Every man dies. Not every man lives."-Tim Robbins
"I came to America because of the great, great freedom which I heard existed in this country. I made a mistake in selecting America as a land of freedom, a mistake I cannot repair in the balance of my lifetime." Albert Einstein, 1947
"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."- Gerorge Orwell
Dr. R.M. Bucke, described Walt Whitman:
"Perhaps, indeed, no man who ever lived liked so many things and disliked so few as Walt Whitman. All natural objects seemed to have a charm for him. All sights and sounds seemed to please him. He appeared to like (and I believe he did like) all the men, women and children he saw (though I never knew him to say that he liked anyone), but each who knew him felt he liked him or her, and that he liked others also. I never knew him to argue or dispute, and he never spoke about money. He always justified, sometimes playfully, sometimes quite seriously, those who spoke harshly of himself or his writings, and I often thought he even took pleasure in the opposition of enemies. When I first knew him, I used to think he watched himself, and would not allow his tongue to give expression to fretfulness, antipathy, complaint, and remonstrance. It did not occur to me as possible that these mental states could be absent in him. After long observation, however, I satisfied myself that such absence or unconsciousness was entirely real. He never spoke deprecatingly of any nationality or class of man, or time in the world's history, or against any trades or occupations -- not even against any animals, insects, or inanimate things, nor any of the laws of nature, nor any of the results of those laws, such as illness, deformity, and death. He never complained or grumbled either at the weather, pain, illness, or anything else. He never swore. He could not very well, since he never spoke in anger and apparently was never angry. He never exhibited fear, and I do not believe he ever felt it."
"To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places - and there are so many - where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory." Howard Zinn (You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A personal history of our times, p. 208)
"We are presently involved not only in a conflict with our Arab neighbors, but, to some extent, with most of mankind as it is organized in the United Nations - because of Jerusalem. Only a blind man does not see that the sources of this conflict are not political, economic or military alone, but also ideological." BEN-GURION LOOKS AT THE BIBLE, By DAVID BEN-GURION P 3 JONATHAN DAVID PUBLISHERS New York 1972
"Let peoples serve you, and nations bow down to you" (Genesis 27:29)
"I will send my terror in front of you, and throw into confusion all the people against whom you shall come ... Little by little I will drive them out from before you, until you have increased and possess the land" (Exodus 23:27-9; also see 34:24)
"Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, for by all these practices the nations I am casting out before you have defiled themselves" (Leviticus 18:24)
"As for the male and female slaves whom you may have, it is from the nations around you that you may acquire male and female slaves. You may also acquire them from the aliens residing with you ..." (Leviticus 25:44-5)
"When the LORD your God brings you into the land that you are about to enter and occupy, and he clears away many nations before you ... and the LORD your God gives them over to you and you defeat them, then you must utterly destroy them" (Deuteronomy 7:1; also see 7:22-4)
"You must demolish completely all the places where the nations whom you are about to dispossess served their gods ... Break down their altars, smash their pillars, burn their sacred poles with fire ... and thus blot out their name from their places" (Deuteronomy 12:2-3)
"... you will lend to many nations, but you will not borrow; you will rule over many nations, but they will not rule over you" (Deuteronomy 15:6; also see 28:12).
"The land that you are entering to possess is a land unclean with the pollutions of the peoples of the lands ... Therefore do not give your daughters to their sons, neither take their daughters for your sons, and never seek their peace or prosperity ..."' (Ezra 9:1-12
The most destructive habit..........................Worry
The greatest Joy....................................Giving
The greatest loss...................................Loss of self-respect
The most satisfying work............................Helping others
The ugliest personality trait.......................Selfishness
The most endangered species.........................Dedicated leaders
Our greatest natural resource.......................Our youth
The greatest "shot in the arm"......................Encouragement
The greatest problem to overcome....................Fear
The most effective sleeping pill....................Peace of mind
The most crippling failure disease..................Excuses
The most powerful force in life.....................Love
The most dangerous pariah...........................A gossiper
The world's most incredible computer................The brain
The worst thing to be without.......................Hope
The deadliest weapon................................The tongue
The two most power-filled words....................."I Can"
The greatest asset..................................Faith
The most worthless emotion..........................Self-pity
The most beautiful attire...........................SMILE!
The most prized possession..........................Integrity
The most powerful channel of communication..........Prayer
The most contagious spirit..........................Enthusiasm
"Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws" (international banker Mayer Amschel Rothschild, 1744�1812 1).
"Money is a new form of slavery, and distinguishable from the old simply by the fact that it is impersonal, that there is no human relation between master and slave‖ (Leo Tolstoy, 1828�19103).
"All of the perplexities, confusion, and distress in America arises, not from the defects of the Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation‖ (John Adams, founding father of the American Constitution, 1735�1826).
"The Government should create, issue, and circulate all the currency and credits needed to satisfy the spending power of the Government and the buying power of consumers. By the adoption of these principles, the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest. The privilege of creating and issuing money is not only the supreme prerogative of government, but it is the government�s greatest creative opportunity" (Abraham Lincoln, 1809�1865, 16th president of the United States, assassinated).
"Once a nation parts with the control of its currency and credit, it matters not who makes the nation�s laws. Usury, once in control, will wreck any nation. Until the control of the issue of currency and credit is restored to government and recognised as its most sacred responsibility, all talk of the sovereignty of parliament and of democracy is idle and futile" (William Lyon Mackenzie King, tenth Prime Minister of Canada, 1874�July 22, 1950).
Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.
-- Rumi
Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become your character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.
-- Lao Tzu
"It's odd how those who dismiss the peace movement as utopian don't hesitate to proffer the most absurdly dreamy reasons for going to war: to stamp out terrorism, install democracy, eliminate fascism, and most entertainingly, to 'rid the world of evil-doers'." -- Arundhati Roy
"Every Christian who is not a revolutionary lives in mortal sin."-- Camillo Torres, a Jesuit priest killed in El Salvador
"You must be the change you wish to see in the world."
"Use truth as your anvil, nonviolence as your hammer,
and anything that does not stand the test when it is
brought to the anvil of truth, reject it."
-- Mohandas Karamchand 'Mahatma' Gandhi (2 quotes)
'Recall the face of the poorest and most helpless person whom you may have seen and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him, will he be able to gain anything by it? Will it restore him to control over his life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to swaraj, self-rule for the hungry and also spiritually starved millions of our countrymen? Then you will find your doubts and your self melting away.'
-- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
"Behold the turtle. He makes progress only when he sticks his neck out."
James Bryant Conant
"Let me issue and control a nation's money, and I care not who writes the laws."-- Mayer Amschel Rothschild, 1790
"Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies."
-- Thomas Jefferson
"If we make peaceful revolution impossible, we make violent revolution inevitable."
-- John Fitzgerald Kennedy
"Manifest plainness, embrace simplicity, reduce selfishness, have few desires."-- Lao Tsu, 'Tao Te Ching'
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing that it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only love can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."
-- The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
For fun, google "a bloopered guide to medical terminology"
preciosity: extreme meticulousness or refinement (e.g. in language)
niggle (v): to find fault constantly and trivially
|