CONTRIBUTION 'continued' (28)

1) "Anyone who has proclaimed violence his method inexorably must choose lying as his principle",
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

2) "There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths", 'Human Society in Ethics and Politics', Bertrand Russell,
1872 to 1970

3) "We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force. " : Ayn Rand in "The Nature of Government"

4) "Americans cannot escape a certain responsibility for what is done in our name around the world. In a democracy, even one as corrupted as ours, ultimate authority rests with the people. We empower the government with our votes, finance it with our taxes, bolster it with our silent acquiescence. If we are passive in the face of America's official actions overseas, we in effect endorse them." - Mark Hertzgaard

5) "My notion of democracy is that under it the weakest shall have the same opportunities as the strongest...no country in the world today shows any but patronizing regard for the weak... Western democracy, as it functions today, is diluted fascism...true democracy cannot be worked by twenty men sitting at the center. It has to be worked from below, by the people of every village." : Gandhi

6) "This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism on command, senseless violence and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism." : Albert Einstein

7) “War seems to me a mean, contemptible thing: I would rather be hacked in pieces than take part in such an abominable business. And yet so high, in spite of everything, is my opinion of the human race that I believe this bogey (war) would have disappeared long ago, had the sound sense of the nations not been systematically corrupted by commercial and political interests acting through the schools and the Press.” ‘The World As I See It’, Albert Einstein

8) "All experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security."
The Declaration of Independence (1776)

9) "Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters." : Daniel Webster

10) In a country well governed poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed wealth is something to be ashamed of. : Confucius

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11) Democracy [is] when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers: Aristotle

12) "No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." : John Donne (1573-1631)

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13) "When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle. All that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." Sir Edmund Burke (1729-1797) - (Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents, 1770)

14) Each of the Iraqi children killed by the United States was our child. Each of the prisoners tortured in Abu Ghraib was our comrade. Each of their screams was ours. When they were humiliated, we were humiliated. The U.S. soldiers fighting in Iraq - mostly volunteers in a poverty draft from small towns and poor urban neighborhoods - are victims just as much as the Iraqis of the same horrendous process, which asks them to die for a victory that will never be theirs: Source: Arundhati Roy, "Tide? Or Ivory Snow? Public Power in the Age of Empire,"

15) Ask yourself why totalitarian dictatorships find it necessary to pour money and effort into propaganda for their own helpless, chained, gagged slaves, who have no means of protest or defense. The answer is that even the humblest peasant or the lowest savage would rise in blind rebellion were he to realize that he is being immolated, not to some incomprehensible 'noble purpose', but to plain, naked, human evil.: Ayn Rand

OCEANVIEW by unknown

Of the ocean’s chant, at my island’s gate,
As age has lowered my brow,
Yet lifts my heart to other days,
Those days of discovery.

When men were young upon the seas,
The earth unknown, unnamed,
They sailed for King and countryman,
They sailed for Gold and greed,

I now sail a voyage of heart,
For a refuge in a storm,
Yes Storm, a catastrophic storm,
The like we’ve seldom seen,

With wind and wave of grand design,
Unmeant but not unmade,
This Storm to test the will of man,
To survive or fade away

16) What influence in fact have ecclesiastical establishments had on Civil Society?

In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the Civil authority; in many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny: in no instance have they been seen the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty, may have found an established Clergy convenient auxiliaries. : James Madison - Memorial and Remonstrance -1785

17) A time comes when silence is betrayal." Rev. Martin Luther King

18) "If the world is to be saved, men must learn to be noble without being cruel, to be filled with faith and yet open to truth, to be inspired by great purposes without hating those who try to thwart them. But before this can happen, men must first face the terrible realisation that the gods before whom they have bowed down were false gods and the sacrifices they have made were vain."
'Why Men Fight: A Method Of Abolishing The International Duel', Bertrand Russell 1916

19) "Foolish men imagine that because judgment for an evil thing is delayed, there is no justice...Judgment for an evil thing is many times delayed...but it is sure as life, it is sure as death.": Thomas Caryle

20) The greatest country, the richest country, is not that which has the most capitalists, monopolists, immense grabbings, vast fortunes, with its sad, sad soil of extreme, degrading, damning poverty, but the land in which there are the most homesteads, freeholds-where wealth does not show such contrasts high and low, where all men have enough-a modest living-and no man is made possessor beyond the sane and beautiful necessities.": Walt Whitman (1819-1892):

21) "Here the ways of men part: if you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire." Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

22) "An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war.": Charles de Montesquieu (French Politician and Philosopher, 1689-1755)

(23)"Democracy don't rule the world, You'd better get that in your head; This world is ruled by violence, But I guess that's better left unsaid." : Bob Dylan : American folksinger, b.1941