Civil war... What did the words mean? Was there any such thing as 'foreign war'? Was not all warfare between men warfare between brothers? Wars could only be defined by their aims. There were no 'foreign' or 'civil' wars, only wars that were just or unjust. Until the great universal concord could be arrived at, warfare, at least when it was the battle between the urgent future and the dragging past, might be unavoidable. How could such a war be condemned? War is not shameful, nor the sword-thrust a stab in the back, except when it serves to kill right and progress, reason, civilization, and truth. When this is war's purpose it maeks no difference whether it is civil or foreign war - it is a crime. Outside the sacred cause for justice, what grounds has one kind of war for denigrating another? By what right does the sword of Washington despise the pike of Camille Desmoulins? Which is the greater - Leonidas fighting the foreign enemy or Timoleon slaying the tyrant who was his brother? One was a defender, the other a liberator. Are we to condemn every resort to arms that takes place within the citadel, without concerning ourselves with its aim?

He is always doing something--the very best thing, the thing we ourselves would certainly choose if we knew the end from the beginning. He is at work to bring us to our full glory.

Elisabeth Elliot

We trifle when we assign limits to our desires, since nature hath set none.

Christian Nevell Bovee

I'm not religious in the normal sense. I believe the universe is governed by the laws of science. The laws may have been decreed by God, but God does not intervene to break the laws.

Stephen Hawking

America is neither free nor brave, but a land of tight, iron-clanking little wills, everybody trying to put it over everybody else, and a land of men absolutely devoid of the real courage of trust, trust in life's sacred spontaneity. They can't trust life until they can control it.

D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

The idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office like breakfast cereal -- that you can gather votes like box tops -- is, I think, the ultimate indignity to the democratic process.

Adlai Stevenson

There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realize his conception of the beautiful.

Oscar Wilde

It is true that a fellow cannot ignore women - but he can think of them as he ought - as sisters, not as sparring partners.

Jim Elliot

The knowledge that makes us cherish innocence makes innocence unattainable.

Irving Howe

Their errors have been weighed and found to have been dust in the balance; if their sins were as scarlet, they are now white as snow: they have been washed in the blood of the mediator and the redeemer, Time.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

I want people to remember me as a full on entertainer and a good person.

Aaliyah

Never tell your story to a deaf man.

Proverb

I think that the job of poetry, its political job, is to refresh the idea of justice, which is going dead in us all the time.

Robert Hass