You cannot raise the standard against oppression, or leap into the breach to relieve injustice, and still keep an open mind to every disconcerting fact, or an open ear to the cold voice of doubt.

If you are to reach masses of people in this world, you must do it by a sign language. Whether your vehicle be commerce, literature, or politics, you can do nothing but raise signals, and make motions to the people.

John Jay Chapman

So shall I fight, so shall I tread,In this long war beneath the stars;So shall a glory wreathe my head,So shall I faint and show the scars,Until this case, this clogging mould,Be smithied all to kingly gold.

John Edward Masefield, The Creed

I would love to support Hillary for president if she would come out against the travesty in Iraq. But I don't think she can speak out against the occupation because she supports it.

Cindy Sheehan

Ulysses was an elaborate prank, and our supposed intellectual elite continue to fall for it.

Orson Scott Card

Do not let spacious plans for a new world divert your energies from saving what is left of the old.

Sir Winston Churchill

As a child grows in an environment in which his needs and longings for specialness and warm relatedness are consistently frustrated, he begins to turn away from his own needs in depression and shame. We can imagine the young child wondering, What is wrong with me that I get so little response from my mother? The two possible answers are I am too defective and unworthy of love, and there is something wrong with what I am asking for. In both cases, there is something wrong, either with the child himself or with his needs and desires. This experience of unimportance or wrongness is the common relational backdrop for vulnerability and susceptibility to shame.

Andrew P. Morrison, The Culture

He who thinks a great deal is not suited to be a party man: he thinks his way through the party and out the other side too soon.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Our love has been the thread through thelabyrinth, the net under the high-wire walker, the only real thing in this strange life of mine that I could ever trust.

Audrey Niffenegger

Starting out really punk came from not knowing any better and listening to music like that, not knowing how to play music - well, still not knowing how to play music.

Beth Ditto

It is chiefly through books that we enjoy the communion with superior minds. In the best books, authors talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours. God be thanked for books.

William Ellery Channing

Now this relaxation of the mind from work consists on playful words or deeds. Therefore it becomes a wise and virtuous man to have recourse to such things at times.

Thomas Aquinas

We are chained to this life by a chain of gold, and we dare not sever it for fear of what lies beyond the drop.

Cassandra Clare