ppi-selected quotations

1998-06-09

Richard Moore

        To understand reality, try to change it.
                 -Henry Volken, Jesuit activist

    Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's
    original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been
    made, through disobedience and rebellion.             -Oscar Wilde


         Perhaps we cannot raise the wind.
         But each of us can put up the sail,
         so that when the wind comes we can catch it.
                             - E.F. Schumacher


  "The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises
  in moral philosophy; that is, the  search for a superior moral
  justification for selfishness."
                                  - John Kenneth Galbraith


    Who can save our species?  The blind, uncontrollable law of
    the market?  Neo-liberal globalization, alone and for its own sake,
    like a cancer which devours human beings and destroys nature?   That
    cannot be the way forward or at least it can only last for a brief
    period in history.        ---President Castro, May 14th 1998


        "If only people could see each other as agents of each others'
  happiness, they could occupy the earth, their common habitation, in peace,
  and move forward confidently together to their common goal.
        The prospect changes when they regard each other as obstacles; soon
  they have no choice left but to flee or be forever fighting.  Humankind
  then seems nothing but a gigantic error of nature."
                                Abbe Sieyes
                                Prelude to the Constitution
                                1789 France


  When they arrived, we had the land and they had the Bible and they told us
  to close our eyes to pray.  When we opened our eyes, they had the land and
  we had the Bible.                      - Desmond Tutu


    Few trends could so thoroughly undermine the very foundation of
    our free society as the acceptance by corporate officials of a social
    responsibility other than to make as much money for their
    shareholders as possible.
                -Milton Friedman


        If voting could change the system, it would be illegal
                                    - attributed to anarchists


        Ask not what the world is doing to you,
        but what you can do with the world.
                        -cadre folk saying


        Only when the last tree has died
        And the last river been poisoned
        And the last fish caught
        Will we realize that we cannot eat money.
                                - The Cree


   If we see that Germany is winning we should help Russia and if Russia
   is winning we ought to help Germany and that way let them kill as many
   as possible . . .
                                                Harry S. Truman, 1941



    "If ever time should come, when vain and aspiring men
    shall possess the highest seats in Government, our
    country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to
    prevent its ruin."                  - Samuel Adams


    "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little
    temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
                                - Benjamin Franklin


    "Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are
    men who want crops without plowing up the ground.  They want rain
    without thunder and lightning.  They want the ocean without the awful
    roar of its waters.  This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a
    physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a
    struggle!  Power concedes nothing without a demand.  It never did, and
    it never will.  Find out just what people will submit to, and you have
    found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed
    upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either
    words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by
    the endurance of those whom they oppress."
                               --Frederick Douglass, August 4, 1857.


        [There] is looming up a new and dark power;
        the enterprises of the country are aggregating
        vast corporate combinations of unexampled capital,
        boldly marching, not for economical conquests only,
        but for political power. The question will arise
        and arise in your day, though perhaps not fully in mine,
        which shall rule - wealth or man; which shall lead -
        money or intellect; who shall fill public stations -
        educated and patriotic freemen, or the feudal serfs of
        corporate capital...
           - Edward G. Ryan, Chief Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court,
             from an address to the 1873 graduating class
             of the University of Wisconsin Law School


        If you think you're too small to be effective,
        You've never been in bed with a mosquito.


        Did you exchange
        A walk-on part in a war
        For a lead role in a cage?
          -Roger Waters, of Pink Floyd


        Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it;<br>
        Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
           - Goethe


        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


        We may congratulate ourselves that this cruel war is
        nearing its end. It has cost a vast amount of treasure
        and blood.... It has indeed been a trying hour for the
        Republic; but I see in the near future a crisis
        approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble
        for the safety of my country. As a result of the war
        corporations have been enthroned and an era of
        corruption in high places will follow, and the money
        power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign
        by working upon the prejudices of the people until all
        wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is
        destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the
        safety of my country than ever before, even in the
        midst of war.
             --Abraham Lincoln, letter to William F. Elkins,
               Nov 21, 1864.  Archer H. Shaw, ed., The Lincoln
               Encyclopedia 40 (1950)


               "Those who can, must!"  --Anonymous


    The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in time of great
    moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.
                                                Dante


     Only those duped by the mainstream media believe that
     fascism is about jack-booted stormtroopers and swastikas
                            -posted to an electric pole in Wexford


    "It is impossible to express a really new principle
    in terms of a model following old laws."
                            -- Max Planck


        Capitalism is the astounding belief that
        the most wickedest of men will do
        the most wickedest of things
        for the greatest good of everyone.
                                        John Maynard Keynes



    For other quotes go to "They told the truth" at
    http://www.taxtruth4u.com



Share: