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"If you assume that every child is sensitive, vulnerable, readily injured, and easily broken, then you will never be far from the truth. If you assume that all children are motivated by pride and justice, you will be able to communicate with them. If you assume that all children should be treated as sacred trusts who deserve your full measure of devotion, you will be on the right path. If you seek to find the vulnerable, precious child in yourself and in all other adults at all times in your dealings with yourself and others, you will have achieved enlightenment. You will become a gift to the children in your life to whatever degree that you remain enlightened in your dealings with them." Peter R. Breggin, M.D., Reclaiming Our Children: A Healing Plan for a Nation in Crisis ******************** Submitted by Maureen

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Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction.

Blaise Pascal

“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murder is less to fear.”
Quote by:
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Roman Statesman, Philosopher and Orator
Date: 42BC

'Newt Gingrich is a stupid person's idea of a smart person.'

Alan Grayson

“Although it is true that only about 20 percent of American workers are in unions, that 20 percent sets the standards across the board in salaries, benefits and working conditions. If you are making a decent salary in a non-union company, you owe that to the unions. One thing that corporations do not do is give out money out of the goodness of their hearts.”

Molly Ivins

We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realize that we know where it lives…inside ourselves.

Albert Camus

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil … is for good men to do nothing.~~

Edmond Burke

there is no longer any doubt as to whether the (Bush) administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.

Maj. Gen. Antonio, M. Taguba / Investigator of Abu Ghraib

“We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven into an age of unreason if we dig deep in our history and remember we are not descended from fearful men — not from men who feared to write, to speak , to associate with and defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular. . . .(Senator McCarthy) didn’t create this situation of fear, he merely exploited it, and rather successfully. . . Cassius was right, “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”

Edward R. Murrow

Congress is not preparing to defend the people of the United States. It is planning to protect the capital of American speculators and investors…. Incidentally this preparation will benefit the manufacturers of munitions and war machines…. Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought! Strike against manufacturing shrapnel and gas bombs and all other tools of murder! Strike against preparedness that means death and misery to millions of human beings! Be not dumb, obedient slaves in an army of destruction! Be heroes in an army of construction!

Helen Keller at Carnegie Hall January 5, 1916

It's coming to America first,
the cradle of the best and of the worst.
It's here they got the range
and the machinery for change
and it's here they got the spiritual thirst.
It's here the family's broken
and it's here the lonely say
that the heart has got to open
in a fundamental way:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

Leonard Cohen

The Republican Party is doing a great job in provoking such a dangerous episode by making consensual governance impossible in a time of awful practical problems and challenges. They’re in the process, right now, of transforming themselves from the party of “no” to the party of no decency, no common sense, no ideas, no conception of the public interest, and no respect for the traditions that they pretend to stand for, like due process of law. In the days since the passage of health care reform, they’ve gone as far as inciting mobs to violence against their fellow congressmen and senators — bricks thrown through windows, death threats made, coffins placed in the yards of their adversaries. One day soon, somebody with a gun or an explosive device, someone with a very sketchy sense-of-self, and perhaps a recent record of personal failure and humiliation, is going to sacrifice himself to become the Tea Party’s first martyr by shooting up a shopping mall in some blue district.

James Howard Kunstler

“Any life lost in war is the life of a human being, irrespective of whether it is an Arab or an Israeli...........................................

The wife who becomes widowed is a human being, entitled to live in a happy family, Arab or Israeli..............................................

Innocent children, deprived of paternal care and sympathy, are all our children, whether they live on Arab or Israeli soil, and we owe them the biggest responsibility of providing them with a happy present and bright future.”

Mohammed Anwar El-Sadat

Hope........And it is not a dream of a fancy proud,
With a fool for its dull begetter;
There's a voice at the heart that proclaims aloud--
'We are born for a something better!'
And that Voice of the Heart, oh, ye may believe,
Will never the Hope of the Soul deceive!'

Friedrich Schiller

'God shouldn't be put in charge of everything until we get to know Him a little better' Kurt Vonnegut, The Nation, 11/28/81

Kurt Vonnegut, The Nation, 11/28/81

'The law is meant to be my servant and not my master, still less my torturer and my murderer'

James Baldwin, The Nation, 7/11/66

There is no present or future, only the past, happening over and over again, now.

Eugene O'Neill

Noah’s Ark : Everything I need to know, I learned from Noah’s Ark .. ONE: Don’t miss the boat. TWO: Remember that we are all in the same boat! THREE: Plan ahead. It wasn’t raining when Noah built the Ark. FOUR: Stay fit. When you’re 60 years old, someone may ask you to do something really big. FIVE: Don’t listen to critics; just get on with the job that needs to be done. SIX: Build your future on high ground. SEVEN: For safety’s sake, travel in pairs. EIGHT: Speed isn’t always an advantage. The snails were on board with the cheetahs. NINE: When you’re stressed, float awhile. TEN: Remember, the Ark was built by amateurs; the Titanic by professionals. ELEVEN: No matter the storm, there’s always a rainbow waiting. Most people walk in and out of your life, but FRIENDS leave footprints in your heart.

Unknown

The bottom line is this: Peace will come to Israel and the Middle East only when the Israeli government is willing to comply with international law, with the Roadmap for Peace, with official American policy, with the wishes of a majority of its own citizens–and honor its own previous commitments–by accepting its legal borders. All Arab neighbors must pledge to honor Israel’s right to live in peace under these conditions. The United States is squandering international prestige and goodwill and intensifying global anti-American terrorism by unofficially condoning or abetting the Israeli confiscation and colonization of Palestinian territories.

Jimmy Carter / Palestine Peace Not Apartheid

When the song of the angels is stilled, When the star in the sky is gone, When the kings and the princes are home, When the shephers are back with their flock, The work of Christmas begins: To find the lost, To heal the broken, To feed the hungry, To release the prisoner, To rebuild the nations, To bring peace among brothers and sisters, To make music in the heart.

Howard Thurman

Just Humor – Current

Panorama – April Fool’s Day Hoax – Spaghetti
Harvest – 1st April 1957

In the modern era, our favorite media hoax is still the BBC’s classic 1957 Swiss Spaghetti Harvest story. The three-minute report had all the hallmarks of a perfect prank: an implausible absurdity, presented with deadpan earnestness. The BBC received hundreds of calls from viewers wanting to buy spaghetti bushes.