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The JUST Response collection of memorable quotations
"We
shall hurl truth at falsehood until truth shall triumph and falsehood
be no more." "Enter
with me into the sufferings, not only of the people of India but of the
whole world. Nonviolence
is a more active and real fight against wickedness than retaliation
whose very nature is to increase wickedness. It is not a weapon of the
weak. It is a weapon of the strongest and bravest." "And
so he who looks down at his feet will not know the truth, but he who
discerns by the sun which way to go." "Remember
your humanity and forget the rest." "The most interesting --
in fact, inspiring -- people I met there [Porto Alegre] are those who remain nameless:
representatives of the international campesino movement, the East
Timorese delegation,... -- the usual heroes, who disappear, unknown,
apart from the consequences of their work." "The twentieth
century has been characterized by three developments of great political
importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and
the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate
power against democracy." "Society is a sort
of organism on the growth of which conscious efforts can exercise little
effect." "It is far easier
to act under conditions of tyranny than to think." "Always
be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will avoid you." "Work
is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the
earth's surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other
people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill paid; the second
is pleasant and highly paid." "I
sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure
myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to lighten his
load by all possible means -- except by getting off his back." "The
reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all
progress depends on the unreasonable man." "Truth
must necessarily be stranger than fiction; for fiction is the creation
of the human mind and therefore congenial to it." "A
system-grinder hates the truth." "For
those who stubbornly seek freedom, there can be no more urgent task than
to come to understand the mechanisms and practices of indoctrination.
These are easy to perceive in the totalitarian societies, much less so
in the system of 'brainwashing under freedom' to which we are subjected
and which all too often we serve as willing or unwitting
instruments." "In
every well-governed state, wealth is a sacred thing; in democracies it
is the only sacred thing." "People
are unreasonable, illogical and self-centred. Love them anyway. If you
do good, people will accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Do good
anyway. If you are successful, you win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway. The good you do will be forgotten tomorrow. Do good
anyway. Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable. Be honest and frank
anyway. What you spent years building may be destroyed overnight. Build
anyway. People really need help but may attack you if you help them.
Help people anyway." "Every
act of rebelling expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to
the essence of being." "He
who does not bellow the truth when he knows the truth makes himself the
accomplice of liars and forgers." "In
every one of those little stucco boxes there's some poor bastard who's never
free except when he's fast asleep and dreaming that he's got the boss
down the bottom of a well and is bunging lumps of coal at him." "I
have told you once and I will tell you again -- your boys will not be
sent into any foreign wars." [Election Speech, 1940] "Thou
shalt not follow a multitude to do evil." "Education
is a state-controlled manufactory of echoes." "Being
unable to make what is just strong, we have made what is strong
just." "In
peace, sons bury their fathers; in war, fathers bury their sons." "Man's
nature is evil; goodness is the result of conscious activity." "If
the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as
it is, infinite." "Those
who in private life behave well towards their parents and elder
brothers, in public life seldom show a disposition to resist the
authority of their superiors. No instance has ever occurred of such men
starting a revolution." "Whoever
criticises others must have some alternative to offer them. To criticise
and yet offer no alternative is like trying to stop flood with flood or
put out fire with fire." "An
Italian politician has about as much chance of being morally upright and free
of corruption as he has of being fully immersed in the River Po and
stepping out bone dry. Entrusting
Mr Prodi with the presidency of the European Commission is tantamount to
entrusting the running of a brewery to a chronic alcoholic, the
operation of a casino to an inveterate gambler or the governorship of
the Bank of England to the Sicilian mafia." "Truth
is a shining goddess, always veiled, always distant, never wholly
approachable, but worthy of all the devotion of which the human spirit
is capable." "O wad some Power
the giftie gie us "Precision and
documentation do not alone guarantee a true overall picture and may even
impede perception of a false one. History writing must be scrupulously
monitored precisely because history is of immense value." "Man has not the
right to turn aside and heed not what is happening in the world around
him, and this I maintain on moral grounds of the highest order." "An Italian
university is a contradiction in terms." "In order to have
good soldiers a nation must be always at war." "Revenge is
barren; its delight is murder and its satiety, despair." "There is a demand
today for men who can make wrong appear right." "No morality can
be founded on authority, even if the authority were divine." "Non-cooperation
with evil is as much a duty as cooperation with good."
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