"Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies
toughness in a descending spiral of destruction... Have we not come to such an impasse in
our modern world that we must love love our enemies - or else?"
Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. from the sermon "Loving Your Enemies" Christmas 1957,
written in the Montgomery, Alabama jail.
"The interests of the States... ought to be made joint in every possible instance
in order to cultivate the idea of our being one nation, and to multiply the instances in
which the people shall look up to Congress as their head." --Thomas Jefferson to
James Monroe, 1785. ME 5:14, Papers 8:229
—Thomas Jefferson
"Oh God, help us in our lives and in all of our attitudes, to work
out this controlling force of love, this controlling power that can solve every problem
that we confront in all areas. Oh, we talk about politics; we talk about the problems
facing our atomic civilization. Grant that all men will come together and discover that as
we solve the crisis and solve these problems—the international problems, the problems
of atomic energy, the problems of nuclear energy, and yes, even the race problem—let
us join together in a great fellowship of love and bow down at the feet of Jesus. Give us
this strong determination. In the name and spirit of this Christ, we pray. Amen"
Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. from the sermon "Loving Your Enemies" Christmas 1957,
written in the Montgomery, Alabama jail.
"By [the] operations [of public improvement] new channels of communication will be
opened between the States; the lines of separation will disappear, their interests will be
identified, and their union cemented by new and indissoluble ties." --Thomas
Jefferson: 6th Annual Message, 1806. ME 3:423
—Thomas Jefferson
"Many are the exercises of power reserved to the States wherein a uniformity of
proceeding would be advantageous to all. Such are quarantines, health laws, regulations of
the press, banking institutions, training militia, etc., etc." --Thomas Jefferson to
James Sullivan, 1807. ME 11:237
—Thomas Jefferson
"My political ideal is democracy. Let every
man be respected as an individual and no man idolized. (regarding his fame) ...the cause
of this may well be the desire, unattainable for many, to understand the few ideas to
which I have with my feeble powers attained through ceaseless struggle."
"I am quite aware that for any organization
to reach its goals, one man must do the thinking and directing and generally bear the
responsibility. But the led must not be coerced, they must be able to choose their leader.
In my opinion, an autocratic system of coercion soon degenerates; force attracts men of
low morality... "
"The really valuable thing in the pageant of
human life seems to me not the political state, but the creative, sentient individual, the
personality; it alone creates the noble and the sublime, while the herd as such remains
dull in thought and dull in feeling."
-- Albert Einstein
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible
make violent revolution inevitable."
-- Pres. John F. Kennedy 1962
"We must realize that today's Establishment is
the new George III: Whether it will continue to adhere to his tactics, we do not know; if
it does, the redress, honored in tradition, is also revolution."
-- Justice William O. Douglas, 1970
"We have, in truth, resorted to power because
our politics has failed. Since no politician can afford to admit this, we must
pretend that we are resorting to power in order to make our politics succeed."
-- Theodore Draper, "Abuse of Power", 1967
The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and
axioms of free society.
Abraham Lincoln to Henry L. Pierce, 1859
All progress has resulted from people who took
unpopular positions.
—Adlai Stevenson
You don' t get what you want out of life, you get what you tolerate.
--- Werner Ehrhardt
The truth is that a vast restructuring of our society is needed if remedies are to
become available to the average person. Without that restructuring, the good will that
holds society together will be slowly dissipated. It is that sense of futility which
permeates the present series of protests & dissents. Where there is a persistent sense
of futility, there is violence; and that is where we are today.
Justice William O. Douglas, Points of Rebellion, 1970
. . .Until one is committed there is hesitancy, the
chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and
creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and
splendid plans: that the moment one commits oneself then Providence moves too. All sorts
of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of
events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen
incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have
come his way.
I have learned a deep respect for one of
Goethe’s couplets:
Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
—W. H. Murray
Leadership is all about the release of human
possibilities. . .the capacity to inspire is communicating to people that you believe they
matter, that you know they have something important to give.
—Joseph Jaworski
Great spirits have always encountered violent
opposition from mediocre minds.
—Albert Einstein
It is in the nature of revolution, the overturning
of an existing order, that at its inception a very small number of people are involved.
The process, in fact, begins with one person and an idea, an idea that persuades a second,
then a third and a fourth, and gathers force until the idea is successfully contradicted,
absorbed into conventional wisdom, or actually turns the world upside down.
In an intellectual revolution there must be ideas
and advocates willing to challenge an entire profession, the establishment itself, willing
to spend their reputations and careers in spreading the idea through deeds as well as
words.
—Jude Wanniski
“The Way the World Works”
"A great nation is not led by a man who simply repeats the talk of the
street-corners or the opinions of the newspapers. A nation is led by a man who hears more
than those things; or who, rather, hearing those things, understands them better; unites
them, puts them into a common meaning; speaks, not the rumors of the street, but a new
principle for a new age; a man in whose ears the voices of the nation do not sound like
the accidental and discordant notes that come from the voice of a mob, but concurrent and
concordant like united forces of a chorus, whose many meanings, spoken by melodious
tongues, unite in his understanding in a single meaning and reveal to him a single vision,
so that he can speak what no man else knows, the common meaning of the comon voice. Such
is the man who leads a great, free, democratic nation."
-- Woodrow Wilson 1909
"America will never be destroyed from the
outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed
ourselves."
--Abraham Lincoln
``Wise statesmen ... established these great self-evident truths, that when in the
distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should set up the doctrine that none
but rich men, or none but white men, were entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness, their posterity should look up again at the Declaration of Independence and
take courage to renew the battle which their fathers began....''
-- Abraham Lincoln
"There
is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents... There is
also an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or
talents; for with these it would belong to the first class... The artificial aristocracy
is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provision should be made to prevent its
ascendency."
