Nerd alert!
This is a list that used to be behind the quote widget on the upper right of the page. They are from various places, maybe half from my personal reading (books). I’m not documenting sources because I don’t have time or did not record them.
There’s good nourishment here! But you may have to chew for at least 5 or 6 seconds to get it. Eat and enjoy!
[Here’s another list of short quotes – about 50 of them.]
A miracle, just take a look around: the inescapable earth. -Wistawa Szymborska
A liberal state is an achievement that has a long history — a history that allowed the West to transcend the murderous grip of warring Christian factions. -Shadia Drury
After every war someone has to tidy up. Things won’t pick themselves up, after all …. No sound bites, no photo opportunities, and it takes years. -Wistawa Szymborska
An eye for an eye and we all go blind. -Gandhi
An intelligent, careful, intensive but straightforward reading [of the Bible] – that is, one not governed by obscure and faddish theories or by a mindless orthodoxy – is what it requires to direct us into life in God’s kingdom. -Dallas Willard
As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead trying to kill me. They do not feel any enmity against me as an individual, nor I against them. They are only doing their duty … if one of them succeeds in blowing me to pieces with a well-placed bomb, he will never sleep any worse for it. He is serving his country, which has the power to absolve him from evil. -George Orwell, London 1941
As a lawyer, I was an advocate of my clients. If I was to be confirmed, I would be an advocate for the law. -Bush judicial nominee Wm Myers
Bush’s mixed-up budget priorities really show the gap between his professed moral values and his actions -True Majority
Christianity is like a swimming pool; the most noise comes from the shallow end. -Unknown
Compassion does not come from religious texts. -the Dalai Lama
Conservative: a statesman who is enamoured of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others. -Ambrose Bierce
Democracies are most commonly corrupted by the insolence of demagogues. -Aristotle
Each single step on the way to the realization of a worthy objective must be a worthy objective in itself. Means have a way of inserting and integrating themselves into ends and of determining their ultimate pattern. -Gandhi
Each believer is a witness, and the non-believer begins by belief in the [believer]’s belief. -H Blackham (on Gabriel Marcel)
Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society. -Ralph Waldo Emerson
Everyday activity can be destructive if motivations are not sincere and compassionate. -the Dalai Lama
Evil is not just personal, but structural and spiritual. -Walter Wink
Famine is a political event. It is not caused by drought, flood, or other natural disaster alone. -James K Galbraith
God at one and the same time UPHOLDS a given political or economic system, since some such system is required to support human life; CONDEMS that system insofar as it is destructive of fully human life; and PRESSES FOR ITS TRANSFORMATION into a more humane order. -Walter Wink
God and a soldier all people adore In time of war, but not before; And when war is over and all things are righted, God is neglected and an old soldier slighted. -Anonymous
God has high standards. Divinity will not put up forever with exploitation, corruption, and mediocrity. -Walter Wink
Governments need what they cannot themselves provide: meaning and motivation. -Huston Smith
He went about doing good. -Peter, about Jesus
Help us to find ways other than war to stop those who hurt others in the world. -Jewish Peace Fellowship.com
Help us to remember that war is not a sporting event or a video game. -Jewish Peace Fellowship.com
How many times have I had someone ask me what I have to live for, as an atheist. Or how I can be moral … I live because I enjoy life. And I can be moral–and sometimes perhaps more moral–because I define morality primarily in terms of my relations to other human beings and my care for them rather than first in relation to an abstract being with sometimes conflicting “moral” commands. -Black Maned Pensator (dkos)
How did the faith of Jesus come to be known as pro-rich, pro-war, and pro-American? -Jim Wallis
I cannot really be open to the call of God in a situation of oppression if the one thing I have excluded as an option is my own suffering and death. -Walter Wink
I cannot believe that the inscrutable universe turns on an axis of suffering; surely the strange beauty of the world must somewhere rest on pure joy. -Louise Bogan
I was provided with additional input that was radically different from the truth. I assisted in furthering that version. -Colonel Oliver North
I will make a bargain with the Republicans. If they will stop telling lies about Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them. -Adlai Stevenson
I can train a monkey to wave an American flag. That does not make the monkey patriotic. -Scott Ritter
I don’t want to hear any lectures about Christian values from the Republican Party — they are the Pharisees and the Sadducees. -Howard Dean
I have always felt that if you’re lucky enough in this life to accumulate enough funds to live better than you have any right to, then you have a moral obligation to pay back to the community, or to the country or to the place that brought you up. -Johnny Carson
I have seen men march to the wars, And then I have watched their homeward tread, And they brought back bodies of living men, But their eyes were cold and dead. -Edmund Vance Cooke
If you stop to think about it you become aware that war is just human sacrifice. There is no honor in killing as many as you can as quickly as you can. -Sgt Kevin Benderman
If your religion does not work at home, don’t export it. -Howard Hendricks
If there are no real gaps and wounds, if the world can be shown to be rational and coherent, there is no need of salvation but only of wisdom. -H Blackham (on Gabriel Marcel)
In America anyone can become President. That’s just one of the risks you take. -Adlai Stevenson
In the long run one can’t satisfactorily say no to war, violence, and injustice unless one is simultaneously saying yes to life, love, and laughter. -David Dellinger
Is there not some chosen curse, some hidden thunder in the stores of heaven, red with uncommon wrath, to blast the man who owes his greatness to his country’s ruin? -Joseph Addison
Isn’t it ironic that the words “liberal,” “homosexual” and “atheist” all seem to have the same power to shock and offend? The latter two were formerly burned at the stake, but the word “liberal” — as in “liberal education” — used to connote intelligence and generosity. -John Slade
It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity. -Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
Jesus …. was a champion of women’s rights, a threat to the established political order, and a radical spiritual activist who worked outside religious institutions … owned nothing and was a passionate advocate for the poor and underprivileged … a master of love and he devoted his life to serving the Divine Intelligence. I want to be like him when I grow up! -Bob Brezsny
Let me tell you something important. As long as my country is under occupation, I feel that my vote means nothing. -Walid Muhammad, Imam of a major mosque in Iraq
Liberalism is trust of the people, tempered by prudence; conservatism, distrust of the people, tempered by fear. -William Gladstone
Liberalism will not die. It is as indispensable to life as the pure air all around about. It is deathless … This is my faith in America. -Sen. George Norris, McCook, NE, 1944
Men are not flattered by being informed that there has been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them. -Abraham Lincoln
Neutrality in a situation of oppression merely supports the status quo. -Walter Wink
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. -Martin Luther King Jr
One does not deal well with God by force. -Theresa of Avila
Paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people. -Justice Hugo L. Black
Propaganda replaces moral philosophy. -Hans J Morgenthau
Real soldiers are dying in their Hummers, so that Republicans can play soldier in theirs. -coldeye on dkos
Should Americans have to give up the Bill of Rights in order to be “safe” from terrorists? Actually, it doesn’t matter what Americans think. The trade has already been made–and without any input from the people. -Paul Craig Roberts
Since our hate is usually a direct response to an evil done to us, our hate almost invariably causes us to respond in the terms laid down by the enemy. -Walter Wink
So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable. -Christopher Reeve
Speaking the truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act. -George Orwell
Stalin killed more communists than the bourgeoisie of the whole world put together. -an anonymous Yugoslav
Strength and wisdom are not opposing values. -Bill Clinton
The Biblical understanding is that no institution exists as an end in itself, but only to serve the common good. -Walter Wink
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
The Scriptures are not the Fountain, but a declaration of the Fountain. And it is into that Fountain itself that we would step. -Thomas Kelly
The worthful aspects of reality – its values, meaning, and purpose – slip through the devices of science in the way that the sea slips through the nets of fishermen. -Huston Smith
The bottom line is that we are willing to spend much more to kill people than to save people -Lucinda Marshall
The sound of you typing on your keyboard is the sound of 21st Century Democracy in action! -Michael Sullivan, Kerry-Edwards Forums
The great reversal is not only the Lord’s unseating of the mighty and raising the humble; it is also our own repentance. -John Howard Yoder
The biblical mandate …. must not only explain that it is our duty to respect the powers that be, but also provide leverage for formulating the limits of that respect, and for articulating our resistance when those limits are overrun. -John Howard Yoder
The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground. -Thomas Jefferson
The high road may be harder, but it leads to a better place. -John Kerry
The “democracy” that America is exporting is in fact a Homeland Security State with more surveillance powers than Saddam Hussein. -Paul Craig Roberts
The man of great wealth owes a peculiar obligation to the State, because he derives special advantages from the mere existence of government. -Teddy Roosevelt
The best general is the one who never fights. -Sun Tzu
The victims of a great natural disaster are worthy (though for how long is uncertain) while the victims of man-made imperial disasters are unworthy and very often unmentionable. -John Pilger
The Left mocks the Right. The Right knows it’s right. Two ugly traits. How far should we go to try to understand each other’s point of view? Maybe the distance grace covered on the cross is a clue. -Bono (U2)
The first act of love is always the giving of attention. -Dallas Willard
There are lots of things that are ugly and terrible about war. I think that people on the right are more comfortable allowing for that. -Jonah Goldberg
There was promulgation of false propaganda by the administration about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. There was promulgation of false propaganda about Iraq as a base for Al Qaeda. -Jimmy Carter
There are some faiths that every citizen should be acquainted with, simply because hundreds of millions of people live by them. -Huston Smith
There is no one, and surely no entire people, in whom the image of God has been utterly extinguished. -Walter Wink
There are few things more dangerous than a mixture of power, arrogance and incompetence. -Bob Herbert
There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell. You can bear this warning voice to generations yet to come. I look upon war with horror. -William Tecumseh Sherman, 1880
They (the administration) need a divided America; but we don’t. -Bill Clinton
This is an administration that believes it can do and say whatever it wants, and that attitude is changing the very nature of the United States. -Bob Herbert
Those who have religion for their God will not have God for their religion. -Unknown
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. -Voltaire
To see tangible organizing actually work, to see people from a variety of backgrounds come together, to see social change leading to increased justice and human happiness is the most extraordinary feeling imaginable. It makes one feel ALIVE. -Robert W. McChesney
Unselfish faith will prove to be America’s greatest resource in the difficult years ahead. -Sen. George Norris, McCook, NE, 1944
Values are not just words; values are what we live by. -John Kerry
Violence … changes only the rulers, but not the rules. -Walter Wink
waiting, waiting While the rich oratory and the lying famous corrupt Senators mine our lives for another war. -Thomas McGrath
We can do better than that. -Howard Dean
We must become the change we want to see. -Gandhi
We have made the Reich by propaganda. -Joseph Paul Goebbels
We empower people to talk to us by listening to them. -Howard Dean
What is life but what a man is thinking of all day? This is his fate and his employer. -Ralph Waldo Emerson
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. -Nietzsche
You can’t talk to the ignorant about lies, since they have no criteria. -Ezra Pound
You can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do. -Anne Lamott
You have to have confidence in your ability, and then be tough enough to follow through. -Rosalyn Carter
Great collection, I’ve been working on a quotes file myself and selections from this easily doubled its size … 🙂
Thanks for that 🙂