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[..] so long as power remains privately concentrated, everybody, everybody, has to be committed to one overriding goal: and that's to make sure that the rich folk are happy - because unless they are, nobody else is going to get anything. So if you’re a homeless person sleeping in the streets of Manhattan, let's say, your first concern must be that the guys in the mansions are happy - because if they're happy, then they'll invest, and the economy will work, and things will function, and then maybe something will trickle down to you somewhere along the line. But if they're not happy, everything’s going to grind to a halt, and you're not even going to get anything trickling down.

Noam Chomsky

"Understanding Power" (2002)

Order is not pressure which is imposed on society from without, but an equilibrium which is set up from within.

Jose Ortega y Gasset

We don't have to argue with anybody. We don't have to curse and go around acting bad with our words. We don't need any bricks and bottles, we don't need any Molotov cocktails, we just need to go around to these stores, and to these massive industries in our country, and say, God sent us by here, to say to you that you're not treating his children right. And we've come by here to ask you to make the first item on your agenda – fair treatment, where God's children are concerned. Now, if you are not prepared to do that, we do have an agenda that we must follow. And our agenda calls for withdrawing economic support from you.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

Henry David Thoreau

"Walden"

They looked at each other for a moment.

The moment became a longer moment, and suddenly it was a very long moment, so long one could hardly tell where all the time was coming from.

For Arthur, who would usually contrive to feel self-conscious if left alone for long enough with a Swiss cheese plant, the moment was one of sustained revelation. He felt on the sudden like a cramped and zoo-born animal who wakes one morning to find the door to his cage hanging quietly open and the savanna stretching grey and pink to the distant rising sun, while all around new sounds are waking.

He wondered what the new sounds were as he gazed at her openly wondering face and her eyes that smiled with a shared surprise.

He didn't realize that life speaks with a voice to you, a voice that brings you answers to the questions you continually ask of it, had never consciously detected it or recognized its tones until now it said something it had never said to him before, which was "yes."

Douglas Adams

"Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.

George Orwell

When fascism comes to America, it will not be in brown and black shirts, it will not be with jackboots, it will be Nike sneakers and smiley shirts. Smiley smiley.

George Carlin

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9f4wSYATh0&t=5m18s

The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Love is all we have, the only way that each can help the other.

Euripides

"Orestes" (408 BC)

To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.

Tacitus

The greatest calamity which could befall us would be submission to a government of unlimited powers.

Thomas Jefferson

The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.

Plutarch

The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.

Henry David Thoreau

If you quietly accept and go along no matter what your feelings are, ultimately you internalize what you're saying, because it's too hard to believe one thing and say another. I can see it very strikingly in my own background. Go to any elite university and you are usually speaking to very disciplined people, people who have been selected for obedience. And that makes sense. If you've resisted the temptation to tell the teacher, "You're an asshole," which maybe he or she is, and if you don't say, "That's idiotic," when you get a stupid assignment, you will gradually pass through the required filters. You will end up at a good college and eventually with a good job.

Noam Chomsky

Interview by Charles M. Young in Rolling Stone, May 28, 1992

Keeping your body healthy is an expression of gratitude to the whole cosmos - the trees, the clouds, everything.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Keep your heart clear and transparent 
And you will never be bound. 
A single disturbed thought, though, 
Creates ten thousand distractions. 
Let myriad things captivate you 
And you'll go further and further astray. 
How painful to see people 
All wrapped up in themselves.

Ryokan

If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.

John Stuart Mill

Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.

Cyril Connolly

Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.

Benjamin Franklin