Politics and Culture - American Profiles In Radical Independence

“The great secret of succeeding in conversation is to admire little, to hear much; always to distrust our own reason, and sometimes that of our friends; never to pretend to wit, but to make that of others appear as much as possibly we can; to hearken”

~ Benjamin Franklin

The most solid comfort one can fall back upon is the thought that the business of one's life is to help in some small way to reduce the sum of ignorance, degradation and misery on the face of this beautiful earth.

~ George Eliot

Family quarrels are bitter things. They don't go by any rules. They're not like aches or wounds; they're more like splits in the skin that won't heal because there's not enough material.

~F. Scott Fitzgerald

We have made mistakes. In our haste to do all things for all people, we did not foresee the full consequences of our actions. And when the people raised their voices, we didn't hear. But our deafness was only a temporary condition, and not an irreversible condition.

~ Barbara Jordan

“The bottom line in this matter rests on the fact that if I work and I don’t want the system to take care of my kids I am punished.”

"Difficulties are opportunities to better things; they are stepping-stones to greater experience.... When one door closes, another always opens; as a natural law it has to, to balance."
~ Brian Adams

It's not so much that we're afraid of change or so in love with the old ways, but it's that place in between that we fear. . . . It's like being between trapezes. It's Linus when his blanket is in the dryer. There's nothing to hold on to.

~ Marilyn Ferguson

I'm not an old, experienced hand at politics. But I am now seasoned enough to have learned that the hardest thing about any political campaign is how to win without proving that you are unworthy of winning.

~ Adlai E. Stevenson

“If you ever questioned why women stay with their abusive spouses you might be surprised to know the answers.”

“This is the duty of our generation as we enter the twenty-first century -- solidarity with the weak, the persecuted, the lonely, the sick, and those in despair. It is expressed by the desire to give a noble and humanizing meaning to a community in which all members will define themselves not by their own identity but by that of others.”

~ Elie Wiesel

“When people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.”

~Isaac Asimov

See, the human mind is kind of like... a piñata. When it breaks open, there are a lot of surprises inside. Once you get the piñata perspective, you see that losing your mind can be a peak experience.

~Jane Wagner

“We need a new spirit of community, a sense that we are all in this together, or the American Dream will continue to wither. Our destiny is bound up with the destiny of every other American.”

~ William Jefferson Clinton, 42nd President Of The United States Of America

The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life.

~ Theodore Roosevelt 26th President Of The United States

“In a controversy, the instant we feel anger, we have already ceased striving for truth and have begun striving for ourselves”

~ Abraham J. Heschel (Jewish theologian and philosopher, 1907-1972)

“Man is not imprisoned by habit. Great changes in him can be wrought by crisis -- once that crisis can be recognized and understood.”

~ Norman Cousins