Politics and Culture - American Profiles In Radical Independence

How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these.

~ George Washington Carver

For any movement to reach the heights of making life better for their fellow man we must first ask the question of why we are here. Once we look deep inside our hearts and minds and truly understand the roots of this cause we can begin to move forward.

~Khalfani King

Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will.

~ Frederick Douglass

Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

1. A body at rest stays at rest, and a body in motion stays in motion, unless it is acted on by an external force.

2. Force equals mass times acceleration (F = ma) (or alternately, force equals the rate of change of momentum with time).

When you meet someone better than yourself, turn your thoughts to becoming his equal. When you meet someone not as good as you are, look within and examine your own self.

~ Confucius

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

~ C.S. Lewis

But goodness alone is never enough. A hard cold wisdom is required, too, for goodness to accomplish good. Goodness without wisdom invariably accomplishes evil.

~ Robert Heinlein

All things are perceived in the light of charity, and hence under the aspect of beauty; for beauty is simply reality seen with the eyes of love.

~ Evelyn Underhill

These thoughts did not come in any verbal formulation. I rarely think in words at all. A thought comes, and I may try to express it in words afterward.”

~ Albert Einstein

“You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.”

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The act of compassion begins with full attention, just as rapport does. You have to really see the person. If you see the person, then naturally, empathy arises. If you tune into the other person, you feel with them. If empathy arises, and if that person is in dire need, then empathic concern can come. You want to help them, and then that begins a compassionate act. So I'd say that compassion begins with attention.

~Daniel Goleman

CIRCUS, n. A place where horses, ponies and elephants are permitted to see men, women and children acting the fool.”

~ Ambrose Pierce