quotations: social justice and courage
Aristotle: Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.
Cesar Chavez: The first principal of nonviolent action is that of noncooperation with everything humiliating.
Harriet Hosmer, American sculptor: I honor every woman who has the strength enough to step out of the beaten path when she feels that her walk lies in another (Heifer Intl. publication).
Dolores Ibarruri: It is better to die on your feet than live on your knees.
Edmund Burke: All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing.
(activist from film Thirst): When we lost our fear, I knew we’d win.
Rachel Naomi Remen (Loeb, Soul of a Citizen, 44): Being brave does not mean being unafraid. It often means being afraid and doing it anyways.
Robert Kennedy: Let no one be discouraged by the belief there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world’s ills—against misery and ignorance, injustice and violence…Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation….It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich: Well behaved women seldom make history.
Marianne Williamson: Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
Andre Gide (Winner of 1947 Nobel Prize for Literature): Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.
Cesar Chavez: The first principal of nonviolent action is that of noncooperation with everything humiliating.
Harriet Hosmer, American sculptor: I honor every woman who has the strength enough to step out of the beaten path when she feels that her walk lies in another (Heifer Intl. publication).
Dolores Ibarruri: It is better to die on your feet than live on your knees.
Edmund Burke: All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing.
(activist from film Thirst): When we lost our fear, I knew we’d win.
Rachel Naomi Remen (Loeb, Soul of a Citizen, 44): Being brave does not mean being unafraid. It often means being afraid and doing it anyways.
Robert Kennedy: Let no one be discouraged by the belief there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world’s ills—against misery and ignorance, injustice and violence…Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation….It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich: Well behaved women seldom make history.
Marianne Williamson: Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
Andre Gide (Winner of 1947 Nobel Prize for Literature): Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.