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"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes."

President Dwight Eisenhower Farewell Address 1961

"Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with.

Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with an its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured." MLK, Letter from a Birmingham Jail

HOPE is not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but that it makes sense and is worth doing, regardless of how it turns out.

Vaclav Havel
 

"Follow those who seek the truth...and run from those who've found it."

A. Nonymous

TAKE SIDES. Silence helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

Eli Wiesel

"It is easier and less costly to change the way people think about reality than it is to change reality." - PR adviser Morris Wolfe.

 First they came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist.  Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.  Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up. --Pastor Martin Niemoeller

 "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, economist and author

 "Peace is not the absence of war. It is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence and justice." Baruch Spinoza

 The Massachusetts congressman Fisher Ames amply compared the two systems in 1795 when he stated that "A monarchy is a merchantman which sails well, but will sometimes strike on a rock, and go to the bottom; a republic is a raft which will never sink, but then your feet are always in the water."

 "If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters." Frederick Douglas

 I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library. Jorge Luis Borges

POWER

 Two abreast, the Mothers alight at the door of the Casa Rosada. As usual,  they arrive with the precise consonance of migrating birds. But the President's secretary wrings her hands, "El Presidente is away. We do not know when he will return." "We have an appointment, we will wait," the Mothers reply. "Señoras," the secretary protests. The Mothers can't hear her. There aren't enough chairs in the waiting room and they are busy ferrying some in. Unlike Odysseus, they know where they are going and what a straight line is. The day wears on. Evening, the palace empties. The Mothers feel quite at home, but the night cleaners cannot come in. Morning comes and the Mothers are barricaded behind the front door. The government officials, their assistants and their sub-assistants must enter through the back door.  Everyone is embarrassed. After lunch, an emissary of the President comes out to ask the Mothers if they will speak with him. The Mothers understand the political process. They will take a vote and then they will announce their decision.

 -Marguerite Guzman Bouvard from Revolutionizing Motherhood - The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo "During the Argentine junta's Dirty War against subversives, as tens of thousands were abducted, tortured, and disappeared,  a group of women forged the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo and transformed Argentine politics forever."