Poor Leonard's Almanack

Quotations and Original Thoughts
by Leonard Roy Frank
Street Spirit November 2006

On Humanity and Conscience

1. We are not going to be able to operate our spaceship earth successfully for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody or nobody.
R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER (architect and educator), "Technology and The Human Environment," in Alvin Toffler, editor, The Futurists, 1972

2. COLOR
Wear it
Like a banner
For the proud --
Not like a shroud.
Wear it
Like a song
Soaring high --
Not moan or cry.
LANGSTON HUGHES (poet), "Color," 1967, The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, edited by Arnold Rampersad and David Roessel, 1994

3. Preparation for war is useful to the holders of centralized political power. When things go badly at home, when popular discontent becomes inconveniently articulate, it is always possible, in a world where war making remains an almost sacred habit, to shift the people's attention away from domestic to foreign and military affairs. A flood of xenophobic or imperialistic propaganda is released by the government-controlled instruments of persuasion, a "strong policy" is adopted toward some foreign power, an appeal for "national unity" (in other words, unquestioning obedience to the ruling oligarchy) is launched, and at once it becomes unpatriotic for anybody to voice even the most justifiable complaints against mismanagement or oppression.
ALDOUS HUXLEY (English writer), Science, Liberty and Peace, 1946

4. I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator.
MARY "MOTHER" JONES (labor organizer), speech, 1903, The Autobiography of Mother Jones, 1925

5. This is the first generation to know that the choices we're making have ultimate consequences. It's a time when you either choose life or you choose death.... Going along with the current order means that you're choosing death.
FRANCES MOORE LAPPE (author of Diet for a Small Planet, 1975), quoted in Studs Terkel, Hope Dies Last: Keeping the Faith in Difficult Times, 2003

6. I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the [Civil] War, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN, letter to Col. William Elkins, 21 November 1864

7. The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.
H. L. MENCKEN (journalist), In Defense of Women, 1922

8. A billion stars go spinning through the night,
blazing high above your head.
But in you is the presence that
will be, when all the stars are dead.
RAINER MARIA RILKE (German poet, 1875-1926), "Buddha in Glory"

9. There can be no real peace without justice. And without resistance there will be no justice.
ARUNDHATI ROY (Indian writer, human rights activist), "Peace & the New Corporate Liberation Theology," Sydney Peace Prize Acceptance Speech, Sydney, Australia, 3 November 2004

10. It is love, not faith, that removes mountains.
GEORGE SAND (pen name of Amandine Dudevant, French writer), 10 September 1832, The Intimate Journal of George Sand, ed. by Marie Jenney Howe, 1977

11. I was a poor young colored man but I had the strength of a man who comes to know himself.
NATE SHAW (sharecropper, farmer and human rights activist, 1885-1973), All God's Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw, edited by Theodore Rosengarten, 1974, quoted in Wendell Berry, "A Remarkable Man," 1975, What Are People For?: Essays, 1990

12. I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to lighten his load by all possible means - except by getting off his back.
LEO TOLSTOY (Russian writer), What Then Must We Do?, 1886, translated by Aylmer Maude, 1935

13. Doug Cassel (Notre Dame professor and international human rights scholar): If the president deems that he's got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person's child, there is no law that can stop him?
Yoo: No treaty.
Cassel: Also no law by Congress. That is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo.
Yoo: I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that.
JOHN YOO (South Korean-born U.S. professor of law, University of California School of Law, Berkeley), debate, Chicago, 1 December 2005, quoted in "John Yoo," Wikipedia. Yoo has been a key Bush administration advisor on detainee interrogation policy.

14. The future of the human race depends on a radical change in social consciousness.
HOWARD ZINN (historian and author of People's History of the United States, 2005), "Changing Minds, One at a Time," Progressive, March 2005

15. Greed, n. The parent of grief and misery: first to others, then to oneself, and finally to everyone.

16. With or without a job, poverty is a full-time occupation - and then some.

17. What each political party says of the other is true.

18. Wisdom is knowing what we know and what we don't know, knowing how to give and take hints, knowing when to stay the course and when to change it, knowing our business and not meddling in other people's.

19. Kindness is love in action.

*****
Leonard Roy Frank is the editor of Random House Webster’s Quotationary (20,000+ quotes in 1,000+ subjects). His "Frankly Quoted" column, distributed freely over the Internet on the first of the month, consists of 40-50 quotes and original thoughts, mostly about current events. To get on the "Frankly Quoted" listserv, send lfrank@igc.org your e-mail address.

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