"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a
little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Benjamin Franklin US Statesman 1706-1790
"Charity consoles but does not question. 'When I give
food to the poor, they call me a saint, and when i ask why they have no food,
they call me a communist.'
Unlike solidarity, which is horizontal and takes place
between equals, charity is top-down, humiliating those who receive it and never
challenging the implicit
power relations. In the best of cases, there will be justice
someday, high in heaven. Here on earth, charity doesn't worry injustice, it
just tries to
hide it."
Eduardo Galeano
"You must be the change you wish to see in the world."
Gandhi
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is
civil obedience. Our problem is that numbers of people all over the world have
obeyed the dictates
of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and
millions have been killed because of this obedience... Our problem is that
people are obedient
all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and
stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while
the jails are
full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves
are running and robbing the country. That's our
problem."
Howard
Zinn
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every
rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and
are not fed, those
who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not
spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its labourers, the genius of
its scientists,
the hopes of its
children."
Dwight D Eisenhower
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed
citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever
has."
Margaret Mead
"This crippling of individuals I consider the worst
evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An
exaggerated competitive
attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to
worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career. I am
convinced there is
only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through
the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system
which would
be oriented toward social
goals."
Albert Einstein, Monthly
Review, 1949
"The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from
the grasp of executive power". Daniel Webster (1782-1852)
"The price good people pay for their indifference to
public office is to be ruled by evil men" ... Plato
"Fascism should rightly be called corporatism as it is
a merger of state and corporate power"... Benito Mussolini
"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 Catholics, and I didn't
speak up, because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time
there was no
one left to speak up for me." -Pastor Martin Niemoller,
1945, Germany
So what are you doing to make this world a more peaceful
place?
Thanks to
E. Wilma van der Veen, Ph.D.
Activist, educator, sociologist
