I read a lot. Sometimes I find passages or quotations that underscore my beliefs or make me consider my values. This page reminds me of those ideas.

My heart is moved by all I cannot save:
so much has been destroyed
I have to cast my lot with those
who age after age, perversely,
with no extraordinary power,
reconstitute the world.   
- Adrienne Rich

When you cease to make
a contribution, you begin
to die.
--Eleanor Roosevelt

"Love must be regarded
as the final flower and fruit
of justice. When it is
substituted for justice
it degenerates into sentimentality
and may become
the accomplice of tyranny. "
-- Reinhold Niebuhr
February 10, 1941.

It is very hard
to be simple enough
to be good.
-- RW Emerson, 23 October 1837

Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise
From outward things what'er you may believe.
There is an inmost center in us all,
Where truth abides in fullness; and around,
Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in,
This perfect, clear perception---which is truth.
                -- Robert Browning

"Throughout history, it has
been the inaction of those
who could have acted, the
indifference of those who
should have known better,
and the silence of the voice
of justice when it mattered
most that has made it
possible for evil to triumph."

-- Haile Selassie I

Awakening is dynamic,
Constantly evolving in
accordance with life's realities--
Unfolding from ego-self
to compassionate self,
From enclosed self to open self,
From foolish self to enlightened self.

--Taitetsu Unno

"I am not only a pacifist
but a militant pacifist.
I am willing to fight for peace.
Nothing will end war unless
the people themselves
refuse to go to war."
-- Albert Einstein

"We have become a culture
of the copy, rather than of the
masterpiece. We no longer
deal with original ideas but
with regurgitated cliches. Look
at cloning. A clone is a copy.
Sex, on the other hand, breeds
originality. You get something
entirely new. Does anyone
believe you can have a livable
world based on a copy? Rejecting
the copy will do interesting things
to your purchasing habits,
and to your experiecne of
beauty and integrity."

Carolyn Raffensperger,
environamental activist,
THE SUN (November 2002)

"I know of no more encouraging
fact than the unquestionable
ability of man to elevate his
life by conscious endeavor."
--Henry David Thoreau

"I was once asked why
I don't participate in anti-war
demonstrations. I said
that I will never do that,
but as soon as you have
a pro-peace rally, I'll
be there."
-- Mother Teresa

"Exactness is a mirror,
not of the world,
but of the ideology of the world."
-- Susan Stewart

"If art, all art, is concerned with truth,

then a society in denial will not find

much use for it."

--Jeanette Winterson

"Any man's life, however uneventful, conceals more riches and mystery than the most profound poem or the most complex mental process."
-- Mario Vargas Llosa, **A Writer's Reality** (1991)

The real questions are the ones that obtrude upon your consciousness whether you like it or not, the ones that make your mind start vibrating like a jackhammer, the ones that you "come to terms with" only to discover that they are still there. The real questions refuse to be placated. They barge into your life at the times when it seems most important for them to stay away. They are the questions asked most frequently and answered most inadequately, the ones that reveal their true natures slowly, reluctantly, most often against your will.
-- Ingrid Bengis

"I think that what the gay movement
needs now is much more the art of
life than a science or scientific
knowledge (or pseudo-scientific
knowledge) of what sexuality is....
We have to understand that with our
desires, through our desires, go
new forms of relationships, new
forms of love, new forms of creation.
Sex is not a fatality: it's a possibility
for creative life."
-- Michel Foucault, 1982

"The self is the new strategic
possibility." -- Paul Veyne, 1993