Breaking the Spell (2006)
“But still try, for who knows what is possible…”
Michael Faraday (1791–1867) English scientist
As quoted in The Life and Letters of Faraday (1870) Vol. II, edited by Henry Bence Jones, p. 483; also engraved above the doorways of the Pfahler Hall of Science at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania (see photo http://www.flickr.com/photos/monyca/17917765/in/pool-ursinus/).
Elia M. Ramollah (1973) founder and leader of the El Yasin Community
The Great Master of Thought (Amen- Vol.3), Observing management
Aung San Suu Kyi (1945) State Counsellor of Myanmar and Leader of the National League for Democracy
Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech (2012)
“Writing is saying to no one and to everyone the things it is not possible to say to someone.”
Rebecca Solnit book The Faraway Nearby
Source: The Faraway Nearby
Leonard Cohen book Beautiful Losers
Beautiful Losers (1966)
Context: What is a saint? A saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility. It is impossible to say what that possibility is. I think it has something to do with the energy of love. Contact with this energy results in the exercise of a kind of balance in the chaos of existence. A saint does not dissolve the chaos; if he did the world would have changed long ago. I do not think that a saint dissolves the chaos even for himself, for there is something arrogant and warlike in the notion of a man setting the universe in order. It is a kind of balance that is his glory. He rides the drifts like an escaped ski. His course is the caress of the hill. His track is a drawing of the snow in a moment of its particular arrangement with wind and rock. Something in him so loves the world that he gives himself to the laws of gravity and chance. Far from flying with the angels, he traces with the fidelity of a seismograph needle the state of the solid bloody landscape. His house is dangerous and finite, but he is at home in the world. He can love the shape of human beings, the fine and twisted shapes of the heart. It is good to have among us such men, such balancing monsters of love.
Tracey Ullman (1959) English-born actress, comedian, singer, dancer, screenwriter, producer, director, author and businesswoman
"Tracking Tracey" http://www.dareland.com/emulsionalproblems/ullman.htm (Interview, January 1989)
“I mean, we're all trying to find out who the hell we are, aren't we?”
Robert Ludlum book The Bourne Identity
Source: The Bourne Identity
Desmond Tutu (1931) South African churchman, politician, archbishop, Nobel Prize winner
Speech in Boston (2002)
Context: Injustice and oppression will never prevail. Those who are powerful have to remember the litmus test that God gives to the powerful: what is your treatment of the poor, the hungry, the voiceless? And on the basis of that, God passes judgment.
We should put out a clarion call to the government of the people of Israel, to the Palestinian people and say: peace is possible, peace based on justice is possible. We will do all we can to assist you to achieve this peace, because it is God's dream, and you will be able to live amicably together as sisters and brothers.
