Quotes about right
page 56

“I personally have great skepticism about the theories extolling the wonders of "Asian values." They are often based on badly researched generalizations and frequently uttered by governmental spokesmen countering accusations of authoritarianism and violations of human rights (as happened spectacularly at the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna in 1993).”

Amartya Sen (1933) Indian economist

1990s, Foreword to The Passions and the Interests (1996)

World, Personality

“.. Our life is a pilgrim's progress. I once saw a very beautiful picture: it was a landscape at evening. In the distance on the right-hand side a row of hills appeared blue in the evening mist. Above those hills the splendour of the sunset, the grey clouds with their linings of silver and gold and purple. The landscape is a plain or heath covered with grass and its yellow leaves, for it was in autumn. Through the landscape a road leads to a high mountain far, far away, on the top of that mountain is a city wherein the setting sun casts a glory. On the road walks a pilgrim, staff in hand. He has been walking for a good long while already and he is very tired. And now he meets a woman, or figure in black, that makes one think of St. Paul's word: As being sorrowful yet always rejoicing. That Angel of God has been placed there to encourage the pilgrims and to answer their questions and the pilgrim asks her: Does the road go uphill then all the way? And the answer is: "Yes to the very end."”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Quote of Vincent van Gogh, from his 'First Sunday Sermon' http://www.vggallery.com/misc/archives/sermon.htm: 'I Am a Stranger on the Earth..'; 29 October 1876 1870s

Life, God, Beauty, Angels

“Manifestly, in any organization men should move from the bottom up to the top. That develops loyalty, ambition and talent, because there is a chance for promotion. Never inject a man into the top if it can be avoided. In a big organization to have to do that, I think, is a reflection on management. Of course there are always exceptional cases. As the years have passed, developing, as they naturally have, emergencies at times, I have been gratified to find that we have, with very few exceptions, been able to find right within ourselves some individual capable of assuming a greater responsibility, and he has always been given the opportunity.”

Alfred P. Sloan (1875–1966) American businessman

Source: Adventures of a White-Collar Man. 1941, p. 137

Men, Nature, Thinking, Chance

“Universities are bastions of free speech and incubators of new and challenging ideas. But sometimes they fail to see the creeping extremism on their campuses. When David Irving goes to a university to deny the Holocaust – university leaders rightly come out and condemn him. They don’t deny his right to speak but they do challenge what he says. But when an Islamist extremist goes there to promote their poisonous ideology, too often university leaders look the other way through a mixture of misguided liberalism and cultural sensitivity.”

David Cameron (1966) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

2010s, 2015, Speech on (20 July 2015)

Way, Idea, Universe

“The critical point is that the Constitution places the right of silence beyond the reach of government.”

William O. Douglas (1898–1980) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Dissenting, Ullmann v. United States, 350 U.S. 422 (1956)
Judicial opinions

Silence

““Music is a fine thing, but metal lasts.” He struck the table with two huge fingers to emphasize his point….
As I left, I thought about what Kilvin had said. It was the first thing he had said to me that I did not agree with wholeheartedly. Metal rusts, I thought, music lasts forever.
Time will eventually prove one of us right.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind (2007), Chapter 60, “Fortune” (pp. 443-444; ellipsis represents minor elision of description)

Music, Time

“In use of the broad powers with which I have been invested, I have found it proper to declare that
1. Priests of any cult who, abusing their ministry, excite hate or disrespect for our laws, our government, or its rights, will be punished by three years’ imprisonment or deportation.
2. Because of the present crisis all cathedral chapters are suppressed, except for that of Guadalajara because of its patriotic behavior.
3. Priests of all cults are forbidden from wearing their vestments or any other distinguishing garment outside of the churches… All violators will be punished with fines of ten to one hundred pesos or imprisonment from fifteen to sixty days.”

Benito Juárez (1806–1872) President of Mexico during XIX century

Proclamation in response to church officials openly encouraging support for French forces. (30 August 1862)

Hate, Law, Behavior

“Whatever theoretical merit there may be to the argument that there is a "right" to rebellion against dictatorial governments is without force where the existing structure of the government provides for peaceful and orderly change.”

Fred M. Vinson (1890–1953) American politician and Supreme Court justice

Dennis v. United States, 341 U.S. 494 (1951)

Peace, Change

“Religion doesn’t solve the problem of rape at all; it exacerbates it. It should be (and in some atheist societies, it is this way) that women could walk about scantily-clad or even nude, and that men would have respect or sanity enough not to be violent against them on such paltry excuses as a lack of human decency or self control. I mean, you don’t bludgeon children to death when someone’s kid is crying loudly and annoying you, right? So why would you victimize a woman just because you find her attractive? That’s sick, but that is the attitude that is typically perpetuated by religion.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Patheos, How is secular humanist governance better than theocracy? http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2013/09/07/how-is-secular-humanist-governance-better-than-theocracy/ (September 7, 2013)

Death, Women, Men, Children

“Every fascist state like Germany, France, or modern Poland takes away citizen's right to self-defense. Fascist Americans such as Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton want to take arms away from American society.”

Janusz Korwin-Mikke (1942) polish politician

Source: tvn24.pl, 5 July 2008

“From the fact that most Americans want others to fund or subsidize their healthcare, it does not follow that they have such a right. A need is not a right. A man's life, liberty and the products of his labor were not intended to be up for grabs by grubby, greedy majorities.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“The Defunct Foundations of the Republic,” http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=528 WorldNetDaily.com, January 1, 2010. 2010s, 2010

Life

“Considering the part played by the sciences in the story of our Western civilization, it is hardly possible to doubt the importance which the history of science will sooner or later acquire both in its own right and as the bridge which has been so long needed in between the Arts and the Sciences.”

Herbert Butterfield (1900–1979) British historian

The Origins of Modern Science (1957) Introduction

Art, History, Science, Parting

“The basic notion of justice, is that the rights of everybody are equals, in principle. In the rights of others, we have to respect our own rights. It is only in that condition that we can reasonnably require that it be respected by others.”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 44 - (Gandhi said the same thing in All men are brothers; Simone Weil too, at the beginning of L'enracinement (the translator).

Justice

“As man is so constituted that it is utterly impossible for him to attain happiness save by seeking the happiness of others, so does it seem to be of the nature of things that individuals and classes can obtain their own just rights only by struggling for the rights of others.”

Henry George (1839–1897) American economist

Source: Social Problems (1883), Ch. 21 : Conclusion

Happiness, Nature

“Evil and good are God's right hand and left.”

Horace Mann (1796–1859) American politician

Philip James Bailey, in Festus (1839), misattribution of this to Mann seems to have only started in recent years, on the internet.
Misattributed

God, Evil

“In 1991, I crossed party lines and supported the use of force against Saddam Hussein, but he was allowed to survive his defeat as the result of a calculation we all had reason to deeply regret for the ensuing decade. And we still do. So this time, if we resort to force, we must absolutely get it right. It must be an action set up carefully and on the basis of the most realistic concepts. Failure cannot be an option, which means that we must be prepared to go the limit. And wishful thinking based on best-case scenarios or excessively literal transfers of recent experience to different conditions would be a recipe for disaster.”

Al Gore (1948) 45th Vice President of the United States

Quotes, Our Larger Tasks (2002)

Failure, Support, Thinking, Time

“And even if what they showed you is true, that doesn’t begin to make it right. The cause might be just, Felka, but history’s littered with atrocities committed in the name of righteousness.”

Alastair Reynolds book Redemption Ark

Source: Redemption Ark (2002), Chapter 38 (p. 662)

History

“Nobody would claim that America has never made mistakes, never failed to live up to its own rhetoric. Nothing in the universe is perfect. There isn’t a nation anywhere on the planet whose record for slavery and slaughter isn’t worse. What the British did to the Irish and the Scots would have had their leaders doing the hemp dance right along with the Nazis at Nuremberg. And even the Swiss thought it was acceptable to inflict unspeakable cruelties on Gypsies and their children.
The difference, for better or worse, is that America never seems to stop examining and reexamining its historical failures, while other countries do their damnedest to sweep theirs under the rug and forget them.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"Wanna Buy a Future?" http://www.bigheadpress.com/lneilsmith/?p=173 2 June 2009.

Children, Failure, Universe, Dance

“In the 21st century, the world needs a confident and effective United Nations. This unique institution should build on its successes and improve its performance. Where there is inefficiency and corruption, it must be corrected. Where there are bloated bureaucracies, they must be streamlined. Where members fail to uphold their obligations, there must be strong action. For example, there should be an immediate review of the Human Rights Council, which has routinely protected violators of human rights. There should be a stronger effort to help the people of Burma live free of the repression they have suffered for too long. And all nations, especially members of the Security Council, must act decisively to ensure that the government of Sudan upholds its commitment to address the violence in Darfur.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2008, Address to the United Nations General Assembly (September 2008)

People, World, Confidence, Decision

“Hand in hand with freedom of speech goes the power to be heard, to share in the decisions of government which shape men's lives. Everything that makes man's life worthwhile — family, work, education, a place to rear one's children and a place to rest one's head — all this depends on the decisions of government; all can be swept away by a government which does not heed the demands of its people, and I mean all of its people. Therefore, the essential humanity of men can be protected and preserved only where government must answer — not just to the wealthy, not just to those of a particular religion, or a particular race, but to all its people.
And even government by the consent of the governed, as in our own Constitution, must be limited in its power to act against its people; so that there may be no interference with the right to worship, or with the security of the home; no arbitrary imposition of pains or penalties by officials high or low; no restrictions on the freedom of men to seek education or work or opportunity of any kind, so that each man may become all he is capable of becoming.
These are the sacred rights of Western society.”

Robert F. Kennedy (1925–1968) American politician and brother of John F. Kennedy

Day of Affirmation Address (1966)

Life, Men, Pain, Children

“We had to be able to make a decision like that, without reprocessing all of our learning. So we take a small slice of information and a profile of the customer, set up a promotion, prime up the customer's history, and wait for the events. It primes up just the right amount of information in real time… [A system like that, ] might not be as precise, but it would be statistically good enough. Maybe it would be wrong five percent of the time, but that's okay. It would be more like making judgment calls.”

Sumit Chowdhury (1969) Indian writer and businessman

Source: Vivek Ranadive, ‎Kevin Maney (2011) The Two-Second Advantage: How We Succeed by Anticipating the Future--Just Enough. p. 109-10

History, Decision, Learning, Time

“Perhaps there was too much of religion in one sense; the word is English, smacks too much of things external such as creeds, rites, an external piety; there is no one Indian equivalent. But if we give rather to religion the sense of the following of the spiritual impulse in its fullness and define spirituality as the attempt to know and live in the highest self, the divine, the all-embracing unity and to raise life in all its parts to the divinest possible values, then it is evident that there was not too much of religion, but rather too little of it — and in what there was, a too one-sided and therefore an insufficiently ample tendency. The right remedy is, not to belittle still farther the agelong ideal of India, but to return to its old amplitude and give it a still wider scope, to make in very truth all the life of the nation a religion in this high spiritual sense. This is the direction in which the philosophy, poetry, art of the West is, still more or less obscurely, but with an increasing light, beginning to turn, and even some faint glints of the truth are beginning now to fall across political and sociological ideals.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

The Renaissance in India (1918)

Life, Truth, Religion, Art

“The way things turned out in Misrata was not what Khadafy had hoped for. Right to the very bitter end, he remained a prisoner of his illusions. For four decades, he had heard people, men and women, shouting themselves hoarse with promises of dying for him. For four decades, he had distributed vast sums of money, generated by Libya’s huge oil exports, among a few hundred thousand “Fedaees” or “self-sacrificers,” individuals who were supposed to fight for him to the end. When high on hubris and the “stimulant” drugs he took, the colonel claimed to have “an army of Omar Mukhtars” under his command, named after a bandit who became a local hero by fighting Italian colonialists in 1912. Yet the first city to rise against Khadafy was Tobruk — Omar Mukhtar’s birthplace. Then Benghazi rose, followed by Braiga. As each town and city rose against him, the colonel promised to fight back from another. His last stands were in Bani-Walid and Sirte. Tens of thousands of Omar Mukhtars did enter the battlefield. But they were fighting not for but against him.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

"Khadafy, kha-put" http://nypost.com/2011/10/21/khadafy-kha-put/, New York Post (October 21, 2011). New York Post

Women, Men, Money, People

“Now let's be fair. College staff have every right to take their own protection against America's notoriously inaccurate "smart" bombs.”

Robert Fisk (1946) English writer and journalist

Cows and armed guards on a college campus. Where is the truth amid all this subterfuge? http://www.robert-fisk.com/articles204.htm, April 2, 2003 2003

“It is not enough just to identify a problem; there are plenty of people who were very skilled at pointing out what was wrong with the world, but they were not always so adept at working out how these things could be righted.”

Alexander McCall Smith book Tea Time for the Traditionally Built

Tea Time for the Traditionally Built, chapter 1.
The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series

People, World, Problem

“The Second Amendment! It says you have the right to bear arms, or the right to arm bears, whatever the hell you want to do!”

Robin Williams (1951–2014) American actor and stand-up comedian

A Night at the Met (1986)

Hell

“Serious business people would never get elected in Ireland. You don't get elected in this country if you run around and tell people the truth. You've got to run round and lie to them about 'it will be all right on the night' and then they'll vote for you.”

Michael O'Leary (businessman) (1961) businessman, CEO of Ryanair

Newsnight Interview (February 24, 2011)

People, Truth, Lie, Business

“Trudeau keeps pushing his “diversity is our strength” slogan. Yes, Canada is a huge and diverse country. This diversity is part of us and should be celebrated. But where do we draw the line?
Ethnic, religious, linguistic, sexual and other minorities were unjustly repressed in the past. We’ve done a lot to redress those injustices and give everyone equal rights. Canada is today one of the countries where people have the most freedom to express their identity.
But why should we promote ever more diversity? If anything and everything is Canadian, does being Canadian mean something? Shouldn’t we emphasize our cultural traditions, what we have built and have in common, what makes us different from other cultures and societies?
Having people live among us who reject basic Western values such as freedom, equality, tolerance and openness doesn’t make us strong. People who refuse to integrate into our society and want to live apart in their ghetto don’t make our society strong.
Trudeau’s extreme multiculturalism and cult of diversity will divide us into little tribes that have less and less in common, apart from their dependence on government in Ottawa. These tribes become political clienteles to be bought with taxpayers $ and special privileges.
Cultural balkanisation brings distrust, social conflict, and potentially violence, as we are seeing everywhere. It’s time we reverse this trend before the situation gets worse. More diversity will not be our strength, it will destroy what has made us such a great country.”

Maxime Bernier (1963) Canadian politician

12 August 2018 on Twitter https://twitter.com/MaximeBernier/status/1028800406535716864

People, Freedom, Strong, Time

“You know they're all gay, right? … Male strippers. Fruity as cake. Queer as a cardinal.”

Arthur M. Jolly (1969) American writer

Sarah, Act I, Scene 2
Past Curfew (2009)

“I know I’m also the girl who’s Chinese family doesn’t speak Chinese, and I’ve grown up watching Western philosophy movies teaching me that I should follow my heart and that I can do and be anything I desire. It almost feels like sometimes I’m too Asian, and then other times I’m not Asian enough. I don’t know… I’m not typical. I don’t fit the box. I’m just ME… Moments like these push me to grow and become better and all I can do is be the best me I can be and trust that what’s right for me will come along.”

Nikki SooHoo (1988) American actress

My Reflection in Mulan http://nikkisoohoo.com/blog/2016/11/7/my-reflection-in-mulan (November 7, 2016)

Family, Feeling, Girl, Time

“To me politics is just a matter of getting the engineering right. If you have a machine which functions properly without much attention, then it’s obviously a good machine. That’s what politics should be about. And if the machine has simple working parts which any layman can understand, then it’s, as it were, your democratic machine. Am I right or am I wrong?”
“Crazy,” said Makhno, and scratched his nose.
“What?”

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

“You’re not right or wrong. You’re crazy.”
Book 2, Chapter 1 “The Camp on Rishiri” (p. 342)
Oswald Bastable, The Steel Tsar (1981)

Understanding, Parting

“I swear that I will invest all my efforts in the preservation of sovereignty and integrity of the territory of the Republic of Serbia, including Kosovo and Metohija as its integral part, as well as the realization of human and minority rights and freedoms, observation and defense of the Constitution and laws, preservation of peace and welfare of all Serbian citizens and that I will fulfill all my duties conscientiously and responsibly.”

Boris Tadić (1958) Serbian politician, President of Serbia 2004–2012

Tadić položio zakletvu, B92, 2008-02-15, 2008-02-16, Serbian http://www.b92.net/info/vesti/index.php?yyyy=2008&mm=02&dd=15&nav_category=11&nav_id=285045,.

Peace, Law, Effort, Freedom

“The true democracy, living and growing and inspiring, puts its faith in the people — faith that the people will not simply elect men who will represent their views ably and faithfully, but will also elect men who will exercise their conscientious judgment — faith that the people will not condemn those whose devotion to principle leads them to unpopular courses, but will reward courage, respect honor, and ultimately recognize right.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1964 Memorial Edition, p. 264 http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/JFK-Quotations/Profiles-in-Courage-quotations.aspx Pre-1960, Profiles in Courage (1956)

Men, People, Faith, Exercises

“When a novel department store called Gigantti was opened in the capitol area a year or two ago, which promised gadgets of many colors for the stinking cheap price of 9:90, 99:90, 999:90; the parking field's rafts of metal plated beetles reached the horizon, and the human lines wriggling midst them in tens of thousands surpassed all the records of the good old Soviet Union. As I looked at those newspaper pictures, a tormented scream erupted from my lips: no democracy, for heaven's sake, no democracy! No common voting right, never! No, no, no!”

Pentti Linkola (1932) Finnish ecologist

Thoughts And Memories About The Old Educated Class - A View Into The Century's Ideological History (2000)

Color, Democracy

“The right to dissent is the only thing that makes life tolerable for a judge of an appellate court… the affairs of government could not be conducted by democratic standards without it.”

William O. Douglas (1898–1980) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

America Challenged (1960)
Other speeches and writings

Life

“Certainly it is okay for them to play. I see no reason in the world why we shouldn't compete with colored athletes as long as they conduct themselves with politeness and gentility. Let me say also that no white man has the right to be less of a gentleman than a colored man, in my book that goes not only for baseball but in all walks of life.”

Ty Cobb (1886–1961) American baseball player

Responding to the impending integration of the Dallas Rangers, as quoted in "Between the Lines" http://www.mediafire.com/view/e8dga7hnpbb7tzk/BETWEEN_THE_LINES_THE_GREAT_T(2).jpg by Dean Gordon Hancock (ANP), in The Atlanta Daily World (February 10, 1952); reproduced in "The Knife in Ty Cobb’s Back" http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-knife-in-ty-cobbs-back-65618032/ (30 August 2011), Smithsonian, by Gilbert King.

Life, Books, World, Color

“Inside all of us is a boss. You just gotta go find her. That’s the truth. Everyone is capable. Everyone has the ability. A lot of it is timing. A lot of it is right place, right time. A lot of it is not giving up. A lot if it is push, dreams, following those [dreams] through, and tenacity. You can do it. It’s going to be hard. People are going to tell you no. But no matter what your goal is in life, there’s always a way. You just have to look for that way. Sometimes you have to make that way. Sometimes you have to go around people. Sometimes you may have to go through people. But there’s always a way to make it happen.”

Erika Jayne (1969) American singer, actress and television personality

Erika Jayne interview to Refinery29 https://www.refinery29.com/erika-jayne-girardi-real-housewives-of-beverly-hills-interview (2017)

Life, People, Truth, Dreams

“Swing and a fly ball to right, Green under it….. in foul ground.. makes the catch!…Put it in the books!.. The Mets are gonna play for the pennant!”

Howie Rose (1954) American sports announcer

Calling the 2006 NLDS clincher.
2006

Books, Flying

“The two young men turned and they didn't smile because they were Woody Ballinger's two boys, Carl and Sammy, and for one brief instant, there was something in their faces that didn't belong in that atmosphere of joviality and the little move they instinctively made that shielded them behind the others in back of them was involuntary enough to stretch a tight-lipped grin across my face that told them I could know.
Could.
From away back out of the years I got that feeling across my shoulders and up my spine that said things were starting to smell right and if you kept pushing the walls would go down and you could charge in and take them all apart until there was nothing left but the dirt they were made of.”

Mickey Spillane (1918–2006) American writer

Survival...Zero! (1970)

Men, Smile, Feeling, Boy

“Scott quoted a famous geneticist, who said, "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution." I would like to drop one word, so that the quote is true. It should read, "Nothing in biology makes sense in the light of evolution." For example, evolution has no explanation as to why and how around 1.4 million species of animals evolved as male and female. No one even goes near explaining how and why each species managed to reproduce (during the millions of years the female was supposedly evolving to maturity) without the right reproductive machinery.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

Referring to title of an essay by Theodosius Dobzhansky

Quotes, Sense, Light, Reading

“The growth in linguistic awareness about the problem, and the emergence of an associated activism, was one of the most exciting developments of the 1990s. Although awareness is still poor among the general public, the issues are now being much more widely discussed at professional levels, in a variety of international, national, regional, and local contexts. At one extreme, there are major campaigns such as those involved in promulgating the Barcelona Declaration of Linguistic Rights, or such initiatives as the `Red Book on Endangered Languages’ (part of the Tokyo Clearing House project). At the other extreme, there is lively debate taking place within many of the endangered communities themselves. Mechanisms and structures are now in place to channel energies.”

David Crystal (1941) British linguist and writer

Source: How Language Works, 2007, p. 216-7

Books, Communication, Problem, Parting

“It was a lovely morning. We have not had many lovely days. And the sun was just coming through the stained glass windows and falling on some flowers right across the church and it just occurred to me that this was the day I was meant not to see.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

TV Interview for Channel 4 A plus 4 (15 October 1984) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=105764, referring to the Brighton bombing in which the IRA attempted to assassinate her. Second term as Prime Minister

Love, Flowers, Sun

“Paramount among such events is the Jewish holocaust during World War II, which Zionists used for propagandistic purposes to assert their "right" to Palestine to which they had laid their suspect colonial claim half a century earlier. In appropriating the holocaust and its victims, Zionism and Israel asserted that any acknowledgment of the holocaust is an acknowledgment of Israel's "right to exist," and conversely that any attempt to deny Israel its alleged right to exist was perforce a denial of the holocaust.”

Joseph Massad (1963) Associate Professor of Arab Studies

Massad, in "Palestinians and Jewish History: Recognition or Submission?", Journal of Palestine Studies, 2000
"Palestinians and Jewish History: Recognition or Submission?"

War, World

“And the course was all about bonding. People used to say, you know, what’s going to make for a good world? I said, I can’t tell you beforehand, but right before they present it I can tell you if the world’s good just by the body language. If they’re standing close to each other, the world is good.”

Randy Pausch book The Last Lecture

The Last Lecture (2007)

People, World

“We first crush people to the earth, and then claim the right of trampling on them forever, because they are prostrate.”

Lydia Maria Child (1802–1880) American abolitionist, author and women's rights activist

Chapter VI http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/abolitn/abeslmca3t.html 1830s, An Appeal on Behalf of That Class of Americans Called Africans (1833)

People

“The Strasbourg court has been particularly respectful of decisions emanating from courts in the UK since the coming into effect of the Human Rights Act, and this because of the very high quality of those judgments.”

Nicolas Bratza (1945) British judge

"Britain should be defending European justice, not attacking it", The Independent, Tuesday 24 January 2012 http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/nicolas-bratza-britain-should-be-defending-european-justice-not-attacking-it-6293689.html

Decision

“If a minority, losing an election, can break up the government rather than accept the results of the election, free government is impossible. If the only alternatives to rule by a Constitutional majority, I say, Constitutional majority, a majority formed under the rules of the Constitution with minority rights secured. There were no examples of the Republicans doing anything to prevent the opposition from having freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of association. There was a great deal of interference with those rights in the Southern states. But they lost the election according to their own rights. And Lincoln said that if people can break up the government rather than accept the results of a fairly conducted election, then the only alternatives are anarchy or tyranny. What is to prevent, he said, anyone of the states seceding from any future union?”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), The Right of Secession Is Not the Right of Revolution

People, Freedom, Future

“A mind does not receive truth as a chest receives jewels that are put into it, but as the stomach takes up food into the system. It is no longer food, but flesh, and is assimilated. The appetite and the power of digestion measure our right to knowledge. He has it who can use it. As soon as our accumulation overruns our invention or power to use, the evils of intellectual gluttony begin,— congestion of the brain, apoplexy and strangulation.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

The Natural History of Intellect (1893)

Truth, Food, Knowledge, Evil

“One of these days I'll make a few casual remarks about Winston [Churchill]. Not a speech—no oratory—just a few words in passing. I've got it all ready. I am going to say that when Winston was born lots of fairies swooped down on his cradle gifts—imagination, eloquence, industry, ability, and then came a fairy who said "No one person has a right to so many gifts", picked him up and gave him such a shake and twist that with all these gifts he was denied judgment and wisdom. And that is why while we delight to listen to him in this House, we do not take his advice.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Conversation with Thomas Jones (22 May 1936), quoted in Thomas Jones, A Diary with Letters. 1931-1950 (Oxford University Press, 1954), p. 204.
1936

Wisdom, Imagination, Housing, Personality

“Providence shows no mercy to weak nations, but recognizes the right of existence-only of sound and strong nations…This Jewish bolshevist annihilation of nations and its western European and American procurers can be met only in one way: by using every ounce of strength with the extreme fanaticism and stubborn steadfastness that merciful God gives to men in hard times for the defense of their own lives…We have suffered so much that it only steels us to fanatical resolve to hate Our enemies a thousand times more and to regard them for what they are destroyers of an eternal culture and annihilators of humanity. Out of this hate a holy will is born to oppose these destroyers of our existence with all the strength that God has given us and to crush them in the end. During its 2,000-year history our people has survived so many terrible times that we have no doubt that we will also master our present plight.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Speech on the 25th Anniversary of the Announcement of the National Socialist Party's Program http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/adolf-hitler-speech-on-the-25th-anniversary-of-the-announcement-of-the-national-socialist-party-s-program-february-1945 (February 24, 1945) 1940s

Men, God, Hate, People

“Now, what is the policy? It is, so far as we know, to interfere with the established fiscal policy of this country in order to promote the union of the Empire—that is to say, it is to affect gravely, if not to sap, the foundations of the edifice in order to promote the stability of the structure. (Laughter and cheers)…Had free trade failed us in the 57 years of experience we have had of it, had we found ourselves with a shrinking trade, a diminished revenue, a population on the verge of poverty, we should long ago have reviewed the whole system of free trade and reconsidered it. But we find ourselves, so far as all statistics can give us a clue, at a pinnacle of wealth such as no nation of the size has ever reached in the history of the world…The Empire is built up on free trade…your Empire is founded on the condition, and it could not have existed until now except on that condition, that every self-governing part of it shall have the right to work out its own prosperity by its own methods. I do not know why it should enter the heads of any statesman to deny that liberty to the United Kingdom.”

Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery (1847–1929) British politician

Speech to the Liberal League on 12 June 1903, repudiating Chamberlain's proposals, reported in The Times (13 June 1903), p. 8.

World, History, Laughter, Parting

“The somewhere we're goin' to, and got to go to if we don't want to get wiped out, it's somewhere everlastingly and eternally ahead! It's like to-morrow; when we get there we aren't there; we got to keep goin', and we got to everlastingly and eternally keep goin' – and goin' fast! If we don't, the Almighty hasn't got a bit o' use for us; He turns us right into dust and scattered old bones, and nothin's left of our whole country and our finest cities except some street paving and a few cellars with weeds in 'em.”

Booth Tarkington (1869–1946) American novelist

The Plutocrat (1927), chapter 30 (Earl Tinker speaking to Jean-Edouard Le Seyeux)

Country

“Google cofounder Larry Page once broached the question: “Are people really focused on the right things?””

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Google It: Total Information Awareness, 2016

People, Question

“Okay, you've got the indictment, that's all you're gonna get… I'll plead not guilty right now.”

Ted Bundy (1946–1989) American serial killer

As Leon County Sherriff Ken Katsaris reads him his indictment for the murder of the Chi Omega Sorority girls (July 27, 1978) video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sR8SZ93h-Wc.

“Did you follow what [General Yehoshafat] Harkabi wrote? Formerly of the Israeli military intelligence service. Remember him? Did you follow what he wrote? He said that it was for the sake of the existence of Israel that we have to accept the rights of the Palestinians to have their independent state. I’m a man of history. My vision is guiding me, my clear vision. It is not by chance that the currents of peace are increasing daily inside Israel. Many of the Israelis begin to understand and discover the realities and the facts. They can’t demolish five million Palestinians. They can’t annihilate them. We are not the Red Indians.”

Yasser Arafat (1929–2004) former Palestinian President, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

In an interview published in "The New York Review of Books" (11 June 1987).
1980s and 1990s

Peace, History, Intelligence, Understanding

“Even if you meet the perfect person, it ain't gonna be at the perfect time. You're married, they're single. That's right. You're Jewish, they're Palestinian. You're a Mexican, they're a raccoon. You're a black woman, he's a black man.”

Chris Rock (1965) American comedian, actor, screenwriter, television producer, film producer, and director

Never Scared (HBO, 2004)

Time, Personality, Perfection

“Satan knows some seed of the woman is going to bruise his head. He didn't want that to happen so his plan apparently is to try to kill every human being on the planet. He wants to kill everybody. Remember when Herod wanted to kill baby Jesus in Bethlehem? What did he do? He slew all the children, "Let's just kill them all to be sure to get the right one." Satan wants to kill every human on the planet. And some of his followers and helpers down here are working at that goal right now.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The dangers of evolution

Children, Baby

“Why do they take the taxes and accept my manual labor for nine years? Why do they accept my taxes but cannot accept the fact that I have human rights?”

Elvira Arellano (1975) Mexican illegal immigrant and activist

Tram Nguyen, "No Sanctuary: Elvira Arellano Deported Without Son," RaceWire: The Colorlines Blog (2007-08-20) http://www.racewire.org/archives/2007/08/immigrant_mother_elivira_arell.html

“Interviewer: Are there any groups you won’t go after?
Penn: We haven’t tackled Scientology [in Penn & Teller: Bullshit! ] because Showtime doesn’t want us to. Maybe they have deals with individual Scientologists—I’m not sure. And we haven’t tackled Islam because we have families.
Interviewer: Meaning, you won’t attack Islam because you’re afraid it’ll attack back …
Penn: Right, and I think the worst thing you can say about a group in a free society is that you’re afraid to talk about it—I can’t think of anything more horrific.”

Penn Jillette (1955) American magician

Interview in Las Vegas Weekly (24 June 2010) https://lasvegasweekly.com/ae/2010/jun/24/celebrity-issue/. 2010s

Family, Thinking

“It's a long way to Tipperary,
It's a long way to go.
It's a long way to Tipperary,
To the sweetest girl I know!
Goodbye Piccadilly,
Farewell Leicester Square!
It's a long long way to Tipperary,
But my heart's right there.”

Jack Judge (1878–1938) British song-writer and music-hall entertainer

Song It's a Long Way to Tipperary

Way, Girl, Heart

“All the terms that we demanded have, since the war began, been substantially conceded…My hon. Friend…[said] that we must obtain a success in order that we may secure better terms; but that is not the public and popular sentiment; the popular feeling is, that as to terms there is no great matter at issue, but that what you want is more military success…It is not only indefensible—it is hideous, it is anti-Christian, it is immoral, it is inhuman; and you have no right to make war simply for what you call success. If, when you have obtained the objects of the war, you continue it in order to obtain military glory…I say you tempt the justice of Him in whose hands the fates of armies are as absolutely lodged as the fate of the infant slumbering in its cradle; you tempt Him to launch upon you His wrath; and if this be courage, I, for one, have no courage to enter upon such a course. I believe it to be alike guilty and unwise.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1855/may/24/prosecution-of-the-war in the House of Commons (24 May 1855) on the Crimean War. 1850s

Fate, War, Justice, Feeling

“The property owner who invests in a modern corporation so far surrenders his wealth to those in control of the corporation that he has exchanged the position of independent owner for one in which he may become merely recipient of the wages of capital… [Such owners] have surrendered the right that the corporation should be operated in their sole interest…”

Adolf A. Berle (1895–1971) American diplomat

Source: The Modern Corporation and Private Property. 1932/1967, p. 355

Wealth

“We have to-day perhaps the most magnificent opportunity of service to our country that has ever been given to any party. You who have just been elected to the House of Commons are, by the testimony of your fellow-countrymen, their natural leaders for the next four or five years. It is your duty, your primary duty, to educate that great democracy of which we are all a part…Can there be anything that stands before us more clearly or poignantly than the groups of our fellow-countrymen who listened in faith to what we had to say, who trusted us and have given us their confidence, and who believe in their hearts that we have come to London to do what we can to right those things that are hard and difficult for them, and to help them in what is always the difficult struggle that they have in life? Don't ever lose touch with your constituency; don't ever mistake the voice of the clubman and the voice of the Pressman in London for the voice of the country. It is the country that has returned you; it is the country which will judge you.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech at the Albert Hall (4 December 1924), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 72-73.
1924

Life, Education, Faith, Democracy

“[Footnote:] Pliny the Elder perished in 79 A. D. when he refused to flee from the great eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, insisting that everything would be all right. It wasn't.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Ostrich, from Birds Who Can't Even Fly
How to Attract the Wombat (1949)

“…as individuals and as nations we live in states of society utterly different from each other. As a collection of individuals, we live under the highest and latest development of civilization, in which the individual is rigidly forbidden to defend himself, because society is always ready and able to defend him. As a collection of nations we live in an age of the merest Faustrecht, in which each one obtains his rights precisely in proportion to his ability, or that of his allies, to fight for them…In practice it is found that International Law is always on the side of strong battalions…It is puerile…to apply to the dealings of a nation with its neighbour's territory the morality which would be applicable to two individuals possessing adjoining property, and protected from mutual wrong by a law superior to both.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Quarterly Review, 151, 1881, pp. 542-544
1880s

Age, Law, Strong, Fight

“No one, in the year 1770, was better fitted than Samuel Adams, either by talent and temperament or the circumstances of his position, to push the continent into a rebellion. Unlike most of his patriot friends, he had neither private business nor private profession to fall back upon when public affairs grew tame, his only business being, as one might say, the public business, his only profession the definition and defense of popular rights. …the serious business of a man who during ten years had abandoned all private pursuits and had embraced poverty to become a tribune of the people.”

Carl L. Becker (1873–1945) American historian

The Eve of the Revolution (1918)

People, Business

“Children who need to be taught to respect traditional moral values are being taught that they have an inalienable right to be gay.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to Conservative Party Conference (9 October 1987) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=106941 Third term as Prime Minister

Children

“Punk: Wow, everybody, it's John Cena. He comes out here every Monday night, he's excitable, he throws his hat at somebody, everybody loves it. I am so impressed at how you do that. You get all these people to believe you're that friendly, smiling, everyday man, when I know the truth. And the truth, John Cena, is you're thoughtless, you're heartless, and above all else, you are dishonest. I'm sure there's millions of people worldwide, including yourself, that would love to believe this is over a spilled diet soda, but John, this goes way beyond my spilled diet soda. Yeah. John, you were fired from the WWE. You were gone. You gave a very tear-inducing speech in the middle of the ring about how you finally get to see your mom and hang out with your little brother, and you said you were gonna go away. You were gonna be a man of your way, but what happened? You came back later that night, and then you came back the next week, and then you came back the next week, showing all of these people who aren't intelligent to see through your facade what I have known all along—that your word is absolutely worthless. And then there's TLC, you have the man beaten. Wade Barrett, a very tough individual, and you have him beat in a chairs match, but that's not good enough for you. You don't take the high ground, you can't walk off into the sunset with your victory; you drag the man off to the side of the stage and you drop fifteen steel chairs on him, and I wanna know exactly why you think that's acceptable behavior. I wanna know why you think it's okay to show up the next night on Raw and humiliate the poor guy…
Cena: That is balderdash! Fifteen steel chairs? That's insane. It was 23 steel chairs. And in case you forgot, Wade Barrett and the Nexus gave me about five thousand beat-downs, made me their personal slave, and ended my career.
Punk: You wanna talk about ended careers, you hypocrite? This is exactly what I'm talking about. You ended the career of my good friend Dave Batista. John! John, look at me when I'm talking to you. This is a reoccurring pattern with you. Once again, you have the man beaten—last man standing, he verbally submits, how humiliating, the match is won. But, no, you AA him off a car through the very steel ramp that I'm sitting on, which facilitated the end of his career. Now we'll talk about Vickie Guerrero. I'm surprised the lovely Vickie Guerrero doesn't up and quit based on all the abuse you heap on her. It's not just the physical things to the Wade Barretts and the Dave Batistas, but it's the name-calling, it's the mental abuse to somebody as gorgeous and beautiful as Vickie Guerrero.
Cena: "It's the this… it's the that." Okay, CM Punk is gonna play Mr. Fingerpointer. Well…1.—Dave Batista broke my neck; 2.—He showed up on Raw the next night and quit on his own terms. And C—I didn't just single out Vickie Guerrero. In case you haven't been watching for the past… eight years, I talk about everybody. Uh… Michael Cole. Michael Cole has an anonymous fetish with Justin Bieber and has the word "The Miz" man-scaped right below his belly button. Me! Look at me. I look like the crazy sex child of the Incredible Hulk and Grimace. And then there's you.
Punk: Yeah, and then there's me, who happens to not be laughing. I don't know if you noticed that. You're not funny.”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

December 27, 2010
WWE Raw

Love, People, Truth, Smile

“The five attitudes are: Upper, Middle, Lower, Right Side, and Left Side. These are the five. Although attitude has these five dimensions, the one purpose of all of them is to cut the enemy. There are none but these five attitudes.
Whatever attitude you are in, do not be conscious of making the attitude; think only of cutting.”

Miyamoto Musashi (1584–1645) Japanese martial artist, writer, artist

Go Rin No Sho (1645), The Water Book

Thinking

“To all the unheard wisdom in the school yard: you think you're the right ones; you swear you're the charmed ones I'm sure. But how can you go on with such conviction? Who do you think you are when you question me?”

Alanis Morissette (1974) Canadian-American singer-songwriter

Can't Not
Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie (1998)

Wisdom, School, Question, Thinking

“Despite tremendous pressure, this statesman put aside partisanship and made the tough decision, and became the first Republican to come out for the impeachment of President Nixon. That man was my dad, former Congressman Lawrence J. Hogan, Sr., who is here with us today. He put aside party politics and his own personal considerations in order to do the right thing for the nation. He taught me more about integrity in one day than most men learn in a lifetime, and I am so proud to be his son.”

Larry Hogan (1956) American politician

" Inaugural Address http://governor.maryland.gov/2015/01/21/inaugural-address-governor-larry-hogan/" (21 January 2015)

Men, Decision, Learning, Personality

“Right now, at this very moment, on American highways, there are no less than 5,000 concentration camp trucks. Trucks that we have constructed. Inside these trucks, there are living, terrified innocent beings. Cows and pigs and chickens. These trucks are being driven to concentration camp's slaughterhouses that we carefully constructed all across America. When the trucks arrive, the animals are so frightened that they won't even get off the truck. They're not stupid, they know what's next. So people go on the trucks with electric prods and force them to walk down the chutes to their own deaths. Or if the animals are small enough to man handle, like chickens, we'll just grab them off the trucks and toss them inside. Inside, these innocent, living beings are hanged upside down, fully conscious. In other words, they go in alive, against their will, and come out chopped up, into hundreds of pieces.”

Gary Yourofsky (1970) animal rights activist

Part of the speech to the students of the Georgia Institute of Technology (Summer 2010)

Death, People, Stupidity, Animals

“Christine O'Donnell: But let me tell you something! They — homosexuals' special rights groups can get away with so much more than nobody else can!
Alan Colmes: Well, what are they getting away with here, Christine? Tell me what you’re seeing…
Christine O'Donnell: They're getting away with nudity!
Fay: Oh, right.
Christine O'Donnell: They're getting away with nudity! They're getting away with lasciviousness! They're getting away with perversion!
Fay: Oh, Christine…
Christine O'Donnell: They're getting away with blasphemy!”

Christine O'Donnell (1969) American Tea Party politician and former Republican Party candidate

2000-06-26
Television series
Hannity & Colmes
Fox News
Christine O'Donnell: how can she be taken seriously? Rush says she's electable.
Pam
Spaulding
Pam's House Blend
2010-09-19
http://www.pamshouseblend.com/diary/17374/christine-odonnell-how-can-she-be-taken-seriously-rush-says-shes-electable
2010-10-20
2010-09-15
Christine O'Donnell Does Not Like Gays.
Instaputz
http://instaputz.blogspot.com/2010/09/christine-odonnell-does-not-like-gays.html
2010-10-20
about 2000 New York City Gay Pride Parade
TV appearances

“Listen to me: a family man is never a real family man. An assassin is never entirely assassin. They play a role, you understand. While a dead man, he is really dead. To be or not to be, right?”

Jean Paul Sartre Dirty Hands

Hugo, Act 4, sc. 6
Dirty Hands (1948)

Family, Understanding, Dead

“Funny the way it is, if you think about it.
Somebody's going hungry, someone else is eating out.
Funny the way it is, not right or wrong.
Somebody's heart is broken, it becomes your favorite song.”

Dave Matthews (1967) American singer-songwriter, musician and actor

Funny the Way It Is
Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King (2009)

Way, Thinking, Heart

“Courts of equity have always considered it of the greatest possible importance that parties should not sleep on their rights.”

John Romilly, 1st Baron Romilly (1802–1874) English Whig politician and judge

Browne v. Cross (1852), 14 Beav. 113.

Sleep

“This reduction implies the release of funds for development and a shift of the labour force previously dedicated to military industries toward peaceful activities, protection of human rights, conservation of the environment, the eradication of illiteracy, promotion of education and scientific research together with enhanced efforts to reach the Millennium Development Goals and implement the agenda for the post-2015 period.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

CELAC / Zone of Peace: “A key step to countering the globalization of militarism” – UN Expert http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=14215&LangID=E. 2014

Education, Peace, Effort

“The Greeks used to put a lot of bodily functions in their plays, and a lot of graphic sexual material, because they believed, that in performing that way it released the demons of shame from the audience, which is what I believe. Cuz I think we’re all pretty much the same, and we all have grown up with that shame-based thing that America deals with, right? And to sit there and hear someone talk about their love of having sex, whatever, makes you feel like you’re not alone, with what you think maybe are dark, twisted thoughts, cuz they’re not. We all share these thoughts. So that’s why I talk like I do, or did, before I retired tonight.”

Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American comedian

Relentless (1992)

Love, Sex, Way, Feeling

“A girl has the power to go forward in her life. And she’s not only a mother, she’s not only a sister, she’s not only a wife. But a girl has the – she should have an identity. She should be recognized and she has equal rights as a boy.”

Malala Yousafzai (1997) Pakistani children's education activist

Nobel Peace Prize Winner Speech (October 10, 2014)

Life, Girl, Boy, Sister

“Democratization of commerce is based on everyone having the right to exercise their roles as micro consumers, micro producers, micro entrepreneurs, micro investors, and micro innovators. Access to information removes the first impediment to building this brave, new world. Information asymmetry has always been at the heart of poverty.”

C.K. Prahalad book The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid

Source: The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, 2009, p. 22

World, Exercises, Heart

“There is a still small voice telling us what is right, and if we listen to that still small voice we shall grow and increase in strength and power, in testimony and in ability not only to live the gospel but to inspire others to do so.”

Heber J. Grant (1856–1945) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Grant (1937) "The Path of Safety," Improvement Era, Dec. 1937, 735.; Cited in " Heber J. Grant, Served 1918–1945 http://www.lds.org/churchhistory/presidents/controllers/potcController.jsp?leader=7&topic=quotes" on ids.org

“Can anyone alter fate? All of us combined…or one great figure…or someone strategically placed, who happens to be in the right spot. Chance. Accident. And our lives, our world, hanging on it.”

Philip K. Dick book The Man in the High Castle

The Man in the High Castle (1962)

Fate, World, Chance

“As in elections, the law pretended universal rights, while securing the interests of powerful houses.”

David Brin book Glory Season

Source: Glory Season (1993), Chapter 27 (p. 553)

Law, Universe, Housing

“To see and feel one’s beloved naked for the first time is one of life’s pure, irreducible epiphanies. If there is a true religion in the universe, it must include that truth of contact or be forever hollow. To make love to the one true person who deserves that love is one of the few absolute rewards of being a human being, balancing all of the pain, loss, awkwardness, loneliness, idiocy, compromise, and clumsiness that go with the human condition. To make love to the right person makes up for a lot of mistakes.”

Dan Simmons book The Rise of Endymion

Source: The Rise of Endymion (1997), Chapter 18 (pp. 348-349)

Love, Life, Pain, Truth

“Love her? You're devoid of all feeling. You lack common decency. You know how to express yourself. You always have just the right words. There's just one thing you haven't the slightest clue about: life itself. You're a craven coward, but a genius at evasions and excuses.”

Ingmar Bergman (1918–2007) Swedish filmmaker

"Martin" (Max von Sydow) in Through a Glass Darkly (1961).
Films

Love, Life, Feeling

“Rights are to be taken, not requested; seized, not begged for.”

José Martí (1853–1895) Poet, writer, Cuban nationalist leader

As quoted in Inside the Monster : Writings on the United States and American Imperialism (1975) by José Martí, as translated by Elinor Randall, p. 27

“I have fought against the people of the North because I believed they were seeking to wrest from the South its dearest rights. But I have never cherished toward them bitter or vindictive feelings, and have never seen the day when I did not pray for them.”

Robert E. Lee (1807–1870) Confederate general in the Civil War

As quoted in The American Soul: An Appreciation of the Four Greatest Americans and their Lessons for Present Americans (1920) by Charles Sherwood Farriss, p. 63

People, Feeling

“People like you always help the far-right, because you like to hurt people, and you like to talk about how bad people are and all their personal failings.”

Bill Clinton (1946) 42nd President of the United States

On the emphasis in the news media on the Starr investigation and the Lewinsky affair (June 22, 2004) Panorama interview http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3829799.stm 2000s

People, Help, Hurt, Personality

“…. Humankind, -- that all men anthropological come from the same source, with the same potentials, must have a potential equality in chance and opportunity and that is so right, I think, that posterity will look back upon what we are doing today in our domestic issues here. They will look back upon it, I think, with incredulity and they'll wonder what the issue was all about. I really think so. It's solved in baseball. It'll be solved educationally. It'll be solved everywhere in the course of time.”

Branch Rickey (1881–1965) American baseball player and coach

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNEo_mOi29U

Men, Thinking, Chance, Time

“It occurred to me that I would like to be a poet. The chief qualification, I understand is that you must be born. Well, I hunted up my birth certificate, and found that I was all right on that score.”

Saki (1870–1916) British writer

"Reginald's Rubaiyat"
Reginald (1904)

Birth, Understanding

“Austerity measures constitute retrogression in human rights, in contravention of articles 2 and 5 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, imposed top-down and never legitimized by popular referendum. Moreover, the “bail-out” of the banking system was undemocratic and inequitable because a “private debt” was rescued through public money, namely, by increasing the public debt, at the expense of social justice. The general feeling of malaise was expressed in the statement that Governments seem to have adopted the elitist view that “banks are too big to fail and bankers too big to jail”, concern being expressed about the dangers of privatization of essential services, including water, and the widespread phenomenon of privatizing profit and socializing cost.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

United Nations General Assembly - Promotion of a democratic and equitable international order http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/IntOrder/A-68-284_en.pdf. 2013

Money, Justice, Feeling, Water

“But just because I believe that religion is a cynical perversion of the human spirit that exists purely for the benefit of the parasites we know as clergy, doesn't mean I'm not looking for answers to the big questions just like everybody else — you know, the questions that religion pretends it has answers to, because it knows that for some people, anyone answer is better than no answer at all. Questions like, Why are we here? Where did we come from? Where are we going?…Is there an afterlife, and if so, is it fully licensed for alcoholic drinks? That last bit may seem like a trivial concern to you, but not to me, because I live in a society where many people enjoy a social drink from time to time — not a huge amount, just enough to kill a horse. And in these enlightened days of the twenty-first century, when everyone's human rights and cultural identity are so very important, I don't see why I should have to abandon my culture, just because I'm dead. It's only the afterlife, not Saudi Arabia. Let's keep things in perspective. Of course in reality, we know that there will be beer in heaven, and lots of it, otherwise it wouldn't be heaven, would it? It's almost not even worth pointing that out, but I thought I would anyway, just in case someone wants to take the opportunity to be offended.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"God is not enough" (23 May 2008) http://youtube.com/watch?v=1czXvHSjDac&feature=related) 2008

People, Alcohol, Religion, Drink

“There will necessarily be a tension between the church and tradition on one hand and human rights on the other.”

Joni Madraiwiwi (1957–2016) Fijian politician

Address to the Pacific Regional Workshop on Leadership Development, Lami, Fiji, 9 July 2005.

“Morality does not come from the clouds; it is born of human want and human experience. We need no inspiration, no inspired work. The industrious man knows that the idle has no right to rob him of the product of his labor, and the idle man knows that he has no right to do it. It is not wrong because we find it in the Bible, but I presume it was put in the Bible because it is wrong.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

"The Brooklyn Divines." Brooklyn Union (Brooklyn, NY), 1883.

“Surely Scripture is right when it makes the sin of sins that unbelief, which is at bottom nothing else than a refusal to take the cup of salvation. Surely no sharper grief can be inflicted upon the Spirit of God than when we leave His gifts neglected and unappropriated.”

Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) British minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 607.

God

“Question: As a doctor, is it meaningful to you when somebody say that healthcare is a right, or that people have a right to good medical care?
Ron Paul: That's incorrect, because you don't have a right to the fruits of somebody else's labor. You don't have a right to a house, you don't have a right to a job, you don't have a right to medical care. You have a right to your life, you have your right to your liberty, you have a right to keep what your earn. And that's what produces prosperity. So you want equal justice. And this is not hard for me to argue, because if you really are compassionate and you care about people, the freer the society the more prosperous it is, and more likely that you are going to have medical care… When you turn it over to central economic planning, they're bound to make mistake. The bureaucrats and the special interests and the Halliburtons are gonna make the money. Whether it's war, or Katrina, these noncompetitive contracts, the bureaucrats make a lot of money and you end up with inefficiency.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

All Things Considered, NPR, July 25, 2007 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12224561 2000s, 2006-2009

Life, Money, War, People

“My ears may have been playing a trick on me, but I thought I heard the gentleman a moment ago say something quote unquote about homos in the military. Was I right in hearing that expression? Was the gentleman referring to the thousands and thousands of gay people who have put their lives on the line in countless wars defending this country? Was that the groups of people that the gentleman was referring to? You have insulted thousands of men and women who have put their lives on the line. I think they are owed an apology.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

Speaking to Representative Duke Cunningham on the floor of the House of Representatives, 11 May 1995, from Watch Bernie Sanders Demolish A Republican Over ‘Homos In The Military’ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-duke-cunningham-homophobia_us_56cb75eee4b041136f17dc9f by Zach Carter, The Huffington Post (22 February 2016) 1990s

Women, Men, War, People