Just for today, do not anger.
Honor your parents, teachers, and elders.
Earn your living honestly.
Show gratitude to everything.
Dr. Mikao Usui
“If those in charge of our society – politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television – can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves.”: Howard Zinn, historian and author
“The point of public relations slogans like “Support our troops” is that they don’t mean anything… That’s the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody’s going to be against, and everybody’s going to be for. Nobody knows what it means, because it doesn’t mean anything. Its crucial value is that it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something: Do you support our policy? That’s the one you’re not allowed to talk about.”: Noam Chomsky
“Military glory — the attractive rainbow that rises in showers of blood.” – Abraham Lincoln – (1809-1865) 16th US President
“The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it… Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate… Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” — Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. – (1929-1968), US civil rights leader
“The injury we do and the one we suffer are not weighed in the same scales”: Aesop
“He does not believe who does not live according to his belief”: Thomas Fuller
“In the last analysis we must be judged by what we do and not by what we believe. We are as we behave ” – Geoffrey L. Rudd, The British Vegetarian, September/October 1962
“Live truth instead of professing it”: Elbert Hubbard
“It is easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them:” Alfred Adler
“A man generally has two reasons for doing a thing. One that sounds good, and a real one”: Pierpoint Morgan
“No man is great enough or wise enough for any of us to surrender our destiny to. The only way in which anyone can lead us is to restore our belief in our own guidance.” : Henry Miller – (1891-1980) – Source: The Wisdom of the Heart, 1941
“One of the world’s greatest problems is the impossibilty of any person searching for the truth on any subject when they believe they already have it.” –Dave Wilbur
“A human being is a part of the whole, called by us, “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.
This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.” : Albert Einstein – (1879-1955) Physicist and Professor, Nobel Prize 1921
“Live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about his religion. Respect others in their views and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and of service to your people. Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide.
Always give a word or sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, or even a stranger, if in a lonely place. Show respect to all people, but grovel to none. When you rise in the morning, give thanks for the light, for your life, for your strength. Give thanks for your
food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason to give thanks, the fault lies in yourself.
Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision. When your time comes to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home.” by: Tecumseh -(1768-1813) Shawnee Chief
” Few trends could so thoroughly undermine the very foundations of our free society as the acceptance by corporate officials of a social responsibility other than to make as much money for their stockholders as possible. ” – Neo-liberal economist Milton Friedman – in his 1962 book Capitalism and Freedom
“Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all.” – John Maynard Keynes
” The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy: that is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” – John Kenneth Galbraith, economist and author
“There is no telling to what extremes of cruelty and ruthlessness a man will go when he is freed from the fears, hesitations, doubts and the vague stirrings of decency that go with individual judgement. When we lose our individual independence in the corporateness of a mass movement, we find a new freedom- freedom to hate, bully, lie, torture, murder and betray without shame and remorse. Herein undoubtedly lies part of the attractiveness of a mass movement”: Eric Hoffer
“A man who has in mind an apparent advantage and promptly proceeds to dissociate this from the question of what is right shows himself to be mistaken and immoral. Such a standpoint is the parent of assassinations, poisonings, forged wills, thefts, malversations of public money, and the ruinous exploitation of provincials and Roman citizens alike. Another result is passionate desire – desire for excessive wealth, for unendurable tyranny, and ultimately for the despotic seizure of free states. These desires are the most horrible and repulsive things imaginable. The perverted intelligences of men who are animated by such feelings are competent to understand the material rewards, but not the penalties. I do not mean penalties established by law, for these they often escape. I mean the most terrible of all punishments: their own degradation.”Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.)
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do.” : Samuel P. Huntington
“Beat me with the truth, don’t torture me with lies”: Author – Unknown
“He is not strong and powerful who throweth people down; but he is strong who witholdeth himself from anger”: Muhammad
“Do not say, that if the people do good to us, we will do good to them; and if the people oppress us, we will oppress them; but determine that if people do you good, you will do good to them; and if they oppress you, you will not oppress them”: Muhammad
“To give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace”: Bible
“Believe nothing just because a so-called wise person said it. Believe nothing just because a belief is generally held. Believe nothing just because it is said in ancient books. Believe nothing just because it is said to be of divine origin. Believe nothing just because someone else believes it. Believe only what you yourself test and judge to be true.”: Buddha – Hindu Prince Gautama Siddharta
“The stone age didn’t end because of a lack of stones.” Al Gore quoting an OPEC oil minister.
“The privatized banking sector is crippling this strength in the United States these days. Instead of creating credit to fund industrial capital formation, the banking system is lending to bail out bad financial pyramiding.” Michael Hudson
“So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men” Voltaire.
“Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.” Albert Einstein
“The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men” Plato
“In the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king” Erasmus c.1469 – 1536
“The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth” Henry Louis Mencken: American humorous journalist, 1880-1956
“The CIA Act of 1949…created the CIA and endowed it with the statutory authority that became one of the chief components of financing the “black” budget — the power to claw monies from other agencies for the benefit of secretly funding the intelligence communities and their corporate contractors. This was to turn out to be a devastating development for the forces of transparency, without which there can be no rule of law, free markets or democracy.” — Catherine Austin Fitts
“Money is like the Pillsbury Doughboy. When you squeeze down on one part, it pops up someplace else.” –Catherine Austin Fitts
“Wherever there’s taxpayer money, there’s a corporation grovelling to put their paws on it. –Milán Calderón
“Our liberty cannot be guarded but by the freedom of the press, nor that be limited without danger of losing it.” –Thomas Jefferson to John Jay, 1786.
“The great only appear great because we are on our knees, let us arise!” – James Connolly (1868-1916)
“The most effectual engines for [pacifying a nation] are the public papers… [A despotic] government always [keeps] a kind of standing army of newswriters who, without any regard to truth or to what should be like truth, [invent] and put into the papers whatever might serve the ministers. This suffices with the mass of the people who have no means of distinguishing the false from the true paragraphs of a newspaper.” –Thomas Jefferson to G. K. van Hogendorp, Oct. 13, 1785. (*) ME 5:181, Papers 8:632
“The only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep the waters pure.” –Thomas Jefferson to Lafayette, 1823.
“Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them.” –Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, 1787.
“Politically speaking, tribal nationalism [patriotism] always insists that its own people are surrounded by ‘a world of enemies’ – ‘one against all’ – and that a fundamental difference exists between this people and all others. It claims its people to be unique, individual, incompatible with all others, and denies theoretically the very possibility of a common mankind long before it is used to destroy the humanity of man.” -Hannah Arendt, The Origins Of Totalitarianism p.227
“Seas of blood have been shed for the sake of patriotism. One would expect the harm and irrationality of patriotism to be self-evident to everyone. But the surprising fact is that cultured and learned [socially conditioned and indoctrinated] people not only do not notice the harm and stupidity of patriotism, they resist every unveiling of it with the greatest obstinacy and passion (with no rational grounds), and continue to praise it as beneficent and elevating.” -Leo Tolstoy
“Blind patriotism has been kept intact by rewriting history to provide people with moral consolation and a psychological basis for denial.” -William H. Boyer
“The role of the U.S. in the new world corporate order is going to be to export security. That means endless wars and weapons in space. The Pentagon will send our kids off to foreign lands to suppress opposition to corporate globalization. How will we ever end America’s addiction to war and violence as long as our communities are dependent on military spending for jobs?” – Bruce Gagnon
The debate here isn’t only how to protect the country. It’s how to protect our values.
If cruelty is no longer declared unlawful, but instead is applied as a matter of policy, it alters the fundamental relationship of man to government. It destroys the whole notion of individual rights. The Constitution recognizes that man has an inherent right, not bestowed by the state or laws, to personal dignity, including the right to be free of cruelty. It applies to all human beings, not just in America — even those designated as ‘unlawful enemy combatants.’ If you make this exception the whole Constitution crumbles. – Alberto J. Mora, former Navy General Counsel [Feb. 27, 2006 issue of The New Yorker, entitled "The Memo"]
“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundnce of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
“Cowardice asks the question – is it safe? Expediency asks the question – is it politic? Vanity asks the question – is it popular? But conscience asks the question – is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take it because it is right.” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them. There is almost no kind of outrage—–torture, imprisonment without trial, assassination, the bombing of civilians .. . which does not change its moral color when it is committed by ‘our’ side. The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.” – George Orwell
“The industrial way of life leads to the industrial way of death. From Shiloh to Dachau, from Antietam to Stalingrad, from Hiroshima to Vietnam and Afghanistan, the great specialty of industry and technology has been the mass production of human corpses.” – Edward Abbey
“The death of a single human being is too heavy a price for the vindication of any principle, however sacred.” – Daniel Berrigan
“War paralyzes your courage and deadens the spirit of true manhood. It degrades and stupefies with the sense that you are not responsible, that ’tis not yours to think and reason why, but to do and die,’ like the hundred thousand others doomed like yourself. War means blind obedience, unthinking stupidity, brutish callousness, wanton destruction, and irresponsible murder.”
- Alexander Berkman
“It seems that ‘we have never gone to war for conquest, for exploitation, nor for territory’; we have the word of a president [McKinley] for that. Observe, now, how Providence overrules the intentions of the truly good for their advantage. We went to war with Mexico for peace, humanity and honor, yet emerged from the contest with an extension of territory beyond the dreams of political avarice. We went to war with Spain for relief of an oppressed people [the Cubans], and at the close found ourselves in possession of vast and rich insular dependencies [primarily the Philippines] and with a pretty tight grasp upon the country for relief of whose oppressed people we took up arms. We could hardly have profited more had ‘territorial aggrandizement’ been the spirit of our purpose and heart of our hope. The slightest acquaintance with history shows that powerful republics are the most warlike and unscrupulous of nations.” – Ambrose Bierce, Warlike America
“COWARDICE, n. A charge often levelled by all-American types against those who stand up for their beliefs by refusing to fight in wars they find unconscionable, and who willingly go to prison or into exile in order to avoid violating their own consciences. These ‘cowards’ are to be contrasted with red-blooded, ‘patriotic’ youths who literally bend over, grab their ankles, submit to the government, fight in wars they do not understand (or disapprove of), and blindly obey orders to maim and to kill simply because they are ordered to do so-all to the howling approval of the all-American mob. This type of behavior is commonly termed ‘courageous.’” – Chaz Bufe
“The things that will destroy us are: politics without principle; pleasure without conscience; wealth without work; knowledge without character; business without morality; science without humanity; and worship without sacrifice” – Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi
“1) Depopulation should be the highest priority of US foreign policy towards the Third World. 2) Reduction of the rate of population in these states is a matter of vital US national security. 3) The US economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from less-developed countries. That fact gives the US enhanced interests in the political, economic and social stability of the supplying countries. Wherever a lessening of population can increase the prospects for such stability, population policy becomes relevant to resources, supplies and the economic interest of the United States.” – The National Security Council, NSSM 200 – “Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for US Security & Overseas Interests”, Washington DC, the White House, December 10, 1974. – Henry Kissinger – Declassified July 3, 1989.
“Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.” – Kahlil Gibran
“Religion breeds Contempt, Humanism breeds Compassion. What we need in this world is less religious people and more humans.” – Carlos Milán
“They have always taught and trained you to believe it to be your patriotic duty to go to war and to have yourselves slaughtered at their command. But in all the history of the world you, the people, have never had a voice in declaring war, and strange as it certainly appears, no war by any nation in any age has ever been declared by the people.” – Eugene Debs: – Socialist candidate for president, June 16, 1918 – The speech led to Debs’s being stripped of his citizenship and sent to jail for 10 years.
“One death is a tragedy, but a million deaths are a statistic.” – Josef Stalin – (1879-1953) Communist leader of the USSR
“If I were the president, I could stop terrorist attacks against the United States in a few days. Permanently. I would first apologize to all the widows and orphans, the tortured and impoverished, and all the many millions of other victims of American imperialism. Then I would announce, in all sincerity, to every corner of the world, that America’s global interventions have come to an end, and inform Israel that it is no longer the 51st state of the USA but now — oddly enough — a foreign country. would then reduce the military budget by at least 90% and use the savings to pay reparations to the victims. There would be more than enough money. One year’s military budget of 330 billion dollars is equal to more than $18,000 an hour for every hour since Jesus Christ was born. That’s what I’d do on my first three days in the White House. On the fourth day, I’d be assassinated.” – William Blum, author of “Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II,” and “Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower”
“The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.” – Tom Paine
“The media’s bias, a large part of it is in fact right-wing bias, because they are effectively part of the right wing.” – Paul Krugman
“New Technologies are not created to help people, but to make money. That they may have any benefit to humanity is simply a by-product” – Carlos Milán
“When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace” – Jimi Hendrix
“America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense, it is the other way around. Human rights invented America.” – Jimmy Carter (American 39th US President (1977-81). Nobel Prize for Peace in 2002. b.1924)
“Under the influence of politicians, masses of people tend to ascribe the responsibility for wars to those who wield power at any given time. In World War I it was the munitions industrialists; in World War II it was the psychopathic generals who were said to be guilty. This is passing the buck. The responsibility for wars falls solely upon the shoulders of these same masses of people, for they have all the necessary means to avert war in their own hands. In part by their apathy, in part by their passivity, and in part actively, these same masses of people make possible the catastrophes under which they themselves suffer more than anyone else. To stress this guilt on the part of the masses of people, to hold them solely responsible, means to take them seriously. On the other hand, to commiserate masses of people as victims, means to treat them as small, helpless children. The former is the attitude held by genuine freedom fighters; the latter that attitude held by power-thirsty politicians.” – Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism
“It is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificually induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear.” – General Douglas MacArthur, May 15, 1951
