Quotes to Live By

“The self is open to becoming different, on a plane of equality, with neither privileges nor oppressive mechanisms” – Ignacio Martín-Baró

“To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man”. – William Shakespeare

“What I have most wanted to do throughout the past ten years is to make political writing into an art. My starting point is always a feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice. When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art’. I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention to, and my initial concern is to get a hearing.” – George Orwell

“Listen to love and love to listen.” – Mary Watkins

“There’s no ticket of admission for active citizenship. Anybody can get through that gate, and anybody can ask that basic question that gets the ball rolling.” – Ralph Nader

“Freedom of speech is something that represents the very dignity of what a human being is. If you cannot speak… I mean, that’s what marks us off. That’s what marks us off from the stones and the stars. You can speak freely. It is almost impossible for me to describe. It is the thing that marks us as just below the angels. I don’t want to push this beyond where it should be pushed, but I feel it.” – Mario Savio

“Our task is not to shine the light on others, but to shine the light from ourselves onto that which is wrong in the world” – Robert Jensen

“Love is an ethics of otherness that thrives on the adventure of otherness. This means that love is an ethical and social responsibility to open personal and public place in which otherness and differences can be articulated. Love requires a commitment to the advent and nurturing of difference” – Kelley Oliver

“It takes a little bit of naivety in order to jump in and do something that otherwise looks impossible. Many great advances in science, technology and culture have a touch of naivety at their inception.” – WikiLeaks

“Spiritual science is in the world not only to create a new language in the vertical direction between earth and heaven –this, as we saw, it has already done –but to create a new language on the horizontal plane from person to person” – Valentin Tomberg

“…. That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.” – Walt Whitman
“Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“May our feeling penetrate into the center of our heart
And seek, in love to unite with those who share our goals,
And with the spirit who look down benevolently
On our heart’s earnest strivings
Sending us strength from realms of light
To illuminate our love” – Rudolf Steiner