Notable quotes, excerpts, and profound lines.

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

.....No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.
..........— Nelson (Rolihlahla) Mandela (1918 - ), former resistance leader to the policy of Apartheid, President of South Africa. Long Walk to Freedom (1994). Quoted in The Great Thoughts (1985, Introduction and a new compilation © 1996 by David Laskin) by George Seldes.

Great Quote !!!

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by GeoffC

Great Quote !!!

[BenG]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

.....No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.
..........— Nelson (Rolihlahla) Mandela (1918 - ), former resistance leader to the policy of Apartheid, President of South Africa. Long Walk to Freedom (1994). Quoted in The Great Thoughts (1985, Introduction and a new compilation © 1996 by David Laskin) by George Seldes.

You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!

-You've Got To Be Carefully Taught from South Pacific, Oscar Hammerstein II

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by BenG

You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!

-You've Got To Be Carefully Taught from South Pacific, Oscar Hammerstein II

Fantastic! I'm stealing that one.

[GeoffC]

[WT Sharpe]

.....Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.
..........— Horace Mann (1796-1859), American education reformer and abolitionist. Commencement oration, Antioch College (1859).

[astra]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

.....Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.
..........— Horace Mann (1796-1859), American education reformer and abolitionist. Commencement oration, Antioch College (1859).

Yeah. Just don't get carried away in the process. Most people forget the original goal along the road and shame humanity.

[WT Sharpe]

.....Never value anything as profitable to thyself which shall compel thee to break thy promise, to lose thy self-respect, to hate any man, to suspect, to curse, to act the hypocrite, to desire anything which needs walls and curtains: for he who has preferred to everything else his own intelligence and daemon and the worship of its excellence, acts no tragic part, does not groan, will not need either solitude or much company; and, what is chief of all, he will live without either pursuing or flying from death.
..........— Marcus Aurelius Antonius (121-180 C.E.), Roman Emperor, Stoic philosopher. Meditations, III, 7.

[jgaiser]

'Patriotism will not do?'

'My dear creature, I have done with all debate. But you know as well as I, patriotism is a word; and one that generally comes to mean either my country, right or wrong, which is infamous, or my country is always right, which is imbecile.'

-- Dr. Stephen Maturin -- Patrick O'Brian's "Master and Commander"

[Stitchawl]

“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.” Galileo Galilei


Stitchawl

[GeoffC]

Not a quote as such, but an interesting poem ... the last two lines particularly ....

Full sixty years the angry winter wave
Has thundering dash’d this bleak and barren shore,
Since Sambo’s head, laid in this lonely grave,
Lies still, and ne’er will hear their turmoil more.

Full many a sand-bird chirps upon the sod,
And many a moon-flight Elfin round him trips;
Full many a Summer’s sunbeam warms the clod,
And many a teeming cloud upon him drips.

But still he sleeps, till the awak’ning sounds
Of the Archangel’s Trump new life impart;
Then the great Judge his approbation founds,
Not on man’s colour, but his worth of heart.

Rev’d James Watson (1796)

Taken from sambos_grave

[WT Sharpe]

.....Toward no crimes have men shown themselves so cold-bloodedly cruel as in punishing differences of belief.
..........— James Russell Lowell(1819 – 1891), American Romantic poet, critic, editor, diplomat. Literary Essays, Volume II (1892), page 874: "Witchcraft."

[Stitchawl]

Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote. - Ben Franklin


Stitchawl

[FlorenceArt]

I'm with old Winston:

Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time

Winston Churchill
Speech in the House of Commons (1947-11-11)

[WT Sharpe]

.....Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
..........— The Gospel of John (circa 90 C.E.), chapter 15, verse 13, King James Version (1611).


.....Greater love than this, he said, no man hath that a man lay down his wife for his friend.
..........— James Joyce (1882-1941), Irish novelist. Ulysses (1922).