Quotable quotes
Other Quotes
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http://xymphora.blogspot.com/2007/08/quotes-from-zionists.html
"The teaching of Confucius has a strong point; i.e., self-improvement of personal virtue. Jesus' Bible has a strong point; i.e., noble altruism. Marxism has a strong point; i.e., a dialectical working method. Ton Dat Tun's doctrine has a strong point; i.e., their policies are suited to conditions in our country. Do Confucianism, Jesus, Marx and Ton Dat Tun share common points? Yes. They all pursued a way to bring happiness to human beings and benefit to society. If they were still alive today, and if they were grouped together, I believe they would live in harmony, like close friends. I try to become their pupil." Ho Chi Minh, 1949
"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis." Dante
" Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and in-human to impose the Jews on the Arabs. What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct. The mandates have no sanction but that of the last war. Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home. The nobler course would be to insist on a just treatment of the Jews wherever they are born and bred. The Jews born in France are French in precisely the same sense that Christians born in France are French. If the Jews have no home but Palestine, will they relish the idea of being forced to leave the other parts of the world in which they are settled? Or do they want a double home where they can remain at will? This cry for the national home affords a colourable justification for the German expulsion of the Jews.....And now a word to the Jews in Palestine. I have no doubt that they are going about it the wrong way. The Palestine of the Biblical conception is not a geographical tract. It is in their hearts. But if they must look to the Palestine of geography as their national home, it is wrong to enter it under the shadow of the British gun. A religious act cannot be performed with the aid of the bayonet or the bomb. They can settle in Palestine only by the goodwill of the Arabs. They should seek to convert the Arab heart...." Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi (November 1938)
"To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places - and there are so many - where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory." Howard Zinn (You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A personal history of our times, p. 208)
I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection. " Martin Luther King Jr Letter from Birmingham Jail
"To be grateful for the good things that happen in our lives is easy, but to be grateful for all of our lives, the good as well as the bad, the moments of joy as well as the moments of sorrow, the successes as well as the failures, the rewards as well as the rejections, that requires hard spiritual work. Still, we are only truly grateful people when we can say thank you to all that has brought us to the present moment. As long as we keep dividing our lives between events and people we would like to remember and those we would rather forget, we cannot claim the fullness of our beings as a gift of God to be grateful for. Let us not be afraid to look at everything that has brought us to where we are now and trust that we will soon see in it the guiding hand of a loving God." Henri Nouwen, The Work of Christmas
"The righteous is not innocent of the deeds of the wicked"
"No Man can reveal to you ought but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge"
"I must not fear. Fear is the mindkiller,...I will face my fear.I will permit my fear to pass Over me and through me...Where the fear has gone...Only I will remain." Frank Herbert, Dune
"It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first of these is that there is no Zionism, colonialization, or Jewish State without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands." Ariel Sharon, Agence France Presse, November 15, 1998.
Seventy six years ago: A Statement to the 1919 Peace Conference by prominent U.S. Jews (including one Congressman):
"We raise our voices in warning and protest against the demand of the Zionists for the reorganization of the Jews as a national unit, to whom, now or in the future, territorial sovereignty in Palestine shall be committed. This demand not only misrepresents the trend of the history of the Jews, who ceased to be a nation 2000 years ago, but involves the limitation and possible annulment of the larger claims of Jews for full citizenship and human rights in all lands in which those rights are not yet secure. For the very reason that the new era upon which the world is entering aims to establish government everywhere on principles of true democracy, we reject the Zionistic project of a ‘national home for the Jewish people in Palestine.’ ...As to the future of Palestine, it is our fervent hope that what was once a "promised land" for the Jews may become a "land of promise" for all races and creeds, safeguarded by the League of Nations which, it is expected, will be one of the fruits of the Peace Conference to whose deliberations the world now looks forward so anxiously and so full of hope. We ask that Palestine be constituted as a free and independent state, to be governed under a democratic form of government recognizing no distinctions of creed or race or ethnic descent, and with adequate power to protect the country against oppression of any kind. We do not wish to see Palestine, either now or at any time in the future, organized as a Jewish State" Quoted in Roselle Tekiner, Samir Abed-Rabbo and Norton Mezvinsky, eds., Anti-Zionism: Analytical Reflections, (New York: Amana Books, 1988).
"My awareness of the essential nature of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish state with borders, an army, and a measure of temporal power, no matter how modest. I am afraid of the inner damage Judaism will sustain - especially from the development of a narrow nationalism within our own ranks, against which we have already had to fight strongly, even without a Jewish state." Albert Einstein http://globalwebpost.com/farooqm/writings/other/einstein.htm
"Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our time is the Emergence in the newly created state of Israel of the "Freedom Party" (Tnuat Haherutprecursor to the Likud-MQ), a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties. It was formed out of the membership and following of the former Irgun Zvai Leumi, a terrorist, right-wing, chauvinist organization in Palestine. The current visit of Menahem Begin, leader of this party to the United States is obviously calculated to give the impression of American Support for his party in the coming Israeli elections, and to cement political ties with conservative Zionist elements in the United States." From a letter signed by prominent Jews including Einstein published in the NY Times Dec. 2, 1948 http://www.qumsiyeh.org/einsteinetalonbegin/)
When approached to sign a petition to condemn the Arab revolt in Palestine and to support the settlement of Jews Sigmund Freud wrote in response: "I cannot do as you wish. I am unable to overcome my aversion to burdening the public with my name, and even the present critical time does not seem to me to warrant it. Whoever wants to influence the masses must give them something rousing and inflammatory and my sober judgment of Zionism does not permit this....I concede with sorrow that the baseless fanaticism of our people is in part to be blamed for the awakening of Arab distrust. I can raise no sympathy at all for the misdirected piety which transforms a piece of a Herodian wall into a national relic, thereby offending the feelings of the natives. Now judge for yourself whether I, with such a critical point of view, am the right person to come forward as the solace of a people deluded by unjustified hope."
Freud's Letter to Dr. Chaim Koffler Keren HaYassod, Vienna: 26 February 1930; posted at the Freud Institute in UK website: http://www.freud.org.uk./arab-israeli.html
"Every Christian who is not a revolutionary lives in mortal sin." Camillo Torres, a Jesuit priest killed in Columbia by US funded troops
"The tragedy of the people of Palestine is that their country was‘given’ by a foreign power to another people for the creation of a new state. The result was that many hundreds of thousands of innocent people were made permanently homeless. With every new conflict their numbers increased. How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty? It is abundantly clear that the refugees have every right to the homeland from which they were driven, and the denial of this right is at the heart of the continuing conflict. No people anywhere in the world would accept being expelled en masse from their country; how can anyone require the people of Palestine to accept a punishment which nobody else would tolerate? A permanent just settlement of the refugees in their homeland is an essential ingredient of any genuine settlement in the Middle East". Message from Bertrand Russell to the International Conference of Parlimentarians in Cairo, February 1970." Reprinted in The New York Times, Feb. 23, 1970.
"Only if we respect ourselves as Arabs and understand the true dignity and justice of our struggle, only then can we appreciate why, almost despite ourselves, so many people all over the world, including Rachel Corrie and the two young people wounded with her from ISM, Tom Hurndall and Brian Avery, have felt it possible to express their solidarity with us. I conclude with one last irony. Isn't it astonishing that all the signs of popular solidarity that Palestine and the Arabs receive occur with no comparable sign of solidarity and dignity for ourselves, that others admire and respect us more than we do ourselves? Isn't it time we caught up with our own status and made certain that our representatives here and elsewhere realize, as a first step, that they are fighting for a just and noble cause, and that they have nothing to apologize for or anything to be embarrassed about? On the contrary, they should be proud of what their people have done and proud also to represent them." Edward Said
http://www.counterpunch.org/said09252003.html
"He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it." Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
"A 'No' uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a 'Yes' merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble." Gandhi
"The tragedy of the people of Palestine is that their country was‘given’ by a foreign power to another people for the creation of a new state. The result was that many hundreds of thousands of innocent people were made permanently homeless. With every new conflict their numbers increased. How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty? It is abundantly clear that the refugees have every right to the homeland from which they were driven, and the denial of this right is at the heart of the continuing conflict. No people anywhere in the world would accept being expelled en masse from their country; how can anyone require the people of Palestine to accept a punishment which nobody else would tolerate? A permanent just settlement of the refugees in their homeland is an essential ingredient of any genuine settlement in the Middle East". Message from Bertrand Russell to the International Conference of Parlimentarians in Cairo, February 1970." Reprinted in The New York Times, Feb. 23, 1970.
"My awareness of the essential nature of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish state with borders, an army, and a measure of temporal power, no matter how modest. I am afraid of the inner damage Judaism will sustain - especially from the development of a narrow nationalism within our own ranks, against which we have already had to fight strongly, even without a Jewish state." Albert Einstein http://globalwebpost.com/farooqm/writings/other/einstein.htm
Caminante, no hay camino. Se hace el camino al andar. (Searcher, there is no road. One makes the road by walking.) Antonio Machado
"an apartheid regime (in the occupied Palestinian areas) is worse than the one that existed in South Africa." South African law professor John Dugard, special rapporteur for the United Nations on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, in a report to the UN General Assembly. http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/468744.html
"Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law" (From Preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to which Israel is a signatory)
"The best jihad is when a person speaks the truth before a tyrant ruler." --The Noble Hadith (sayings and doings of the prophet Muhammad, PBUH)
Goethe's Faust: "In the end, we still depend upon creatures of our own making" (Am Ende haengen wir doch ab/Von Kreaturen, die wir machten.)
Bishop Desmond Tutu taken from and describing the book: "Speaking the Truth About Zionism and Israel" (edited by Rev. Michael Prior, Melisende, 2004): "In our struggle for justice and peace in South Africa we had to learn to speak - and listen to - hard truths. Our experience should encourage all who strive for justice and peace in the Holy Land. My visits to the Holy Land remind me so much of South Africa: apartheid is back, complete with the "Separation Wall" and bantustans. History, it seems, repeats itself. Yet, if peace could come to South Africa, surely it can come also to the Holy Land. I welcome this book that exposes some of the hardest truths about Israel-Palestine. The distinguished contributors - from Israel, Palestine, the US, the UK and Ireland, women and men, Jews, Christians and Muslims - speak their Truth. Reconciliation will follow later."
“O you who believe! Stand out firmly for justice, as witnesses to Allah, even as against yourselves, or your parents, or your kin, and whether it be (against) rich or poor: for Allah can best protect both. Follow not the lusts (of your hearts), lest you swerve, and if you distort (justice) or decline to do justice, verily Allah is well-acquainted with all that you do.” Holy Quran, 4:135
“Whoever among you sees something abominable should rectify it with his hand; and if he has not strength to do so; then he should do it with his tongue; and if he has not strength to do so, then he should (abhor it) from his heart, and that is the least of Faith.” Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him), Sahih Muslim
Israeli artist declaration 2002: "If the state of Israel aspires to perceive itself as a democracy, it should abandon once and for all, any legal and ideological foundation of religious, ethnic, and demographic discrimination. The state of Israel should strive to become the state of all its citizens. We call for the annulment of all laws that make Israel an apartheid state, including the Jewish law of return in its present form"
"I claim a right to live on my land and accord you the privilege to return to yours." Native American Chief Joseph Nez Perce
"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor" - Bishop Desmond Tutu
"The most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well."
Baron Pierre de Courbertin (1863-1931), French founder of the International Olympic Committee and the man who single handedly revived the Olympic Games
"I cannot do everything, but still I can do something and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do."
Edward Everett Hale
"Every Christian who is not a revolutionary lives in mortal sin." Camillo Torres, a Jesuit priest killed in Columbia by US funded troops
"Years ago, I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free." Eugene V. Debs, 1918
"You must be the change you wish to see in the world." "Use truth as your anvil, nonviolence as your hammer, and anything that does not stand the test when it is brought to the anvil of truth, reject it." Mohandas Karamchand 'Mahatma' Gandhi
'Recall the face of the poorest and most helpless person whom you may have seen and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him, will he be able to gain anything by it? Will it restore him to control over his life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to swaraj, self-rule for the hungry and also spiritually starved millions of our countrymen? Then you will find your doubts and your self melting away.' Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
"If we make peaceful revolution impossible, we make violent revolution inevitable." John Fitzgerald Kennedy
"Manifest plainness, embrace simplicity, reduce selfishness, have few desires." Lao Tsu, 'Tao Te Ching'
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." Anthropologist Margaret Mead
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing that it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only love can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that." Martin Luther King, Jr.
"He who fights monsters should see to it that he does not become a monster in the process. And when you stare persistently into an abyss, the abyss also stares into you." Friedrich Nietzsche, 'Beyond Good and Evil' 1886 (Fourth Part: 'Maxims and Interludes')
"We must learn that we can be agents of change, that we are part of the problem and that together, we are also part of the solution. The actual danger is not "out there". The real dangers, as well as the potential solutions, lie within us. Our personal behavior is just about the only thing in this world over which we have 100 percent control, and so we must take responsibility for it." Petra Kelly, co-founder of the German Green Party, from her book 'Nonviolence Speaks to Power'
"Every time anyone says that Israel is our only friend in the Middle East, I can't help but think that before Israel, we had no enemies in the Middle East." Fr. John Sheehan of the Jesuit order
"You cannot defeat Jews, you maneuver them; they maneuver you. I would say it's endless maneuvers." PM Ariel Sharon in an interview with James Bennet of the NY Times. Bennet concludes as follows: "Because it scorns negotiation and agreement, Sharon's long-term interim arrangement is an acceptance of, and maybe a goad to, enduring conflict -- almost surely at a lower level, but sustained. As this conflict grinds on, Israel will no doubt remain morally alert -- morally conflicted, as demonstrated by the soldiers who refuse to serve in the territories -- but it will also remain morally compromised in the eyes of the world. Its back to the rest of the Middle East, its face to the Mediterranean, Israel could become ''the largest ghetto in modern Jewish history,'' in the words of Ezrahi. Sharon may be right. This could be the only way to secure Israel's survival as a Jewish haven. But it may mean a poignant legacy for this indomitable, secular Jew born into the Middle East: an Israel that is increasingly religious, walled off from its neighbors, simultaneously yearning after and fearing a Western community of nations that sees it as more and more foreign."
"The enemy aggressor is always pursuing a course of larceny, murder, rapine and barbarism. We are always moving forward with high mission, a destiny imposed by the Deity to regenerate our victims while incidentally capturing their markets, to civilise savage and senile and paranoid peoples while blundering accidentally into their oil wells." John Flynn, 1944
"The formula for the parameters of unilateral solution are: To maximize the number of Jews; minimize the number of Palestinians; not to withdraw to the 1967 border and not to divide Jerusalem.” (Ehud Olmert, 5 December 2003)
“The Court is not convinced that the construction of the wall along the route chosen was the only means to safeguard the interests of Israel against the peril which it has invoked as justification for that construction.” (International Court of Justice, July 2004)
“You don’t simply bundle people onto trucks and drive them away…I prefer to advocate a positive policy, to create, in effect, a condition that in a positive way will induce people to leave.” (Ariel Sharon, 24 August 1988)
"Apparently the Israeli public is accepting a situation in which military activity in Palestinian towns is accompanied by indiscriminate killing." (Haaretz editorial writer, 29 January 2004)
"It is clear that the present government of Israel simply does not tell the truth." (Arthur Hertzberg, 7 January 2004)
"… it's utterly hypocritical for Israelis to wonder aloud why Palestinians don't pursue a non-violent strategy. One obvious reason is that, whenever they have, Israel brutally represses it." (Norman G. Finkelstein, 11 September 2003)
"The Israeli government seemingly cultivates this fear of existential threat." (Amira Hass, 24 March 2004)
“Settlements can be built, but there is no need to talk about it and come out dancing every time a building permit is given. Let them build but without talking.” (Ariel Sharon, 22 June 2003)
"Sharon certainly does have a plan: to protect Eretz Yisrael, avoid returning any territories and make sure the settlements stay where they are. Everything else is tactics." (Aluf Benn, 18 September 2003)
"We walked outside, Ben-Gurion accompanying us. Allon repeated his question, What is to be done with the Palestinian population?' Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture which said 'Drive them out!'" (Yitzhak Rabin, 23 October 1979)
"If I was an Arab leader I would never make peace with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country." (David Ben Gurion, The Jewish Paradox, 1978, p. 99)
"How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to." (Golda Meir, 8 March 1969)
"The United Nations is under no more of a legal obligation to maintain Zionism in Israel than it is to maintain apartheid in South Africa." (William Thomas Mallison, 1986)
"Zionist colonialism inhabits the space between two extinct models -- those provided by South Africa and French practice in Algeria. It is not a blend of the two, but rather a distillation of the worst in each." (Azmi Bishara, 8 January 2004)
“The Court has reached the conclusion that the construction of the wall by Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is contrary to international law…” (International Court of Justice, July 2004)
"The settlement of the Land of Israel is the essence of Zionism. Without settlement, we will not fulfill Zionism. It's that simple.” (Yitzhak Shamir, 21 February 1997)
“The significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process . . . . Effectively, this whole package called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda . . . . All with a presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress." (Dov Weisglass, October 2004)
“It would be better to drown these prisoners in the Dead Sea if possible, since that’s the lowest point in the world.” (Avigdor Lieberman, 7 July 2003)
“No settlement can be just and complete if recognition is not accorded to the right of the Arab refugee to return to the home from which he has been dislodged…” (UN Mediator for Palestine, Count Folk Bernadotte, 1948)
“Ariel Sharon keeps goats and sheep. He puts a fence around them and closes them in with a gate. He decides if they come in or go out. This is now what he is doing to us.” (Palestinian from Sur Bahir)
“If we are evacuated, we’ll return the night after and establish 10 new outposts.” (Yehoshua Mor-Yosef, 10 June 2003)
"Everybody has to move, run and grab as many hilltops as they can to enlarge the settlements because everything we take now will stay ours... Everything we don't grab will go to them." (Ariel Sharon, 15 November 1998)
"We consider these settlements to be contrary to the Geneva Convention, that occupied territory should not be changed by establishment of permanent settlements by the occupying power." (President Carter, 13 June 1980)
"The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies." (Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949)
"While politicians talk about peace, Israeli settlements continue to expand rapidly on Palestinian land. Settlements have nearly doubled during the Oslo period- -- under both Labour and Likud governments." (Anthony Arnove & Ahmed Shawki, 20 August 2001)
"We declare openly that the Arabs have no right to settle on even one centimeter of Eretz Israel... Force is all they do or ever will understand. We shall use the ultimate force until the Palestinians come crawling to us on all fours." (Rafael Eitan, April 1983)
"It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist." (Golda Meir, 15 June 1969)
"The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiques are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. It is a disgrace to our imperial record, and may soon be too inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are today not far from a disaster... Our unfortunate troops, British and Indian, under hard conditions of climate and supply, are policing an immense area, paying dearly every day in lives for the willfully wrong policy of the civil administration in Baghdad."T. E. Lawrence, "A Report on Mesopotamia," Sunday Times (London), August 22, 1920.
"Why of course the people don't want war ... But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship ...Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger." Hermann Goering, Nazi leader, at the Nuremberg Trials after World WarII
"First they came for the communists but I was not a communist so I kept quiet. Then they came for the socialists and the trade unionists but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew, so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." Martin Niemoller, after being released from Dachau, 1945
"Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but has liberators..." General F. S. Maude, Commander of British Forces, Baghdad, March 19, 1917
"Unlike many armies in the world, you came not to conqueor, not to occupy, but to liberate, and the Iraqi people know this." Donald Rumsfeld, US Secretary of Defense, Baghdad, April 29, 2003
"I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government.... There is something strangely inconsistent about a nation and a press that would praise you when you say, 'Be nonviolent toward Jim Clark,' but will curse and damn you when you say, 'Be nonviolent toward little brown Vietnamese children!' There is something wrong with that press...." -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
"The target suffered a terminal illness before a firing squad in Baghdad." CIA officer testifying to US Senate hearing, after bloody CIA aided Baa'th Party coup overthrew Iraqi Prime Minister Abdel Kassem, 1963
"It was an operation where all the "t"s were really crossed. It was a great victory." James Critchfield, former head of the CIA's Middle East Desk, describing their involvement in the Ba'athist coup, 1963, quoted in 'Out of the Ashes' by Andrew and Patrick Cockburn
"Covert operations should not be confused with missionary work." Henry Kissinger describing why US betrayal of the Kurds, 1975
"In the next voyage of the Mayflower, after she carried the Pilgrims, she was employed in transporting a cargo of slaves from Africa." Nathaniel Hawthorne
"The US must carry out some act somewhere in the world which shows its' determination to continue to be a world power." Henry Kissinger, post-Vietnam blues, as quoted in The Washington Post, April 1975
"The American system is the most ingenious system of control in world history. With a country so rich in natural resources, talent and labour power the system can afford to distribute just enough wealth to just enough people to limit discontent to a troublesome minority. It is a country so powerful, so big, so pleasing to so many of its' citizens that it can afford to give freedom of dissent to the small number who are not pleased. There is no system of control with more openings, apertures, flexibilities, rewards for the chosen. .. There is none that disperses its' control more complexly through the voting system, the work situation, the church, the family, the school, the mass media none more successful in mollifying opposition with reforms, isolating people from one another, creating patriotic loyalty." Howard Zinn, from A People's History of the United States, first published 1981
"One hundred nations in the UN have not agreed with us on just about everything that's come before them, where we're involved, and it didn't upset my breakfast at all." Ronald Reagan, former US President, basking in the triumph that was the US invasion of Grenada, 1983
"If Kuwait grew carrots, we wouldn't give a damn." Lawrence Korb, former US Assistant Secretary of Defence, January 1991
"Many of the targets were chosen only secondarily to contribute to the military defeat of Iraq. ... Military planners hoped the bombing would amplify the economic and psychological impact of international sanctions on Iraqi society. ....Because of these goals, damage to civilian structures and interests, invariably described by briefers during the war as 'collateral' and unintended, were sometimes neither. ....They deliberately did great harm to Iraq's ability to support itself as an industrial society." from 'Allied Air War Struck Broadly in Iraq; Officials Acknowledge Strategy Went Beyond Purely Military Targets,' Article by Barton Gellman, The Washington Post, 23rd June 1991. Over half a million Iraqi Children under the age of 5 died as a result.
"In the most lackadaisical and morally laid back way, we are killing people,.small, brown children beyond the reach of our shrivelled imaginations." Edward Pearce, Journalist, article in "The Guardian" entitled "Death and Indecency in a time of Cholera," 25th October 1991
"Sanctions will be there until the end of time, or as long as he (Hussein) lasts." Former US President Bill Clinton, quoted in The New York Times, 23rd November 1997
"The Arab Monetary Fund has estimated the value of destroyed infrastructure and economic assets attributable to the 1991 Gulf war at $232 billion." Dr. Eric Hoskins, in his report "Political Gain and Civilian Pain", December 1997
"That's not really a number I'm terribly interested in." General Colin Powell, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, on being asked his assessment of Iraqi military and civilian casualties, April 1991
"We are in the process of destroying an entire society. It is as simple and as terrifying as that. It is illegal and immoral." Denis Halliday, former UN Humanitarian Aid Co-Ordinator, in his resignation speech, 30th September 1998
"4000 to 5000 children are dying every month due to the impact of sanctions because of the breakdown of water and sanitation, inadequate diet, and the bad internal health situation." Denis Halliday, 14th October 1998
"The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it." - Albert Einstein
“Wooden-headedness, the source of self-deception, is a factor that plays a remarkably large role in government. It consists in assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring or rejecting any contrary signs. It is acting according to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts. It is epitomized in a historian's statement about Phillip II of Spain, the surpassing wooden-head of all sovereigns: No experience of the failure of his policy could shake his belief in its essential excellence “ Barbara Tuchman The March of Folly. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1984.
“And ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hours of separation.” Kalil Gibran, The prophet
“A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices” William James
“The time is always right to do what is right.” Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Though the wind they create may push me south-east-west-north.. my soul.. remains planted like that olive tree they stole.” Anonymous displaced Palestinian
“If you want peace, work for justice.” Pope Paul VI
“Wisdom is ofttime nearer when we stoop than when we soar.” William Wordsworth
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” Frederick Douglass
"Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar." Julius Caesar
"Is there any man, is there any woman, let me say any child here, that does not know that the seed of war in the modern world is industrial and commercial rivalry?" Former US President Woodrow Wilson, 1919
"The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it." Albert Einstein
"The ultimate measure of a person is not where one stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where one stands in times of challenge and controversy". MLK
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent". Thomas Jefferson
"Any people that would give up liberty for a little temporary safety deserves neither liberty nor safety". Benjamin Franklin
"It does not take a majority to prevail . . but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men." Samuel Adams, American revolutionary.
"If one remains neutral in situations of injustice, then one is complicit in that injustice. If an elephant has his foot on the tail of a mouse, and you remain neutral, the mouse is not going to appreciate your neutrality." Desmond Tutu
"What does it matter to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?" Mahatma Gandhi
"(I advocate) using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes and against recalcitrant Arabs as an experiment. (I do not understand) the squeamishness about the use of gas ... We cannot in any circumstamstances acquiesce in the non-utilisation of any weapons which are available to procure a speedy termination of the disorder which prevails on the frontier." Winston Churchill, then Secretary of State at the British War Office, authorising RAF Middle East Command to attack rebelling Iraqis with chemical weapons, 1919
"Israel may have the right to put others on trial, but certainly no one has the right to put the Jewish people and the State of Israel on trial."
"The efficiency of the truly national leader consists mainly of preventing the people's attention from becoming divided, and of always concentrating it on a single enemy." Adolp Hitler, 'Mein Kampf' 1924
"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws our country."-- Thomas Jefferson, 1816
"Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few." James Madison
"Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched." Guy de Maupassant
"We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people." Martin Luther King, Jr.
"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor."
Archbishop Desmond Tutu
"The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today - my own government."
Martin Luther King Jr., April 4th 1967, exactly one year before he was assassinated
"I tremble for my fellow man when I remember that God is Just." Thomas Jefferson
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has” Margaret Mead
"The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well." - Joe Ancis
"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored." - Aldous Huxley
"An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes in a very narrow field." - Neils Bohr
"I'd like to know god's thoughts...the rest are details." - Albert Einstein
"Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people." - Unknown
"Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils." - Unknown
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing." Edmund Burke
"You will find, as you look back upon your life, that the moments that stand out are the moments when you have done things for others." Henry Drummond
“To know and not to do is not to know. “ Chinese proverb
"Truth is not determined by majority vote."-Doug Gwyn
"Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness."-Chinese Proverb
"I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him."-Booker T. Washington
"One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar."-Helen Keller
"I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves. Be on your guard against men; they will hand you over to the local councils and flog you in their synagogues."Matthew 10:16-17
"Thus says the Lord God of Israel: You shed blood, yet you would keep possession on the land? You rely on your sword, you do abominable things...yet you would keep possession of the land?." (Ezekiel 33:25-28)
"I may not be totally perfect, but parts of me are excellent."-Ashleigh Brilliant
"Some people are always grumbling because roses have thorns. I am thankful that thorns have roses."-Alphonse Karr
"We learn the rope of life by untying its knots."-Jean Toomer
"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Every man dies. Not every man lives."-Tim Robbins
"I came to America because of the great, great freedom which I heard existed in this country. I made a mistake in selecting America as a land of freedom, a mistake I cannot repair in the balance of my lifetime." Albert Einstein, 1947
"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."- Gerorge Orwell
Dr. R.M. Bucke, described Walt Whitman:
"Perhaps, indeed, no man who ever lived liked so many things and disliked so few as Walt Whitman. All natural objects seemed to have a charm for him. All sights and sounds seemed to please him. He appeared to like (and I believe he did like) all the men, women and children he saw (though I never knew him to say that he liked anyone), but each who knew him felt he liked him or her, and that he liked others also. I never knew him to argue or dispute, and he never spoke about money. He always justified, sometimes playfully, sometimes quite seriously, those who spoke harshly of himself or his writings, and I often thought he even took pleasure in the opposition of enemies. When I first knew him, I used to think he watched himself, and would not allow his tongue to give expression to fretfulness, antipathy, complaint, and remonstrance. It did not occur to me as possible that these mental states could be absent in him. After long observation, however, I satisfied myself that such absence or unconsciousness was entirely real. He never spoke deprecatingly of any nationality or class of man, or time in the world's history, or against any trades or occupations -- not even against any animals, insects, or inanimate things, nor any of the laws of nature, nor any of the results of those laws, such as illness, deformity, and death. He never complained or grumbled either at the weather, pain, illness, or anything else. He never swore. He could not very well, since he never spoke in anger and apparently was never angry. He never exhibited fear, and I do not believe he ever felt it."
"To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places - and there are so many - where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory." Howard Zinn (You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A personal history of our times, p. 208)
The most destructive habit..........................Worry
The greatest Joy....................................Giving
The greatest loss...................................Loss of self-respect
The most satisfying work............................Helping others
The ugliest personality trait.......................Selfishness
The most endangered species.........................Dedicated leaders
Our greatest natural resource.......................Our youth
The greatest "shot in the arm"......................Encouragement
The greatest problem to overcome....................Fear
The most effective sleeping pill....................Peace of mind
The most crippling failure disease..................Excuses
The most powerful force in life.....................Love
The most dangerous pariah...........................A gossiper
The world's most incredible computer................The brain
The worst thing to be without.......................Hope
The deadliest weapon................................The tongue
The two most power-filled words....................."I Can"
The greatest asset..................................Faith
The most worthless emotion..........................Self-pity
The most beautiful attire...........................SMILE!
The most prized possession..........................Integrity
The most powerful channel of communication..........Prayer
The most contagious spirit..........................Enthusiasm
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