Quotes like these have the power to put into words what the heart cannot verbalize itself.
"Every child smiles in the same language."
Anonymous
"Unexpected kindness is the most powerful,
least costly and most underrated agent of human change. Kindness
that catches us by surprise brings out the best in our natures."
Senator Bob Kerrey
"You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean;
if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.
Where there is love there is life."
Mahatma Gandhi
"Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first;
nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first."
Charles de Gaulle
"If all this suffering does not help us to broaden
our horizon, to attain a greater humanity by shedding
all trifling and irrelevant issues,
then it will all have been for nothing"
Etty Hillesum
"Intolerance: a veil worn to disguise fear and ignorance."
Binda Fraser, Ontario Canada
"If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten
we belong to each other."
Mother Teresa
"Just as you have the instinctive natural desire to be happy and
overcome suffering, so do all sentient beings; just as you have
the right to fulfill this innate aspiration, so do all sentient beings.
so on what grounds do you discriminate?"
His Holiness the Dalai Llama
"Racism is a learned affliction and anything that is learned can be unlearned"
Jane Elliott
"The mind of the bigot is like the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour
upon it, the more it will contract."
Oliver Wendell Holmes
"In Germany they first came for the Communists and I didn't speak up because
I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up
because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't
speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant."
"Then they came for me --- and by that time no one was left to speak up."
German Pastor Martin Niemoller
"You must be the change you wish to see in the world."
Mahatma Gandhi
"Hate is like a cancer. It doesn't matter if you have a
little cancer or a lot of cancer - it's still cancer!"
Unknown
"You are a human being. You have rights inherent in that
reality. You have dignity and worth that exists prior to law."
Lyn Beth Neylon, Human Rights USA director
"Let us rise up tonight with a greater readiness. Let us stand
with a greater determination. And let us move on in these powerful days,
these days of challenge, to make America what it ought to be."
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., on the night before his assassination
"We may have different religions, different languages,
different colored skin, but we all belong to one human race.
We all share the same basic values."
Kofi Annan, United Nations Secretary General
"I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human
beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides.
Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages
the tormentor, never the tormented."
Elie Wiesel
"As long as you keep a person down,
some part of you has to be down there to hold him down,
so it means you cannot soar as you otherwise might."
Marian Anderson (1897-1993), singer
"Remember, to hate, to be violent, is demeaning.
It means you're afraid of the other side of the coin
-- to love and be loved."
James Baldwin (1924-1987), writer
"Each person must live their life as a model for others."
Rosa Parks, civil rights heroine, after she learned that she was to be
given an honorary doctorate by the University of Southern California
"We will remember not the words of our enemies,
but the silence of our friends."
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
"Prejudices are what fools use for reason."
Voltaire
"Idealistic and realistic are only separated
by changing someone's mind."
Ananda Lewis
"The less secure a man is, the more likely he is
to have extreme prejudice."
Clint Eastwood
"When we look at modern man we have to face the fact that modern man suffers
from a kind of poverty of the spirit, which stands in glaring contrast to his
scientific and technological abundance, we've learned to fly the air like
birds, we've learned to swim the seas like fish, and yet we havent learned to
walk the earth as brothers and sisters."
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
"I believe in a America that is officially neither Catholic,
Protestant nor Jewish - where no public official either requests or accepts
instructions from the pope, The National Council of Churches or any other
ecclesiastical source - where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly
or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials - and
where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is
treated as an act against all."
Pres. John Fitzgerald Kennedy
"Be young, have fun, smash racism."
Ben Frazier (Founder of Anti-Racist Action of Texas)
What do you think? Do you know of any quotes or poems that should be in this list?