corimagua

A strong man cannot help a weaker unless that weaker is strong of himself; he must, by his own efforts, develop the strength which he admires in another. None but himself can alter his condition. It has been usual for men to think and to say, ‘Many men are slaves because on is an oppressor, let us hate the oppressor’. Now, however, there is amongst an increasing few a tendency to reverse this judgment and to say ‘One man is an oppressor because many are slaves, let us despise the slaves’. The truth is that oppressor and slave are co-operators in ignorance, and while seeming to afflict each other, are in reality afflicting themselves. 

Before a man can achieve anything, even in worldly things, he must lift his thoughts above slavish animal indulgence. There can be no progress, no achievement without sacrifice, and a man’s worldly success will be the measure that he sacrifices his confused animal thoughts and fixes his mind on the development his his plans and the strengthening of his resolution and self-reliance.

-James Allen, As a Man Thinketh

The prospect is for times of turmoil, struggle, but also inspiration. There is a chance that such a movement could succeed in doing what the system itself has never done–bring about great change with little violence. This is possible because the more of the 99 percent that begin to see themselves as sharing needs, the more the guards and the prisoners see their common interest, the more the Establishment becomes isolated, ineffectual. The elite’s weapons, money, control of information would be useless in the face of a determined population. The servants of the system would refuse to work to continue the old, deadly order, and would begin using their time, their space–the very things given them by the system to keep them quiet–to dismantle that system while creating a new one.

-Howard Zinn

A People’s History of the United States 

Until one is committed there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness, concerning all acts of initiation (and creation)…. the moment one definitely commits, then Providence comes too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred… Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.

-Goethe

Those who contemplate the beauty of the Earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of birds, the ebb and flow of tides, the folded bud ready for spring. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature–the assurance that dawn comes after the night and spring after the winter.

-Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendell Berry, “The Peace of Wild Things”

When they want you to buy something they will call you. When they want you to die for profit they will let you know. So, friends, every day do something that won’t compute. Love the Lord. Love the world. Work for nothing. Take all that you have and be poor. Love someone who does not deserve it. Denounce the government and embrace the flag. Hope to live in that free republic for which it stands….. Expect the end of the world. Laugh. Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts. So long as women do not go cheap for power, please women more than men, Ask yourself: Will this satisfy a woman satisfied to bear a child?… As soon as the generals and the politicos can predict the motions of your mind, lose it. Leave it as a sign to mark the false trail, the way you didn’t go. Be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction. Practice Resurrection. 

-Wendell Berry

Farmer and Poet

Focus on the evil of war. War begins by calling for the annihilation of the others but ends ultimately in self-annihilation. It corrupts souls and mutilates bodies. It destroys homes and villages and murders children on their way to school. It grinds into the dirt all that is tender and beautiful and sacred. It empowers human deformities–warlords, Shiite death squads, Sunni insurgents, the Taliban, al-quaida, and our own killers–who can speak only in the despicable language of force. War is a scourge. It is a plague. It is industrial murder. And before you support war…. look into the hollow eyes of the men, women, and children who know it.

 

Chris Hedges, The Pictures you Aren’t Supposed to See, January 4, 2010

We must convince each generation that they are transient passengers on this planet earth. It does not belong to them. They are not free to doom generations yet unborn. They are not at liberty to erase humanity’s past nor dim its future.

-Bernard Lown  and Evjueni Chazov

The law of love will work, just as the law of gravitation will work, whether we accept it or not… a man who applies the law of love with scientific precision can work great wonders… The men and women who discovered for us the law of love were greater scientists than any of our modern scientists… The more I work at this law, the more I feel the delight in life, the delight in the scheme of this universe. It gives me a peace and a meaning of the mysteries of nature that I have to power to describe.

-Mahatma Gandhi,  quoted in P.Crean and P.Kome, eds.,

Peace, A Dream Unfolding

I don’t believe that the solutions in society will come from the left or from the right or the north or the south. They will come from…. islands of people with integrity who want to do something…. This is what a network should do–Identify the people who would like to do something good. And they are everywhere. This is how the change will appear–you won’t notice the difference. It won’t be anyone winning over anyone. It will just spread…. It will be something that the intelligent people do…

-Karl-Henrik Robèrt, In Context