Quotes

"Patriotism, n. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name. In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit it is the first."
— Ambrose Bierce

"Brothers, you came from our own people. You are killing your own brothers. Any human order to kill must be subordinate to the law of God, which says, 'Thou shalt not kill'. No soldier is obliged to obey an order contrary to the law of God. No one has to obey an immoral law. It is high time you obeyed your consciences rather than sinful orders.

Constant development is the law of life, and a man who always tries to maintain his dogmas in order to appear consistent drives himself into a false position.

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

James Russell Lowell. 1819–1891

128. The Present Crisis

WHEN a deed is done for Freedom, through the broad earth's aching breast
Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from east to west,
And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels the soul within him climb
To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublime

Ubi caritas et amor
Deus ibi est.

"Consumerism and Militarism are the overwhelming fundamentalist churches that we face today. We pray when we buy. We sing perversely to some god when we shoot."

And, elsewhere, in a sermon, it follows that "Shopping is bombing."

“Dear Ambassador, we are concerned that you are perhaps over-focused on human rights to the detriment of commercial interests.”

Excerpt from a 2003 memo from the UK Foreign Office to their Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, who had compiled an overwhelming dossier of evidence on torture in Uzbekistan, including photos of a boy being boiled alive.

Your feet must hurt, because you've been running through my mind all day.