Quotes

Most peacemaker don’t begin with a grand vision. They begin with the troubles at hand and the resources they have. Then you act for good, for justice, for healing, for hope, for peace. It’s as simple as that. — Dan Buttry

Before water turns to ice, it looks just the same as before. Then a few crystals form, and suddenly the whole system undergoes cataclysmic change. — Joanna Rogers Macy

What [is] more helpful to wisdom than the night? — Cyril of Jerusalem

We are what we practice. Therefore, excellence is not an act but a habit. — Aristotle

Fear is a hazard of great endeavors to bridge political differences. In 1963, racial apprehension before [the March on Washington] drove the federal government to furlough its workers for the day. The Pentagon deployed 20,000 paratroopers. Hospitals stockpiled plasma. Washington banned sales of alcohol, and Major League Baseball canceled not just one but two days of [Washington’s baseball games], just to be sure. When the march of benign inspiration embarrassed these measures, opponents still insisted that the civil rights bill would enslave white people. — Taylor Branch

If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth—only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair. — C.S. Lewis

Were I to be reduced again to the chains, I regard being the slave of a religious slaveholder the greatest calamity that could befall me. They are the worst, the basest, the meanest, the most cruel and cowardly of all others. — Frederick Douglass

Laughter at oneself is always proof that God has healed us in the touchy places. — Eugenia Price

War is as outmoded as cannibalism, chattel slavery, blood feuds, and dueling, an insult to God and humanity . . . and a daily crucifixion of Christ. — Muriel Lester

Almost everything in the last two years [since Barack Obama’s election] has made it clear that in American in 2010, the patterns that began in the 17th century are still all-too-much with us, and will be with us, until we figure out what it means . . . [as] Martin King [was] constantly saying to us, “America, you must be born again!” — Vincent Harding