Quotes

Which God Do You Kill For? — bumper sticker

Let's Fix Democracy in This Country First — bumper sticker

Learning music by reading about it is like making love by mail. — Luciano Pavarotti

When a friend counseled him to “do try to moderate your indignation, and keep more cool,” abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison responded, “I have need to be all on fire, for I have mountains of ice to melt!” — Suzanne Jurmain

Just listen to retired Army Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to [Secretary of State] Colin Powell. In a speech in Washington last year, Wilkerson, an outspoken critic of the Bush administration’s unilateralism, revealed a plan that was far more ambitious—and ominous. “We had a discussion in policy-planning about actually mounting an operation to take the oil fields in the Middle East, internationalize them, put them under some sort of U.N. trusteeship, and administer the revenues and the oil accordingly. That’s how serious we thought about it,” he said. — Cynthia Tucker

America has become a Linus nation . . . always searching for our security blanket. . . . There is nothing more dangerous than a powerful nation that is afraid. — Methodist Bishop Timothy W. Whitaker

My sincere view is that the commitment of our forces to this fight was done with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions—or bury the results. — – Marine Lt. Gen. Greg Newbold, former director of operations at the Pentagon’s military joint staff, writing in Time magazine. Newbold resigned four months before the invasion of Iraq.

[G]race uses faltering beginnings to achieve its own unforeseeable ends. — James Finley

In our culture, mysticism is sadly misunderstood and maligned as disconnected with reality: impractical at best and dangerously irresponsible at worst. Even those who may admire mysticism often regard it as the special capacity of a few spiritually gifted people, almost all of whom lived in the Middle Ages. . . . Mysticism is not an escape from reality, but the opposite. It is a prayerful penetration of reality. — Ellen F. Davis

I have an attachment to the musical [South Pacific] because I was in our High School production . I know the songs and the dialogue and still got caught by one line. There is a scene where a local plantation owner is asked to undertake a dangerous mission on behalf of the US Navy. He declines. The officers try to persuade him by recounting all they are doing to fight the Japanese. He replies: "I know what you are against, but I do not know what you are for." — Cam Watts