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On the eve of our entry into World War I, William Jennings Bryan, President Woodrow Wilson's first secretary of state, described the United States as "the supreme moral factor in the world's progress and the accepted arbiter of the world's disputes." — Chalmers Johnson

If I adore You out of fear of hell, burn me in hell. If I adore You out of desire for paradise, lock me out of paradise. But if I adore You alone, do not deny to me Your eternal beauty. — Rabia al-Adawiyya, 8th century Sufi mystic

How does blood cleanse, if it is not a matter of revenge? “Washed in the blood of the Lamb” always seems a strange, powerful image to me. I was listening to an old folk spiritual recently, “Wayfaring Stranger,” and I wondered if the wildness and mystery of such traditional Christian images hasn’t gone underground. The song contains this verse: I want to wear a crown of glory When I get home to that good land. I want to shout salvation’s story In concert with the blood-washed band. Shouting salvation’s story has been in vogue lately as a way to secular power, but does our nation, led by a president who calls Jesus his favorite philosopher, still know the difference between a blood-washed and a blood-soaked band? Whatever kind of band we are, the blood has to be hidden. For at the very moment that our society has become more sophisticated at inflicting violence and at fictionalizing it for entertainment, real violence is less visible. — Dan Finlay

I will tell you something about stories they aren’t just entertainment they are all we have to fight off illness and death we don’t have anything if we don’t have the stories their evil is mighty, but it can’t stand up to our stories so they try to make us confused or forget them they would like that because then we would become defenseless. — Leslie Silko

When my thirst got great enough to ask, a stream welled up inside; some jade wave buoyed me forward and I found myself upright in the instant, with a garden inside my own ribs aflourish. There, the arbor leafs. The vines push out plump grapes. You are loved, someone said, take that and eat it. — Mary Karr

Conviction is worthless unless it is converted into conduct. No pressure, no diamonds. Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand. The eye sees what it brings the power to see. War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle. Weak eyes are fondest of glittering objects. — Thomas Carlyle

Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive. — Howard Thurman

Joy, not grit, is the hallmark of holy obedience. — Richard Foster

Lord Jesus Christ, Who didst command us to love our enemies, and those who defame and injure us, and to pray for them and forgive them; Who Thyself didst pray for Thine enemies, who crucified thee: grant us, we pray, the spirit of Christian reconciliation and meekness, that we may heartily forgive every injury and be reconciled with our enemies. Grant us to overcome the malevolence and offences of people by means of Christian meekness and true love of our neighbor. We further beseech Thee, O Lord, to grant to our enemies true peace and forgiveness of sins; and do not allow them to leave this life without true faith and sincere conversion. And help us repay evil with goodness, and to remain safe from the temptations of the devil and from all the perils which threaten us, in the form of visible and invisible enemies. Amen. — Eastern Orthodox prayer for enemies

A conqueror is always a lover of peace. — Prussian general Karl von Clausewitz