Philosophy

I think there's a difference between God and religion.

Sinead O'Connor

They buried us, but they didn't know we were seeds.

Dinos Christianopoulos, poet who was sidelined by the Greek literary community in the 1970s because he was gay

I want to burden the conscience of the affluent with all the suffering and all the hidden, bitter tears.

Rosa Luxemburg

Love requires the commitment of dealing with another human being.
said in a music video by Cyn

We've done so much work to make the world unstrange, when the world just wants to be strange.

Maria Dahvana Headley

War would end if the dead could return. 

Stanley Baldwin

War would end if the rich had to sacrifice their children.

Stephen McLaren

It takes great courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it.

Oscar Wilde

Poverty is policy

Stephen McLaren

The less I needed, the better I felt

Charles Bukowski

It is impossible to begin to learn that which one thinks one already knows.

Epictetus AD 50 - 135 (approx)

Born a slave, Epictetus was given access to study and he became a teacher and philosopher. He taught that philosophy is a way of life and not simply a theoretical discipline. To Epictetus, all external events are beyond our control; we should accept whatever happens calmly and dispassionately. However, individuals are responsible for their own actions, which they can examine and control through rigorous self-discipline.

If wars can be started by lies, peace can be started by truth.

Julian Assange

Every war in the last 50 years is a result of media lies.

Julian Assange

One can truly know the measure of a society by how it treats its prisoners.
Letter to King Charles, May 2023

Julian Assange

Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

We must love one another or die.

Two lines from W.H.Auden's poem, September 1, 1939, written at the onset of WWII (Germany invaded Poland)

I am prepared to die, but there is no cause for which I am prepared to kill. I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.

Mahatma Gandhi

Societies in decline have no use for visionaries.

We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.

Anaïs Nin
French 20th Century fearless writer

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

JFK

In a time of universal deceit,
telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

George Orwell

The government, which was designed for the people, has got into the hands of the bosses and their employers, the special interests. An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy. 

Woodrow Wilson

When I was growing up, it was 'Communists'. Now it's 'Terrorists'. So, you always have to have somebody to fight and be afraid of, so the war machine can build more bombs, guns, and bullets.

Cindy Sheehan

Cindy is an American anti-war activist whose son, U.S. Army Specialist Casey Sheehan, was killed by enemy action during the Iraq War. She attracted national and international media attention in August 2005 for her extended antiwar protest at a makeshift camp outside President George W. Bush's Texas ranch. Sheehan ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2008. 
She was a vocal critic of President Barack Obama's foreign policy.

Her memoir, Peace Mom: A Mother's Journey Through Heartache to Activism, was published in 2006.
In an interview with The Daily Beast in 2017, Sheehan continued to hold her critical views towards George W. Bush, while also criticizing the militarism of Donald Trump.

Never ever depend on governments or institutions to solve any major problems. All social change comes from the passion of individuals.

Margaret Mead

Empire breeds terrorism.

Pat Buchanan

If you had not suffered as you have, there would be no depth to you as a human being, no empathy.

Eckhart Tolle

If reporters don't report and universities don't debate; if the "open society" is really just a hushed conversation within a gated community; if information is ground under by right-wing think tanks - in short, if power is admired and truth despised - then who will speak the words clearly that need to be heard.

Roger Lange

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. 

Desmond Tutu

Travel is one of the best anti-war weapons that there are. I've been to Iran, and if you're there you see little kids, cops, old people, cemeteries. Once you see that, you can't say, "Oh, Iran, let's bomb them.

Viggo Mortensen

If you ever feel useless, just remember that it took the USA four presidents, thousands of lives, trillions of dollars and twenty years to replace Taliban with Taliban.

John Wright

The perfect dictatorship would have the appearance of a democracy, but would basically be a prison without walls in which the prisoners would not even dream of escaping. It would essentially be a system of slavery where, through consumption and entertainment, the slaves would love their servitudes.

Aldous Huxley

It would be nice to spend billions on schools and roads, but right now that money is desperately needed for political ads.

Andy Borowitz

To be wealthy and honoured in an unjust society is a disgrace. 

Confucius

In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other.

Voltaire (1764)

Grenfell is a lens through which to see how we are governed.

Stephanie Barwise QC

Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you.

Pericles (430 B.C.)

When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it. 

Frederic Bastiat

Nothing truly valuable arises from ambition or from a mere sense of duty; it stems rather from love and devotion towards men. 

Albert Einstein

The dissenter is every human being at those times of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself.

Archibald Macleish

Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold.

Zelda Fitzgerald

Happiness is not so much in having as sharing. We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.

Norman MacEwan

I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn't arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I'm going to be happy in it.

Groucho Marx

Today is the most unusual day because we have never lived it before; we will never live it again; it is the only day we have. 

William A. Ward

The dog you love is emotionally the same as the cow or pig you ate.

Moby

There are strange untapped potentials within our species that our philosophies don't touch on, our religions don't anticipate, our academia doesn't acknowledge, and our common worldviews don't account for.

Caitlin Johnstone

I think a curse should rest on me -- because I love this war. I know it's smashing and shattering the lives of thousands every moment - and yet, I can't help it - I enjoy every second of it.

Winston Churchill

Until all mankind, without exception, undergoes a great change, wars will be waged, everything that has been built up, cultivated and grown will be cut down and disfigured, to begin all over again after that.

Anne Frank