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Once upon a time you dressed so fine
You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didnt you?
Peopled call, say, beware doll, youre bound to fall
You thought they were all kiddin you
You used to laugh about
Everybody that was hangin out
Now you dont talk so loud
Now you dont seem so proud
About having to be scrounging for your next meal. – Bob Dylan, Rolling Stone

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“Despite the rapid advances made by civilization in this century, I believe that the most immediate cause of our present dilemma is our undue emphasis solely on material development. We have become so engrossed in its pursuit that, without even knowing it, we have neglected to foster the most basic human needs of love, kindness, cooperation and caring. If we do not know someone or do not feel connected to a particular individual or group, we simply overlook their needs. And yet the development of human society is based entirely on people helping each other. Once we have lost the essential humanity that is our foundation, what is the point of pursuing only material improvement?” – Dalai Lama

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Photo by Llorenzi Wikicommons.

“Goodness is stronger than evil;
Love is stronger than hate;
Light is stronger than darkness;
Victory is ours through him who loves us.”
-Archbishop Desmond Tutu

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Photo Wiki Commons

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Do not attempt to become Buddha. – Dogen

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‘Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven. ‘So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.  – Mathew 6 (NRSV)

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Photo by Simon Koopmann WikiCommons

Believe nothing because a wise man said it.
Believe nothing because it is generally held.
Believe nothing because it is written.
Believe nothing because it is said to be divine
Believe nothing because someone else believes it.
But believe only what you yourself judge to be true.

- The Buddha

The proposition, that the sun is the centre and does not revolve about the earth, is foolish, absurd, false in theology and heretical.

- The Inquisition, on Galileo’s proposals

Image: Wikicommons

“The citizen who thinks he sees that the commonwealth’s political clothes are worn out, and yet holds his peace, and does not agitate for a new suit is disloyal; he is a traitor. That he may be the only one who thinks he sees this decay does not excuse him; it is his duty to agitate anyway.” -Mark Twain

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A man who says that no patriot should attack the war until it is over…is saying no good son should warn his mother of a cliff until she has fallen. – GK Chesterton

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Photo by johnny Wiki Commons

Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Truly I tell you, it will be hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.’ Mathew 19:23-24 (NRSV)

When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist. – Dom Helder Camara

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Photo by Rogiro Flickr

What good fortune for governments that the people do not think.

- Adolph Hitler

Those who can make you believe absurdities
can make you commit atrocities

-Voltaire

by Wing-Chi Poon

Sometimes, if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge and lean over to watch the river slipping slowly away beneath you, you suddenly know everything there is to be known.

- Winnie the Pooh

“Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”

—U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis (1856–1941)

“Naturally, the common people don’t want war, but after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.”

– Hermann Goering. Hitler’s Reich-Marshall at the Nuremberg Trials after WWII.

“Guard against the postures of pretended patriotism”

–George Washington

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Images :: Wikicommons :: “War Scare in Hogan’s Alley” 1896

by Thomas Berg (Wikimedia)

War is a judgment that overtakes societies when they have been living upon ideas that conflict too violently with the laws governing the universe….  Never think that wars are irrational catastrophes: they happen when wrong  ways of thinking and living bring about intolerable situations.

-Dorothy Sayers, in Creed or Chaos, (London: Methuen and Co., 1947)

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