Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. What if they are a little coarse, and you may get your coat soiled and torn? What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice? Up again; you shall never be so afraid of a tumble.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Is it right?

Cowardice asks the question: Is it safe? Expediency asks the question: Is it politic? Vanity asks the question: Is it popular? But conscience asks the question: Is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular -- but he must take it simply because conscience tells him it is right.

-- Martin Luther King Jr., from his address, "To Chart Our Course for the Future" (1968).

O Lord, open my eyes that I may see the needs of others; open my ears that I may hear their cries; open my heart so that they need not be without succor; let me not be afraid to defend the weak because of the anger of the strong, nor afraid to defend the poor because of the anger of the rich ... And so open my eyes and my ears that I may this coming day be able to do some work of peace for thee.  

- Alan Paton

The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.

- Alice Walker

You are a Christian only so long as you constantly pose critical questions to the society you live in ... so long as you stay unsatisfied with the status quo and keep saying that a new world is yet to come.

- Henri Nouwen

Peace does not appear so distant as it did. I hope it will come soon, and come to stay; and so come as to be worth the keeping in all future time. 

- Abraham Lincoln,
Letter to James C. Conkling, Aug. 26, 1863.

Dear President Obama...

We join people in your country and around the world in congratulating you on becoming the President-elect of the United States. Your victory has demonstrated that no person anywhere in the world should not dare to dream of wanting to change the world for a better place. We note and applaud your commitment to supporting the cause of peace and security around the world. We trust that you will also make it the mission of your presidency to combat the scourge of poverty and disease everywhere. We wish you strength and fortitude in the challenging days and years that lie ahead. We are sure you will ultimately achieve your dream, making the United States of America a full partner in a community of nations committed to peace and prosperity for all.

- Full text of a message from Nelson Mandela, the first black president of South Africa, to Senator Barack Obama

Without Love

If there is love, there is hope to have real families, real brotherhood, real equanimity, real peace. If the love within your mind is lost, if you continue to see other beings as enemies, then no matter how much knowledge or education you have, no matter how much material progress is made, only suffering and confusion will ensue.

- The Dalai Lama

"Hope"

"Hope" is the thing 
with feathers – 
That perches in the soul – 
And sings the tune 
without the words –
And never stops at all.

- Emily Dickinson

So let me tell you: I intend to protect my home. Praying -- not a curse -- only the hope that my courage will not fail my love. But if by some miracle, and all our struggle, the Earth is spared, only justice to every living thing (and everything is alive) will save humankind.  

- Alice Walker, The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in aTime of Fear

Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it towards others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will also be in our troubled world. 

- Etty Hillesum,
died in Auschwitz in 1943 at the age of 29. From An Interrupted Life, a compilation of her diaries and letters.

I have long since come to believe that people never mean half of what they say, and that it is best to disregard their talk and judge only their actions. - Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness

Lead me from death to life,  from falsehood to truth. Lead me from despair to hope, from fear to trust. Lead me from hate to love,  from war to peace. Let peace fill our hearts,  our world, our universe. Peace, peace, peace.

- Satish Kumar

I believe in person to person; every person is Christ for me, and since there is only one Jesus, that person is the one person in the world at that moment.  - Mother Teresa

Strength to Love

One day we will learn that the heart can never be totally right if the head is totally wrong. Only through the bringing together of head and heart – intelligence and goodness – shall man rise to a fulfillment of his true nature.

- Martin Luther King Jr., from Strength to Love, a collection of Dr. King's sermons.

I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought,
and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.

G.K. Chesterton

An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.

-- Plato

Dear President Obama....

Please don't let Rahm Emmanuel completely dominate the US's reaction to the Israel/Palestine situation...

I came here 25 years ago to live in the countryside and raise my family. We wanted to resettle the whole land of Israel. But now when I see how our soldiers treat Palestinians at the checkpoints, I am ashamed. I want us to get out of here. I want two states for two people. But I can’t get any money for my house and I can’t leave.

-- David Avidan, an Israeli living in the Jewish settlement of Rimonim. He is one of 280,000 Israeli settlers living on Palestinian lands in occupied West Bank territory. (200,000 more Israeli Jews live in East Jerusalem, also captured and occupied since 1967.) According to Avshalom Vilan, an Israeli Parliament member from the left wing Meretz Party, “Half the settlers beyond the barrier are ideologically motivated and do not want to move. But about 40 percent of them are ready to go for a reasonable price.” (Source: The New York Times)

It is no wonder that just the touch of another human being at a dark time can be enough to save the day.

- Frederick Buechner, Beyond Words

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."

-- Oscar Wilde