I am done with great things and big things,
great institutions and big success,
and I am for those tiny, invisible, molecular, moral forces
that work from individual to individual through
the cranies of the world
like so many rootlets
or like the capillary oozing of water
yet which, if you give them time
will rend the hardest monuments of man's pride'.
William James 1899
I maintain that we are born and grow up with a fondness for each other and that we have genes for that. We can be talked out of that fondness. For the genetic message is like distant music and some of us are hard of hearing. Societies are noisy affairs drowning out the sound of ourselves and our connection. Hard of hearing, we go to war. Stone deaf, we make thermo nuclear missiles. Nonetheless, the music is there, waiting for more listeners.
Lewis Thomas
Most folks shouldn't have a funeral. Most folks should go straight from the morgue to the cemetery. Because most folks ain't done nothing we can talk about. Bought you a nice house? Who cares? We'll sell your house as soon as you die. The only thing that will matter two minutes after you're gone is if you did something for somebody other than yourself.
Al Sharpton
We can't do everything; and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something and to do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for God's grace to enter and do the rest.
Oscar Romero
Here's the test to find out when your mission on earth is finished: if you're alive, it isn't.
Richard Bach
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
Martin Luther King
The mystery of the poor is this: that they are Jesus, and what you do for them, you do for Him. It is the only way we have of knowing and believing in our love. The mystery of poverty is that by sharing in it, making ourselves poor in giving to others, increases our knowledge of and belief in love.
Dorothy Day
En toda epoca y en cualquier sociedad, el acto supremo es
darse a si mismo, perderse con el fin de encontrarse. Solo se tiene
lo que se da.
(In every age in whatever society the supreme act
is the giving of one's self. to lose yourself towards the end of
finding yourself. You only have what you give.)
Ignazio Silone
We can't do great things, only small things with great love.
Mother Theresa
Go to the people.
Live with them.
Learn from them.
Love them.
Start with what they know.
Build with what they have.
But with the best leaders,
when the work is done,
the task accomplished,
the people will say
"We have done this ourselves".
Lao Tsu 700 bc
Each time a man stands for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
Robert Kennedy
It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied to a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.
Martin Luther King
Do all the good you can,
by all the means you can,
in all the ways you can,
in all the places you can,
at all the times you can,
to all the people you can,
as long as ever you can.
John Wesley
Little progress can be made by merely attempting to repress our evil. Our great hope lies in developing what is good.
Calvin Coolidge
Siempre adelante, como el sapo. (Always forward, like the toad.)
Carlos Ortiz
If you hate injustice, lust, tyranny and greed, hate those things in yourself first.
Mohandas Gandhi
Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow to children.
Kahil Gibran
Francis of Assisi taught me that there is a wound in the creation, and that the greatest use we can make of our lives is to ask to be made a healer.
Alan Paton
Teaching a child not to step on a caterpillar is as valuable to the child as it is to the caterpillar.
Bradley Miller
Getting close enough to hear, see, touch, smell and taste the reality of others is what always makes the difference.
Jim Wallis
The words of the tongue should have three gatekeepers.
Arab proverb
Money can buy you a great dog but only love can make him wag his tail.
Steven Tyler
Sign me up as a diplomat. My only office is the park.
Paul Kantner
Is this thing on?
Bill Artzberger
The first man to compare the cheeks of a young woman to a rose was obviously a poet.
The first to repeat it was possibly an idiot.
Salvador Dali