"And for a moment it seemed to me as if I also were buried in a vast grave full of unspeakable secrets. I felt an intolerable weight oppressing my breast, the smell of the damp earth, the unseen presence of victorious corruption, the darkness of an impenetrable night."
Joseph Conrad,
Heart of Darkness, 1899
"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting”
Milan Kundera,
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, 1978
"At the root of America's economic crisis lies a moral crisis: the decline of civic virtue among America's political and economic elite. A society of markets, laws, and elections is not enough if the rich and powerful fail to behave with respect, honesty, and compassion toward the rest of society and toward the world."
Jeffrey Sachs,
The Price of Civilization, October 2011
“When a man takes an oath, Meg, he's holding his own self in his own hands— like water. And if he opens his fingers then, he needn't hope to find himself again. Some men aren't capable of this, but I would be loathe to think your father one of them.”
Robert Bolt,
A Man for All Seasons, July 1960
"Of this
Logos, the Word being eternal, men have proven to be uncomprehending, both before they hear and once they have heard it. For although all things happen according to this Word, they are like the uneducated who first experience words and deeds. And as for the rest, they are as unaware of what they do when they are awake, as they are when they are asleep."
Heraclitus,
On Nature, ~500 BC
"The wealthy, not only by private fraud but also by common laws, do every day pluck and snatch away from the people some part of their daily living. I perceive nothing but a certain conspiracy of rich men in procuring their own commodities under the name and authority of the commonwealth. They invent and devise all means and crafts, first how to keep safely without fear of losing that which they have unjustly gathered together, and next how to hire and abuse the work and labor of the people for as little money and effort as possible."
Thomas More,
Utopia, 1516
"Take a stand for that which is right, and the world may misunderstand you, and criticize you, but you never go alone. Walk with him this morning, and believe in Him, and do what is right, and he'll be with you even until the consummation of the ages. And the world will look at you, and they won't understand you, but you'll go on anyhow.
I will not bow, and God grant that we will never bow, before the gods of evil."
Martin Luther King,
But If Not, 5 November 1967
