‘I am here to organize. I am here to be political. I am here to be
a citizen in a pluralist democracy. . . . When you don’t act, you
act. When you don’t vote, you vote. When you accept the loony logic
of some of the left that there is no political value in supporting
the lesser of two evils, you open the door to the greater evil.
That’s what happens when you despair, you open the door to evil. .
. . Evil is happy refusing funds to American clinics overseas that
counsel abortion, and evil is happy drilling for oil in Alaska;
evil is happy pinching pennies while 40 million people worldwide
suffer and perish from AIDS.’
Playwright Tony Kushner, graduation speech at Vassar
College, The Nation (July 1, 2002)
‘I don’t think that looking younger is very seductive. It seems to
get the biggest publicity, to look younger than you are, or
thinner, but I have found it not to be a particularly successful
strategy.’
Isabella Rossellini, actor, on the philosophy behind her new
line of cosmetics, from My Generation (May/June 2002)
‘Stories make us more alive, more human, more courageous, more
loving. Why does anybody tell a story? It does indeed have
something to do with faith, faith that the universe has meaning,
that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose
or say or do matters, matters cosmically.’
Madeleine L’Engle, author, The Writer (June
2002)
‘Compassion is a kind of fire (Aquinas says compassion is the fire
that Jesus came to set on the earth)-it disturbs, it surprises, it
ignites, it burns, it sears, and it warms. Compassion incinerates
denial; it especially warms and melts cold hearts, cold structures,
frozen minds, and self-satisfied lifestyles. Those who are touched
by compassion have their lives turned upside down. That is not
necessarily a bad thing.
Matthew Fox, Episcopal priest and theologian, in the book
Creation Spirituality
‘Only in Hollywood is ‘literate’ not a compliment.’
Michael Blake, screenwriter, Movie Maker, (Vol. 9,
No. 46).
‘Staying inside the house breeds a sort of insanity always. Every
house is in this sense a hospital. A night and a forenoon is as
much confinement to those wards as I can stand.’
Henry David Thoreau’s journal, December 29, 1856
‘Nuclear bombs, whether they’re used or not, violate everything
that is humane. They alter the meaning of life itself. Why do we
tolerate them? Why do we tolerate these men who use nuclear weapons
to blackmail the entire human race?’
Arundhati Roy, Indian author, ‘Under a Nuclear Shadow’ in
zmag.org
‘All possessions not at the same time beautiful and useful are an
affront to human dignity. Ours is perhaps the first society to find
it natural that some things should be beautiful and others
useful.’
Ananda Coomaraswamy, Indian aesthetician, in the book The
Transformation of Nature in Art
Compiled by Abbie Jarman, Maria Opitz, and Rebecca
Wienbar
