Another world is not only possible, she is on her way.
On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.

-----Arundhati Roy

TO ALCHEMISTS:

If all you boast of your great art be true ;
Sure, willing poverty lives most in you.

-----Ben Jonson

Force is something you use in the present—you cut down a tree, you build a bridge, you do something. That's force. But power—it's something you can use in the future, and the greatest power in the world is the emotion of an idea."

----- Jeanette Rankin,
the first female representative to the Congress of the United States
and activist for women’s suffrage and peace.

"Telling our lives is important for those who come after us,
for those who will see our experience as part of their own historical struggle."

-----Linda Hogan, Chicakasaw

"The establishment of the chaplainship to Congress is a palpable violation of equal rights, as well as of Constitutional principles: The tenets of the chaplains elected by the majority shut the door of worship against the members whose creeds & consciences forbid a participation in that of the majority. To say nothing of other sects, this is the case with that of Roman Catholics & Quakers who have always had members in one or both of the Legislative branches. Could a Catholic clergyman ever hope to be appointed a Chaplain!

To say that his religious principles are obnoxious or that his sect is small, is to lift the veil at once and exhibit in its naked deformity the doctrine that religious truth is to be tested by numbers or that the major sects have a right to govern the minor.

----- James Madison ( "Father of the American Constitution")

"Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth
—more than ruin—more even than death. ...
Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible,
thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit.
Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid.
Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man."

----- Bertrand Russell

"I pledge allegiance to the Earth,
and to all life that it nourishes
to protect life on our planet,
to live in harmony with nature and to share our resources justly,
so that all people can live with dignity,
in good health and in peace."

This oath is recited each day by students and teachers
at Kawaiaha'o Church School in Honolulu.

"The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it."

-----an unknown, but undoubtedly frustrated, activist
 

"The profoundest act of worship is to try to understand."

----- Cat Faber, The Word of God

"Take care not to feel toward the inhuman as they feel toward others." 

----- Marcus Aurelius, Gay Pagan scholar, philosopher, emperor

Why should not we enjoy an original relation to the universe?

Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition,
and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?

The sun shines also today. There are new lands, new men, new thoughts.

Let us demand our own works and law and worship.


-----Ralph Waldo Emerson

I do not find in our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature.....
Millions of innocent men, women and children,
since the introduction of Christianity,
have been burned, tortured, fined and imprisoned.
What has been the effect of this coercion?
To make half the world fools and half hypocrites;
to support roguery and error all over the world.

----- Thomas Jefferson, Unitarian (Deist), Freemason

"Expect, watch for and embrace uncertainty.                        
Dance with the madness of the cosmos and not against it.
Leave your door open and your heart ready for anything."


  -----Vanessa Rush Southern,                                           
     "This Piece of Eden", Unitarian Universalist Assn., 2003

It is no great matter to make a goddess into a witch
or a virgin into a harlot;
but to achieve the contrary, to give the humiliated dignity,
to make the fallen worth coveting,
for that either art or character is needed.

-----Goethe

Gisli the Outlaw

A minor Icelandic saga, translated by George Webbe Dasent [1866]

Gisli chaunted,                                                                          

"Stay thy hand, be slow to slaughter;
Rouse not men to seek thy life:
Come! thy word to wisdom's daughter
Be not first in stirring strife.
Man of noble nature, ever
Help the weak, the halt, the blind;
Hard the hand that opens never,
Bright and blest the generous mind."

No life grows great until it is focused, dedicated, and disciplined.

----- Henry Emerson Fosdick, Unitarian

Solon's Tenets
from Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers

The people who say you are not facing reality 
actually mean that you are not facing their idea of reality. 
Reality is above all else a variable. 
With a firm enough commitment, 
you can sometimes create a reality which did not exist before.

----- Margaret Halsey (1910-1997)

Life is not a journey to the grave
with the intention of arriving safely in one pretty and well-preserved piece,
but to skid across the line broadside, thoroughly used up, worn out, leaking oil,
shouting, "Geronimo!"

- anonymous

All these benefits of Creation, says Epicurus, we are to ascribe to Nature.

And why not to God, I beseech you? as if they were not both of them one and the same power, working in the whole, and in every part of it. If you call him Almighty Jupiter -- the Thunderer, Creator and Preserver of us all -- it comes to the same issue; some will express him under the notion of Fate; which is only a connection of causes, and himself the uppermost and original, upon which all the rest depend.

The Stoics represent the several functions of the Almighty Power under several appellations. When we speak of him as the father and the fountain of all beings, we call him Bacchus. When we call him under the name Hercules, we denote him to be indefatigable and invincible. And when we contemplate him in the reason, order, proportion, and wisdom of his proceedings, we call him Mercury; so that whichever way we look, and under whatever name we use, we never fail of finding him; for he is every where, and fills his own work.

If a man should borrow money of Seneca, and say that he owes it to Annaeus or Lucius, he may change the name but not his creditor; for let him take which of the three names he pleases, he is still a debtor to the same person. As justice, integrity, prudence, frugality, fortitude are all characteristics of one and the same mind, so when we are pleased, we cannot correctly say that it is one virtue which charms us, but rather the virtuous mind.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Roman Pagan Stoic philosopher, statesman

On the Unity of Godhead, from "Of Benefits"

            This modernized version created by Christa Landon, based on several translations.

"In Nature there are neither rewards nor punishments, 
there are consequences."

-----R.G. Ingersoll, Unitarian, Humanist