#civil

The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization. ↗

— Sigmund Freud

#first #founder #human #hurled #instead

There is a heady sense of manhood that comes from advancing from apathy to commitment, from timidity to courage, from passivity to aggressiveness. There is an intoxication that comes from standing up to the police at last. ↗

— David T. Dellinger

#courage #justice #resistance #courage

We knew no one man had killed the prophet. Rather, the combined weight of racism and an absence of moral courage had crushed him. A constitution ignored, laws denied, these were the weapons. America pulled the trigger. ↗

— Marita Golden

#civil-rights-movement #martin-luther-king #mlk-martin-luther-king #courage

Es ist wichtig zu begreifen, dass wir der Toleranz nicht dienen, wenn wir unser Profil verwässern, sondern indem wir uns umgekehrt unserer eigenen Werte wieder vergewissern. [...] Wir tun der Toleranz auch nichts Böses an, wenn wir die Menschenrechte verteidigen, wie sie in den letzten Jahrhunderten und Jahrzehnten entwickelt und niedergeschrieben wurden in der Allgemeinen Erklärung der Menschenrechte der Vereinten Nationen und einer Vielzahl von Konventionen, die detailliert den Schutz einzelner Menschenrechte regeln - etwa zum Schutz von Flüchtlingen, zur Verhinderung von Völkermord, gegen die Diskriminierung der Frau etc. Fast alle Staaten der Welt haben sich nach tiefer leidvoller Erfahrung, nach nationaler Hybris und nach ideologischem oder religösem Fanatismus im Prinzip auf diese Grundrechte und die Rule of Law als Minimum einer Überlebensordnung geeinigt. Die als universell, unveräußerlich und unteilbar angesehenen Menschenrechte sind daher ein gemeinsames Gut der Menschheit. Und wir dürfen und müssen gegenüber kommunistischen, fanatisch-islamistischen oder despotischen Staaten über ihre Verletzung sprechen; denn als Menschen sind wir verpflichtet, die Menschenrechte unserer Mitmenschen zu respektieren und zu verteidigen. ↗

— Joachim Gauck

#courage #democracy #empowerment #human-rights #humanity

[Ella Baker]'s second defining characteristic was her dislike of top-down leadership... 'She felt leaders were not appointed but the rose up. Someone will rise. Someone will emerge'. It was an attitude Baker shared with some of the older women in the movement. ↗

— Gail Collins

#ella-baker #feminism #grassroots-organizing #leadership #naacp

Not until the beginning of the 20th century did Europe's urban populations finally become self-sustaining: before then, constant immigration of healthy peasants from the countryside was necessary to make up for the constant deaths of city dwellers from crowd diseases. ↗

— Jared Diamond

#disease #history #death

The fiendlike skill we display in the invention of all manner of death-dealing engines, the vindictiveness with which we carry on our wars, and the misery and desolation that follow in their train, are enough of themselves to distinguish the white civilized man as the most ferocious animal on the face of the earth. ↗

— Herman Melville

#violence #war #white-people #death

Western Civilization was responsible for a paradigm shift in history. It created the industrial and scientific revolutions that enabled the birth of a transportation, communications and knowledge revolution unprecedented in the 5 billion year history of this planet. Unfortunately this revolution took place amidst a moral vacuum at the very top of the power structure. It is as if a three year old child had been given control over both a candy story and a shotgun. He was able to use the shotgun to get all the candy he wanted but he had no idea what to do next. Whenever somebody tried to tell him too much candy was bad for him, he shot the person who said that. ↗

— Benjamin Fulford

#western-civilization #communication

A liberal education is at the heart of a civil society, and at the heart of a liberal education is the act of teaching. ↗

— A. Bartlett Giamatti

#act #civil #civil society #heart #liberal

Civilization depends on continually making the effort, of never giving in. It needs to be cared for by men of goodwill, protected from the dark. ↗

— Iain Pears

#dreams