#pragmatism

If we live with possibilities we are exiles from the present which is given us by God to be our own, homeless and displaced in a future or a past which are not ours because they are always beyond our reach. The present is our right place, and we can lay hands on whatever it offers us. ↗

— Thomas Merton

#hope #pragmatism #present #dreams

Cine a ucis stelele? Cine a surpat drumul spre viitor al celor din morminte? ↗

— Ionel Teodoreanu

#dreams #hope #pragmatism #dreams

Ordinary life goes on--that has saved many a man's reason. ↗

— Graham Greene

#life

The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, -- this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost... He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American... ↗

— W.E.B. Du Bois

#dubois #identity #pragmatism #progress #progress

Don’t be deceived when they tell you things are better now. Even if there’s no poverty to be seen because the poverty’s been hidden. Even if you ever got more wages and could afford to buy more of these new and useless goods which industries foist on you and even if it seems to you that you never had so much, that is only the slogan of those who still have much more than you. Don’t be taken in when they paternally pat you on the shoulder and say that there’s no inequality worth speaking of and no more reason to fight because if you believe them they will be completely in charge in their marble homes and granite banks from which they rob the people of the world under the pretence of bringing them culture. Watch out, for as soon as it pleases them they’ll send you out to protect their gold in wars whose weapons, rapidly developed by servile scientists, will become more and more deadly until they can with a flick of the finger tear a million of you to pieces. ↗

— Jean-Paul Marat

#politics #pragmatism #sad-but-true #poverty

The Citizen's Petition reflects Vermont's spirit of pragmatism and across-the-board cooperation. I applaud the 'Campaign to Fix the Debt' for calling attention to one of the country's most pressing problems, our ballooning national debt, and for urging policymakers to find practical solutions. ↗

— Peter Welch

#attention #calling #campaign #citizen #cooperation