#sm

If the anti-abortion movement took a tenth of the energy they put into noisy theatrics and devoted it to improving the lives of children who have been born into lives of poverty, violence, and neglect, they could make a world shine. ↗

— Michael Jay Tucker

#poverty

Ignorance and prejudice are the handmaidens of propaganda. Our mission, therefore, is to confront ignorance with knowledge, bigotry with tolerance, and isolation with the outstretched hand of generosity. Racism can, will, and must be defeated. ↗

— Kofi Annan

#intolerance #prejudice #racism #tolerance #defeat

The last time that I consciously wrote anything to 'save the honor of the Left', as I rather pompously put it, was my little book on the crookedness and cowardice and corruption (to put it no higher) of Clinton. I used leftist categories to measure him, in other words, and to show how idiotic was the belief that he was a liberal's champion. Again, more leftists than you might think were on my side or in my corner, and the book was published by Verso, which is the publishing arm of the New Left Review. However, if a near-majority of leftists and liberals choose to think that Clinton was the target of a witch-hunt and the victim of 'sexual McCarthyism', an Arkansan Alger Hiss in other words, you become weary of debating on their terms and leave them to make the best of it. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#arkansas #bill-clinton #corruption #cowardice #debate

A sure sign of ineptitude and malice is manifested when one's attacker is willing to cover himself with mud in order to try and make some of it adhere to his target. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#debate #ineptitude #malice #norman-g-finkelstein #smear-campaigns

Sanctions make a substantial contribution to power based on privation, and they have never hurt a single despot in the whole history of their use. ↗

— Roger Scruton

#international-sanctions #iraq #iraq-sanctions #kim-jong-il #north-korea

One of the things that we don't want to do is to destroy the infrastructure of Iraq, because in a few days we're going to own that country. ↗

— Tom Brokaw

#infrastructure #iraq #oil #iraq

Faust complained about having two souls in his breast, but I harbor a whole crowd of them and they quarrel. It is like being in a republic. ↗

— Otto von Bismarck

#otto-von-bismarck #procrastination #conflict

In Christ, for the first time, we see that in God himself there exists--within his inseparable unity--the distinction between the Father who gives and the Gift which is given (the Son), but only in the unity of the Holy Spirit. ↗

— Hans Urs von Balthasar

#christ #christianity #god #god-father #god-son

Yet, I didn't understand that she was intentionally disguising her feelings with sarcasm; that was usually the last resort of people who are timid and chaste of heart, whose souls have been coarsely and impudently invaded; and who, until the last moment, refuse to yield out of pride and are afraid to express their own feelings to you. ↗

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#expression

The means of defence against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people. ↗

— James Madison

#liberalism #liberty #tyranny #roman