BIRTHDAYS & QUOTATIONS

May 28, 1759 William Pitt the Younger "Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who posses it; where law ends, tyranny begins." May 28, 1917 Barry Commoner "If you can see the light at the end of the tunnel, you are looking the wrong way."

May 27, 1819 Julia Ward Howe "Ambitious people climb, but faithful people build." May 27, 1911 Hubert Humphrey "Compassion is not weakness, and concern for the unfortunate is not socialism."

May 22, 1943 Betty Williams "We believe in taking down the barriers, but we also believe in the most energetic reconciliation among peoples by getting them to know each other, talk each other's languages, understand each other's fears and beliefs, getting to know each...

May 22, 1859 Arthur Conan Doyle "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." May 22, 1930 Harvey Milk "The fact is that more people have been slaughtered in the name of religion than for any other single reason....

May 18, 1872 Bertrand Russell "War does not determine who is right - only who is left." May 19, 1925 Malcolm X "If you don't stand for something you will fall for anything."

May 17, 1794 Anna Jameson "In morals what begins in fear usually ends in wickedness; in religion what begins in fear usually ends in fanaticism. Fear, either as a principle or a motive, is the beginning of all evil." May 17, 1953 Tara Brach "Feeling compassion for...

May 15, 1856 L. Frank Baum "There is no living thing that is not afraid when it faces danger. The true courage is in facing danger when you are afraid." May 15, 1935 Utah (Bruce) Phillips "The Earth is not dying, it is being killed, and those who are killing it have...

May 12, 1895 Jiddu Krishnamurti "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." May 13, 1944 Armistead Maupin "The world changes in direct proportion to the number of people willing to be honest about their lives."

May 11, 1918 Richard P. Feynman "The most interesting phenomena are, of course, in the new places, the places where the rules do not work - not the places where they do work! That is the way in which we discover new rules." May 12, 1820 Florence Nightingale "So never...

May 10, 1955 Rick Steves "Fear is for people who don't get out very much." May 10, 1960 Paul David Hewson, KBE "Idealism detached from action is just a dream. But idealism allied with pragmatism, with rolling up your sleeves and making the world bend a bit, is very...

May 9, 1921 Daniel Berrigan "There is no peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war - at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake." May 9, 1944 William (Willie) C....

May 7, 1754 Joseph Joubert "A part of kindness consists in loving people more than they deserve." May 7, 1861 Rabindranath Tagore "You can't cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water."

May 5, 1479 Guru Amar Das “They who quarrel with others, instead of quarrelling with their own hearts, waste their lives.” May 5, 1813 Søren Kierkegaard "Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced."

May 4, 1796 Horace Mann "Education is our only political safety. Outside of this ark all is deluge." May 4, 1916 Jane Jacobs "Advanced cultures are usually sophisticated enough, or have been sophisticated enough at some point in their pasts, to realize that foxes...

May 3, 1849 Jacob Riis "I'd look at one of my stonecutters hammering away at the rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet, at the hundred and first blow it would split in two, and I knew it was not that blow that did it, but all that...

April 28, 1926 Nell Harper Lee "Real courage is when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what." April 28, 1948 Terry Pratchett "It's not worth doing something unless you were doing something that someone,...

April 26, 1564 William Shakespeare "In time we hate that which we often fear." April 26, 1889 Ludwig Wittgenstein "A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards; as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push."

April 18, 1813 James McCune Smith "Freedom and Liberty are not synonyms. Freedom is an essence; Liberty, an accident. Freedom is born with a man; Liberty may be conferred upon him… Freedom is the gift of God; Liberty, the creature of society. Liberty may be taken away...

April 16, 1889 Charlie Chaplin "We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.” April 16, 1906 Wendell Johnson...

April 16, 1844 Anatole France "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." April 16, 1924 Madanjeet Singh “Ideas have never succeeded in isolation unless they translated...

April 15, 1889 A. Philip Randolph "Justice is never given; it is exacted and the struggle must be continuous for freedom is never a final fact, but a continuing evolving process to higher and higher levels of human, social, economic, political and religious...

April 13, 1840 Samuel Ullman "Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul." April 13, 1906 Samuel Beckett "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try...

April 10, 1930 Dolores Huerta "If you haven't forgiven yourself something, how can you forgive others?" April 10, 1954 Annie Lamott "The opposite of faith is not doubt: It is certainty. It is madness. You can tell you have created God in your own image when it turns...

April 9, 1905 J. William Fullbright "The citizen who criticizes his country is paying it an implied tribute." April 9, 1929 Joyce Appleby "Our sense of worth, of well-being, even our sanity depends upon our remembering. But, alas, our sense of worth, our well-being,...

April 8, 563 Buddha "Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned." April 8, 1938 Kofi Annan "To live is to choose. But to choose well, you must know who you are and what you stand for,...

April 2, 1840 Emile Zola "If you shut up truth, and bury it underground, it will but grow." April 3, 1822 Edward Everett Hale "I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can...

April 1, 1929 Milan Kundera "The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history ... The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting." April 1, 1940 Wangari Muta Maathai "We owe it...

March 29, 1918 Pearl Bailey "Hungry people cannot be good at learning or producing anything, except perhaps violence." March 30, 1903 Countee Cullen "For we must be one thing or the other, an asset or a liability, the sinew in your wing to help you soar, or the chain...

March 25, 1906 A.J.P. Taylor "There is nothing more agreeable in life than to make peace with the Establishment—and nothing more corrupting." March 25, 1925 Flannery O'Connor "Conviction without experience makes for harshness."

March 24, 1897 Wilhelm Reich "Only the liberation of the natural capacity for love in human beings can master their sadistic destructiveness." March 24, 1936 David Suzuki "We're in a giant car heading towards a brick wall and everyone's arguing over where they're...

March 21, 1806 Benito Juarez "Peace is the respect for the rights of others." ("El respeto al derecho ajeno es la paz.") March 22, 1930 Derek Bok "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance."

March 20, 1612 Anne Bradstreet "Authority without wisdom is like a heavy ax without an edge, fitter to bruise than polish." March 20, 1828 Henrik Ibsen "Never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for freedom and truth."