BIRTHDAYS & QUOTATIONS

January 14, 1875 Albert Schweitzer "The purpose of human life is to serve, and to show compassion and the will to help others." January 14, 1892 Martin Niemoller "First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a socialist. Then they...

January 12, 1835 Brooke Foss Westcott "What we can do for another is the test of powers; what we can suffer is the test of love." January 12, 1920 James L. Farmer, Jr. "Courage, after all, is not being unafraid, but doing what needs to be done in spite of fear."

January 11, 1907 Abraham Joshua Heschel "Racism is man's gravest threat to man - the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason." January 11, 1955 Max Lucado "A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd."

January 10, 1834 Lord Acton "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." January 10, 1864 George Washington Carver How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and...

January 9, 1859 Carrie Chapman Catt "No written law has ever been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion." January 9, 1908 Simone de Beauvoir "It is not in giving life but in risking life that man is raised above the animal; that is why...

January 8, 1601 Baltasar Gracian "Never open the door to a lesser evil, for other and greater ones invariably slink in after it." January 8, 1885 A.J. Muste "There is no way to peace; peace is the way."

January 6, 1882 Sam Rayburn "Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a good carpenter to build one." January 6, 1883 Kahlil Gibran "When we turn to one another for counsel we reduce the number of our enemies."

January 5, 1931 Alvin Ailey "From his roots as a slave, the American Negro - sometimes sorrowing, sometimes jubilant but always hopeful - has touched, illuminated, and influenced the most remote preserves of world civilisation. I and my dance theater celebrate this...

January 4, 1896 Everett Dirksen "There is no force so powerful as an idea whose time has come." January 4, 1943 Doris Kearns Goodwin "The past is not simply the past, but a prism through which the subject filters his own changing self-image."

January 2, 1915 John Hope Franklin "We also learn that this country and the Western world have no monopoly of goodness and truth and scholarship, we begin to appreciate the ingredients that are indispensable to making a better world. In a life of learning that is,...

December 31, 1908 Simon Wiesenthal "For evil to flourish, it only requires good men to do nothing." December 31, 1968 Junot Díaz "You can never run away. Not ever. The only way out is in."

December 30, 1873 Al Smith "All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy." December 30, 1946 Patti Smith "You can't carve up the world. It's not a pie."  

January 29, 1809 William E. Gladstone "Nothing that is morally wrong can be politically right." January 29, 1876 Pablo Casals "Each person has inside a basic decency and goodness. If he listens to it and acts on it, he is giving a great deal of what it is the world...

December 28, 1856 Woodrow Wilson "In the Lord's Prayer, the first petition is for daily bread. No one can worship God or love his neighbor on an empty stomach." December 28, 1954 Denzel Washington "You pray for rain, you gotta deal with the mud too. That's a part of...

December 27, 1822 Louis Pasteur "Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world." December 27, 1948 Juan Felipe Herrera "Poetry is a call to action, and it also is action."

December 26, 1894 Jean Toomer "We learn the rope of life by untying its knots." December 26, 1921 Steve Allen "Totalitarianism is patriotism institutionalized."

December 25, 1931 Carlos Castenada "We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same." December 26, 1894 Jean Toomer "We learn the rope of life by untying its knots."

December 24, 1725 Benjamin Rush "Controversy is only dreaded by the advocates of error." December 24, 1881 Juan Ramón Jiménez  "If they give you ruled paper, write the other way."

December 23, 1926 Robert Bly "It’s all right if you grow your wings on the way down." December 23, 1943 Margaret MacMillan "An apology offered and, equally important, received is a step towards reconciliation and, sometimes, recompense. Without that process, hurts can...

December 22, 1912 Lady Bird Johnson "The clash of ideas is the sound of freedom." December 22, 1960 Mark Frauenfelder "Coming up with a way to fix mistakes challenges your creativity and your critical thinking skills and your resourcefulness. Often you end up with...

December 21, 1892 Rebecca West "Did St. Francis preach to the birds? Whatever for? If he really liked birds he would have done better to preach to the cats." December 21, 1948 Samuel L. Jackson "People know about the Klan and the overt racism, but the killing of one's...

December 20, 1895 Susanne Langer "If we would have new knowledge, we must get a whole world of new questions." December 20, 1954 Sandra Cisneros "The older I get, the more I'm conscious of ways very small things can make a change in the world. Tiny little things, but...

December 19, 1875 Carter G. Woodson "When you control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his actions." December 19, 1987 Ronan Farrow "LGBT people are some of the bravest and most potent change agents and leaders I have encountered, and the most forceful...

December 18, 1917 Ossie Davis "Any form of art is a form of power; it has impact, it can affect change - it can not only move us, it makes us move." December 16, 1927 Ramsey Clark A right is not what someone gives you; it's what no one can take from you.

December 17, 1916 Penelope Fitzgerald "However, no two people see the external world in exactly the same way. To every separate person a thing is what he thinks it is - in other words, not a thing, but a think." December 17, 1936 Pope Francis "Each of us has a vision...

December 16, 1901 Margaret Mead "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." December 16, 1917 Arthur C. Clarke "It is not easy to see how the more extreme forms of nationalism can...

December 15, 1913 Muriel Rukeyser "The universe is made of stories, not of atoms." December 15, 1959 Donna Brazile "A government of, by, and for the people requires that people talk to people, that we can agree to disagree but do so in civility. If we let the...

December 14, 1883 Morihei Ueshiba "As soon as you concern yourself with the 'good' and 'bad' of your fellows, you create an opening in your heart for maliciousness to enter. Testing, competing with, and criticizing others weaken and defeat you." December 14, 1897...

December 13, 1797 Heinrich Heine "Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings." December 13, 1903 Ella Baker "Give light and people will find the way."

December 11, 1911 Naguib Mahfouz "You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions." December 11, 1973 Mos Def "Good art provides people with a vocabulary about things they can't articulate."

December 10, 1805 William Lloyd Garrison "With reasonable men, I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost." December 10, 1830 Emily Dickinson "They might not need me; but...

December 9, 1608 John Milton "He that studieth revenge keepeth his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well." December 9, 1912 Tip O'Neill "All politics is local."

December 7, 1873 Willa Cather "There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm." December 7, 1927 Henepola Gunaratana "When you have learned compassion for yourself, compassion for others is automatic."

December 6, 1927 Patsy Mink "It is easy enough to vote right and be consistently with the majority. But it is more often more important to be ahead of the majority and this means being willing to cut the first furrow in the ground and stand alone for a while if...

December 5, 1927 Bhumibol Adulyadej "A good person can make another person good; it means that goodness will elicit goodness in the society; other persons will also be good." December 5, 1934 Joan Didion "To free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to...

December 4, 1795 Thomas Carlyle "Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight." December 4, 1925 Albert Bandura "Moral justification is a powerful disengagement mechanism. Destructive conduct is made personally and socially acceptable by portraying it in the...

December 3, 1842 Ellen Swallow Richards "If you keep your feathers well oiled the water of criticism will run off as from a duck's back." December 3, 1935 Eddie Bernice Johnson "We can't go all over the world killing people because we disagree with them."...

December 1, 1797 Sojourner Truth "They are the same stars, and that is the same moon, that look down upon your brothers and sisters, and which they see as they look up to them, though they are ever so far away from us, and each other." December 1, 1948 N.T. Wright...

November 30, 1936 Abbie Hoffman "You measure a democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." November 30, 1947 David Mamet "Every reiteration of the idea that nothing matters debases the human...