Some of my saved quotes & quotables

Letter to NYT decrying Zionism in 1948, signed by Albert Einstein

"In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience"

"A riot is the language of the unheard"
"I happen to be a pacifist, but if I had had to make a decision about fighting a war against Hitler, I may have temporarily given up my pacifism and taken up arms."
-MLK Jr, The Other America

There were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror —that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.

-Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

How many more of these goddamn elections are we going to have to write off as lame, but “regrettably necessary” holding actions? And how many more of these stinking double-downer sideshows will we have to go through before we can get ourselves straight enough to put together some kind of national election that will give me and the at least 20 million people I tend to agree with a chance to vote for something, instead of always being faced with that old familiar choice between the lesser of two evils?

- Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72

Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiae's chapter "On Anger" is great and defends the morality of righteous anger.

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.

-Abraham Lincoln