Quotes by American Authors - Page 110

One of the greatest lies is to believe that we don’t have value. One of the greatest mistakes is to act on that belief. And the greatest liberation is found in looking at the cross of Christ and realizing the enormity of the lie.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
White ain't nothing.'Mama's grip did not lessen. 'It is something, Cassie. White is something just like black is something. Everybody born on this Earth is something, and nobody, no matter what color is better than anybody else.''Then how come Mr. Simms don't know that.''Because he's one of those people who has to believe that white people are better than black people to make himself feel big.' I stared questionably at Mama, not really understanding.Mama squeezed my hadn't and explained further, 'You see, Cassie, many years ago, when our people were fist brought from Africa in chains to work as slaves in this country--''Like Big Ma's Papa and Mama?'Mama nodded. "Yes, baby. Like Papa Luke and Mama Rachel. Except they were born right here is Mississippi, but their grandparents were born in Africa. And when they came, there was some white people who thought that is was wrong for any people to be slaves. So the people who needed slaves to work in their fields and the people who were making money bringing slaves from Africa preached that black people weren't really people like white people were, so slavery was all right. They also said that slavery was good for us because it thought us to be good Christians, like the white people.' She sighed deeply, her voice fading into a distant whisper, 'But they didn't teach us Christianity to save our souls, but to teach us obedience. They were afraid of slave revolts and they wanted us to learn the Bible's teachings about slaves being loyal to their masters. But even teaching Christianity didn't make us stop wanting to be free, and many slaves ran away.”...She was silent for a moment, then went on. 'Well, after a while, slavery became so profitable to people who had slaves and even to those who didn't that most people started to believe that black people weren't really people like everybody else. And when the Civil War was fought, and Mama Rachel and Papa Luke and all the other slaves were freed, people continued to think that way. Even the Northeners who fought the war didn't really see us equal to white people.'So, now, even though seventy years have passed since slavery, most white people still think of us as they did then, that we're not as good as they are. And people like Mr. Simms hold onto that belief harder than some other folks because they have little else to hold onto. For him to believe that he is better than we are makes him think that he's important, simply because he's white.
Mildred D. Taylor
For alongside our famous individualism, there's another ingredient in the American saga- a belief that we're all connected as one people. If there's a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me- even if it's not my child. If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for their prescription drugs and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer- even if it's not my grandparent. If there's an Arab-American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that that threatens my civil liberties. It is that fundamental belief- I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper- that makes this country work.
Barack Obama
The assumption of ‘rights’ is the cancer of privilege.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
An institution rooted in slavery can never set us free.
DaShanne Stokes
No freedom till we're equal. Damn right I support it.
Macklemore
Free elections don't always result in fair elections.
DaShanne Stokes
Socialists and Progressives confuse compassion and compulsion.
A.E. Samaan
Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long.
Kate Chopin
Freedom is a hard habit to break.
Robert A. Heinlein
Shame is embarrassment multiplied against itself until it dies under it’s own weight and we with it. Forgiveness is freedom multiplied against the Cross until it flies under it’s own liberation and we with it.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
I have spent a great deal of my life struggling to keep myself in control. To know myself inside and out, everything In perfect order. I lose that when I'm with you. That frightens me, and it frightens me how much I like it. How tempting it is to lose myself in you. To let it go. To let you save me from breaking chandeliers rather than constantly worrying about it, myself.
Erin Morgenstern
[T]he state should not impose a preferred way of life, but should leave its citizens as free as possible to choose their own values and ends, consistent with a similar liberty for others.
Michael J. Sandel
First, individual rights cannot be sacrificed for the sake of the general good, and second, the principles of justice that specify these rights cannot be premised on any particular vision of the good life. What justifies the rights is not that they maximize the general welfare or otherwise promote the good, but rather that they comprise a fair framework within which individuals and groups can choose their own values and ends, consistent with a similar liberty for others.
Michael J. Sandel
When religious people take the stance that they don’t owe anyone that is hurting closure or answers then God is not winning. Conflict continues because of lack of communication, fear and indifference.
Shannon L. Alder
... the young people are the ones who most quickly identify with the struggle and the necessity to eliminate the evil conditions that exist.
Malcolm X
The chains that break you, are the chains that make you. And the chains that make you, are the chains you break.
Anthony Liccione
Nearly all people stand in great horror of annihilation, and yet to give up your individuality is to annihilate yourself. Mental slavery is mental death, and every man who has given up his intellectual freedom is the living coffin of his dead soul.
Robert G. Ingersoll
The rich run a global system that allows them to accumulate capital and pay the lowest possible price for labour. The freedom that results applies only to them. The many simply have to work harder, in conditions that grow ever more insecure, to enrich the few. Democratic politics, which purports to enrich the many, is actually in the pocket of those bankers, media barons and other moguls who run and own everything.
Charles Moore
Like a butterfly stuck in a chrysalis, waiting for the perfect moment, I was waiting for the day I could burst forth and fly away and find my home.
Emme Rollins
The world is not ready for some people when they show up, but that shouldn't stop anyone.
Ashly Lorenzana
It is the fate of great achievements, born from a way of life that sets truth before security, to be gobbled up by you and excreted in the form of shit. For centuries great, brave, lonely men have been telling you what to do. Time and again you have corrupted, diminished and demolished their teachings; time and again you have been captivated by their weakest points, taken not the great truth, but some trifling error as your guiding principal. This, little man, is what you have done with Christianity, with the doctrine of sovereign people, with socialism, with everything you touch. Why, you ask, do you do this? I don't believe you really want an answer. When you hear the truth you'll cry bloody murder, or commit it. … You had your choice between soaring to superhuman heights with Nietzsche and sinking into subhuman depths with Hitler. You shouted Heil! Heil! and chose the subhuman. You had the choice between Lenin's truly democratic constitution and Stalin's dictatorship. You chose Stalin's dictatorship. You had your choice between Freud's elucidation of the sexual core of your psychic disorders and his theory of cultural adaptation. You dropped the theory of sexuality and chose his theory of cultural adaptation, which left you hanging in mid-air. You had your choice between Jesus and his majestic simplicity and Paul with his celibacy for priests and life-long compulsory marriage for yourself. You chose the celibacy and compulsory marriage and forgot the simplicity of Jesus' mother, who bore her child for love and love alone. You had your choice between Marx's insight into the productivity of your living labor power, which alone creates the value of commodities and the idea of the state. You forgot the living energy of your labor and chose the idea of the state. In the French Revolution, you had your choice between the cruel Robespierre and the great Danton. You chose cruelty and sent greatness and goodness to the guillotine. In Germany you had your choice between Goring and Himmler on the one hand and Liebknecht, Landau, and Muhsam on the other. You made Himmler your police chief and murdered your great friends. You had your choice between Julius Streicher and Walter Rathenau. You murdered Rathenau. You had your choice between Lodge and Wilson. You murdered Wilson. You had your choice between the cruel Inquisition and Galileo's truth. You tortured and humiliated the great Galileo, from whose inventions you are still benefiting, and now, in the twentieth century, you have brought the methods of the Inquisition to a new flowering. … Every one of your acts of smallness and meanness throws light on the boundless wretchedness of the human animal. 'Why so tragic?' you ask. 'Do you feel responsible for all evil?' With remarks like that you condemn yourself. If, little man among millions, you were to shoulder the barest fraction of your responsibility, the world would be a very different place. Your great friends wouldn't perish, struck down by your smallness.
Wilhelm Reich
Do not make the mistake of thinking that you have to agree with people and their beliefs to defend them from injustice.
Bryant McGill
All the animals, the plants, the minerals, even other kinds of men, are being broken and reassembled every day, to preserve an elite few, who are the loudest to theorize on freedom, but the least free of all.
Thomas Pynchon
Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves.
Herbert Marcuse
The most loving parents and relatives commit murder with smiles on their faces. They force us to destroy the person we really are: a subtle kind of murder.
Jim Morrison
Marriage is a fine institution, but I'm not ready for an institution.
Mae West
Every tomorrow is an outcome of what I do today, and the beauty of it all is that today is happening all the time.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Don’t pass on your passions, to settle in the stale normality. Endure. Strive. Ensure.
Anthony Liccione
Have you ever dreamed of one thing for so long, wanted nothing more than to have that dream fulfilled, only to find out that maybe it wasn't what you actually wanted all along?"He juggled four stones lightly. "I believe that's called growing up.
Anne Elisabeth Stengl
Believe in your dream and define yourself endlessly.
Debasish Mridha
Potemkin suffered bitterly from having nothing left to want. For when dreams turn into reality, there is an empty spot where the dreams used to be, and Potemkin had no dreams left.
Eleanor Herman
As we work together as a team, God grows our dreams into something greater than we can accomplish alone.
Dillon Burroughs
Healing is that place where we step into 20 seconds of insane courage because we need to either close that door or hold it open. Regardless of the outcome, the truth is what sets you free never the fear of not knowing.
Shannon L. Alder
The streets of America may not have been paved with gold, but they were cobbled in middle-class dreams.
Regina Lee Blaszczyk
Programming your mind with positive thoughts each day will go a long way to keep you from allowing external criticism to derail your dreams.
Ken Poirot
We grew up on the same street,You and me.We went to the same schools,Rode the same bus,Had the same friends,And even shared spaghettiWith each other's families.And though our roots belong toThe same tree,Our branches have grownIn different directions.Our tree,Now resembles a thousandOther treesIn a sea of a trillionOther treesWith parallel destiniesAnd similar dreams.You cannot envy the branchThat grows biggerFrom the same seed,And you cannotBlame it on the sun's direction.But you still compare us,As if we're still those twoKids at the parkSlurping down slushies andEating ice cream.Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun (2010)
Suzy Kassem
FORKED BRANCHESWe grew up on the same street,You and me.We went to the same schools,Rode the same bus,Had the same friends,And even shared spaghettiWith each other's families.And though our roots belong toThe same tree,Our branches have grownIn different directions.Our tree,Now resembles a thousandOther treesIn a sea of a trillionOther treesWith parallel destiniesAnd similar dreams.You cannot envy the branchThat grows biggerFrom the same seed,And you cannotBlame it on the sun's direction.But you still compare us,As if we're still those twoKids at the parkSlurping down slushies andEating ice cream. Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun (2010)
Suzy Kassem
You know that's not true. We have something, Helena. In another life, it would have been a beautiful something."That hurts. God, does it. I've seen that life. He doesn't even know what he's talking about. In his mind, I'm just some possibility that could have been, but in my mind, he's the only possibility. I step close to him, close enough to see the stubble on his cheeks. I reach up to touch it, and it scrapes against the tender side of my hand. Kit closes his eyes. "There's a house uptown on Washington ; we live there together in that life," I say softly. "Everything is green, green, green in our backyard. We have two children, a boy and a girl. She looks like you," I say. "But she acts like me." I carees his cheek because I know it's the last time I'm going to get to do it. Kit's eyes are open and storming. I run my teeth across my bottom lip before I continue. "In the summer, we make love outside, against the big wooden table that still holds our dinner dishes. And we talk about all the places we want to make love." I lick the tears from my lip where they are pooling. Running in a straight line down my cheeks, a leaky faucet. "And we're so happy, Kit. It's like a dream every day." I reach up on my tiptoes and kiss him softly on the lips, letting him taste my tears. He's staring at me so hard I want to crack. "But, it's just a dream, isn't it?
Tarryn Fisher
Night-time is being brushed aside like so much cobweb. The day is wound up and begins even before the last haunted dreams, the last of the fog, those spectral and evanescent residues, have faded away.
Gregory Maguire
They say that dreams are only real as long as they last. Couldn't you say the same thing about life?
Richard Linklater
Someday" is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you.
Timothy Ferriss
She saw Luke, standing atop a pile of bones. Jace with white feathered wings sprouting out of his back, Isabelle sitting naked with her whip curled around her like a net of gold rings, Simon with crosses burned into the palms of his hands. Angels, falling and burning. Falling out of the sky.
Cassandra Clare
Dreams are a simple psychological emetic, and people who have them are more blessed than cursed
Stephen King
You are greater than you can possibly imagine, if you would only free yourself up to imagine.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
In many instances, the failures of my greatest schemes ultimately lead to the fulfillment of my greatest successes. Therefore, God will allow our most cherished dreams to perish so that we might turn and seek out His most cherished plans.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
The lamplight was eerie, and, standing there motionless in our bathrobes, sleepy, with shadows flickering all around, I felt as though I had woken from one dream into an even more remote one, some bizarre wartime bomb shelter of the unconscious.
Donna Tartt
Where are the memories that held us together? Where are the dreams that were yet to come? I'm afraid to be happy. I shouldn't be happy. If I'm happy without you does that mean I've told you goodbye?
Donna Lynn Hope
An exceptional future can only be built on the transformation of the mess I’ve made out of my past, not the elimination of that mess.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
If a Black mother says she had a dream, listen. They are psychic.
Genereux Philip
You know that feeling when you’re suddenly startled out of a deep sleep, and you’re in that hazy middle world where you’re not sure what’s real—like maybe you actually could be chasing after an ice cream truck wearing only fishing waders and a canary yellow bridesmaid’s dress, or you’re just one answer away from winning a year’s supply of adult diapers on a Japanese game show?—SINGLE-MINDED
Lisa Daily
I am the greatest obstacle to my greatest dreams.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Dreams are ideas where the collar has been removed and the leash has been thrown away.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
When my vision is numbed by apathy and narrowed by mediocrity, I can stand in the presence of great things and fail to see even the smallest of things.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
World peace, true love, and happily-ever-afters amount to wasted wishes, failed endeavors, and most precious dreams.
Richelle E. Goodrich
Libraries are sexual dream factories. The langour brings it on.
Siri Hustvedt
Sweet dreams, baby,” he whispered into myhair, his arm giving me a squeeze. “See you onthe other side.”“You too, Captain,” I whispered...'Lauren and Tate, in Sweet Dreams
Kristen Ashley
i think you will be tired of tellingme & my dreams to go to hell
E.E. Cummings
What if you were wrong? What if everything you ever believed was a lie? What if you missed your opportunity because you didn't know your worth? What if you settled on familiar, but God was trying to give you something better? What if you decided not to go backwards, but forward? What if doing what you have never done before was the answer to everything that didn't make sense? What if the answer wasn't to be found in words, but in action? What if you found the courage to do what you really wanted to do and doing it changed your whole life?
Shannon L. Alder
They tell you: Follow your dreams. Listen to your spirit. Change the world. Make your mark. Find your inner voice and make it sing. Embrace failure. Dream. Dream and dream big. As a matter of fact, dream and don’t stop dreaming until your dream comes true.I think that’s crap.I think a lot of people dream. And while they are busy dreaming, the really happy people, the really successful people, the really interesting, powerful, engaged people? Are busy doing.
Shonda Rhimes