Politics Quotes - Page 69

The naively cynical measure a piece of legislation, a victory, a milestone not against the past or the limits of the possible, but against their ideas of perfection...
Rebecca Solnit
I wonder sometimes what would happen if victory was imagined not just as the elimination of evil but the establishment of good...
Rebecca Solnit
We inhabit, in ordinary daylight, a future that was unimaginably dark a few decades ago, when people found the end of the world easier to envision than the impending changes in everyday roles, thoughts, practices that not even the wildest science fiction anticipated. Perhaps we should not have adjusted to it so easily. It would be better if we were astonished every day.
Rebecca Solnit
Stories migrate secretly. The assumption that whatever we now believe is just common sense, or what we always knew, is a way to save face. It's also a way to forget the power of a story and of a storyteller, the power in the margins, and the potential for change.
Rebecca Solnit
What lies ahead seems unlikely; when it becomes the past, it seems inevitable.
Rebecca Solnit
You may be told that the legal decisions lead the changes, that judges and lawmakers lead the culture in those theaters called courtrooms, but they only ratify change. They are almost never where change begins, only where it ends up, for most changes travel from the edges to the center.
Rebecca Solnit
Hope is not a door, but a sense that there might be a door at some point, some way out of the problems of the present moment even before that way is found or followed.
Rebecca Solnit
There's a kind of activism that's more about bolstering identity than achieving results, one that sometimes seems to make the left the true heirs of the Puritans. Puritanical in that the point becomes the demonstration of one's own virtue rather than the realization of results. And puritanical because the somber pleasure of condemning things is the most enduring part of that legacy, along with the sense of personal superiority that comes from pleasure denied. The bleakness of the world is required as contrasting backdrop to the drama of their rising above.
Rebecca Solnit
Hopefulness is risky, since it is after all a form of trust, trust in the unknown and the possible, even in discontinuity. To be hopeful is to take on a different persona, one that risks disappointment, betrayal...
Rebecca Solnit
Another part of the Puritan legacy is the belief that no one should have joy or abundance until everyone does, a belief that austere at one end, in the deprivation it endorses, and fantastical in the other, since it awaits a universal utopia. Joy sneaks in anyway, abundance cascades forth uninvited...Joy doesn't betray but sustains activism. And when you face a politics that aspires to make you fearful, alienated, and isolated, joy is a fine initial act of insurrection.
Rebecca Solnit
The revolution that counts is the one that takes place in the imagination; many kinds of change issue forth thereafter, some gradual and subtle, some dramatic and conflict-ridden--which is to say that revolution doesn't necessarily look like revolution.
Rebecca Solnit
The term 'politics of prefiguration' has long been used to describe the idea that if you embody what you aspire to, you have already succeeded. That is to say, if your activism is already democratic, peaceful, creative, then in one small corner of the world these things have triumphed. Activism, in this model, is not only a toolbox to change things but a home in which to take up residence and live according to your beliefs, even if it's a temporary and local place...
Rebecca Solnit
Bush invited his constituency to be blind to the world's real problems, and leftists often do the opposite, gazing so fixedly at those problems that they cannot see beyond them. Thus it is that the world often seems divided between false hope and gratuitous despair. Despair demands less of us, it's more predictable, and in a sad way safer. Authentic hope requires clarity--seeing the troubles in this world--and imagination, seeing what might lie beyond these situations that are perhaps not inevitable and immutable.
Rebecca Solnit
To say that the emperor has no clothes is a nice anti-authoritarian gesture, but to say that everything without exception is going straight to hell is not an alternative vision but only an inverted version of the mainstream's 'everything's fine.
Rebecca Solnit
The darkest things of this world nestle inseparable from, and do not eclipse, its equally boundless graces and glories.
Brian Awehali
The job facing American voters… in the days and years to come is to determine which hearts, minds and souls command those qualities best suited to unify a country rather than further divide it, to heal the wounds of a nation as opposed to aggravate its injuries, and to secure for the next generation a legacy of choices based on informed awareness rather than one of reactions based on unknowing fear.
Aberjhani
They want us to be afraid. They want us to be afraid of leaving our homes. They want us to barricade our doors and hide our children. Their aim is to make us fear life itself! They want us to hate. They want us to hate 'the other'. They want us to practice aggression and perfect antagonism. Their aim is to divide us all! They want us to be inhuman. They want us to throw out our kindness. They want us to bury our love and burn our hope. Their aim is to take all our light! They think their bricked walls will separate us. They think their damned bombs will defeat us. They are so ignorant they don’t understand that my soul and your soul are old friends. They are so ignorant they don’t understand that when they cut you I bleed. They are so ignorant they don’t understand that we will never be afraid, we will never hate and we will never be silent for life is ours!
Kamand Kojouri
Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.
Gore Vidal
Every person has his secret; in reverie, unbeknown to others, he finds peace, freedom, sorrow and love.
Abhysheq Shukla
And yet their reward appear not, and their labor had no fruit: for I have gone here and there through the heathen, and I see that they flow in wealth, and think not upon thy commandments.
Compton Gage
Weigh thou therefore their wickedness now in the balance, and theirs also that dwell the world; and so shall thy name no where be found anymore.
Compton Gage
Thy heart had gone too far in this world, and think thou to comprehend the way of the most High?
Compton Gage
In the end, you will realize most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly.
Abhysheq Shukla
The greatest futility! says the congregator, "The greatest futility! Everything is futile!" What does a person gain from all his hard work- At which he toils under the sun? A generation goes and another cometh forth, but the earth remains the same.
Compton Gage
As thou know not what is the way of the spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child: even so thou know not the works of what makes all.
Compton Gage
In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thine hand: for thou know not whether shall prosper, either this or that, or whether they both shall be alike good.
Compton Gage
Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun: But if a man live many years, and rejoice in them all; yet let him remember the days of darkness; for they shall be many. And all that cometh is vanity.
Compton Gage
These be they that have put off the mortal clothing, and put on the immortal, and have confessed the name of God: now are they crowned, and receive palms.
Compton Gage
Go thy way, and tell my people, the people of thy Lord God what manner of things, and how great wonders of the Lord thy God, thou hast seen.
Compton Gage
The more thou search, the more thou shall marvel; for the world hast fast to pass away-
Compton Gage
The world hast fast to pass away- And cannot comprehend the things that are promised to the righteous in time to come: for this world is full of unrighteousness and infirmities.
Compton Gage
As concerning the things whereof thou asked me, I will tell thee; for the evil is sown, but the destruction thereof is not yet come.
Compton Gage
If therefore that which is sown be not turned upside down, and if the place where the evil is sown passes not away, then cannot it come that is sown with good?
Compton Gage
The grain of evil seed had been sown in the heart of Adam from the beginning, and how much ungodliness had it brought up unto this time? and how much shall it yet bring forth until the time of threshing come?
Compton Gage
Ponder now by thyself, how great fruit of wickedness the grain of evil seed had brought forth. And when the ears shall be cut down, which are without number, how great a floor shall they fill?
Compton Gage
How, and when shall these things come to pass? wherefore are our years few and evil?
Compton Gage
Do not thou hasten above the most Highest: for thy haste is in vain to be above him, for thou hast much exceeded.
Compton Gage
Did not the souls also of the righteous ask question of these things in their chambers, saying, "How long shall I hope on this fashion?" when cometh the fruit of the floor of our reward?
Compton Gage
O Lord that bear rule, even we all are full of impiety. And for our sakes peradventure it is that the floors of the righteous are not filled, because of the sins of them that dwell upon the earth.
Compton Gage
Go thy way to a woman with child, and ask of her when she had fulfilled her nine months, if her womb may keep the birth any longer within her.
Compton Gage
In the grave the chambers of souls are like the womb of a woman: For like as a woman that travails make haste to escape the necessity of the travail: even so do these places haste to deliver those things that are committed unto them.
Compton Gage
From the beginning, look, what thou desires to see, it shall be shew thee.
Compton Gage
If I have found favor in thy sight, and if it be possible, and if I be meet therefore, shew me then whether there be more to come than is past, or more past than is to come.
Compton Gage
Love wins when reflections win over reflexes.
Abhysheq Shukla
As thou hast said unto thy servant, that thou, which gives life to all, hast given life at once to the creature that thou hast created, and the creature bare it: even so it might now also bear them that now be present at once.
Compton Gage
Ask the womb of a woman, and say unto her, If thou bring forth children, why dost thou it not together, but one after another? pray her therefore to bring forth ten children at once.
Compton Gage
She cannot: but must do it by distance of time.
Compton Gage
How my adventures become your sins?
Compton Gage
Go thy way, weigh me the weight of the fire, or measure me the blast of the wind, or call me again the day that is past.
Compton Gage
What man is able to do that, that thou should ask such things of me?
Compton Gage
If I should ask thee how great dwellings are in the midst of the sea, or how many springs are in the beginning of the deep, or how many springs are above the firmament, or which are the outgoings of paradise: Peradventure thou would say unto me, ‘I never went down into the deep, nor as yet into hell, neither did I ever climb up into heaven.
Compton Gage
Nevertheless now have I asked thee but only of the fire and wind, and of the day where-through thou hast passed, and of things from which thou canst not be separated, and yet canst thou give me no answer of them.
Compton Gage
Thine own things, and such as are grown up with thee, canst thou not know; How should thy vessel then be able to comprehend the way of the Highest, and, the world being now outwardly corrupted to understand the corruption that is evident in my sight?
Compton Gage
It were better that we were not at all, than that we should live still in wickedness, and to suffer, and not to know wherefore.
Compton Gage
I went into a forest into a plain, and the trees took counsel- And said, Come, let us go and make war against the sea that it may depart away before us, and that we may make us more woods. The floods of the sea also in like manner took counsel, and said, Come, let us go up and subdue the woods of the plain, that there also we may make us another country. The thought of the wood was in vain, for the fire came and consumed it. The thought of the floods of the sea came likewise to nought, for the sand stood up and stopped them. If thou wart judge now betwixt these two, whom would thou begin to justify? or whom would thou condemn?
Compton Gage
Verily it is a foolish thought that they both have devised, for the ground is given unto the wood, and the sea also had its place to bear its floods.
Compton Gage
Thou hast given a right judgment, but why judge thou not thyself also?
Compton Gage
For like as the ground is given unto the wood, and the sea to his floods: even so they that dwell upon the earth may understand nothing but that which is upon the earth: and he that dwell above the heavens may only understand the things that are above the height of the heavens.
Compton Gage
I beseech thee, O Lord, let me have understanding: For it was not my mind to be curious of the high things, but of such as pass by us daily.
Compton Gage
Wherefore the present age is given up as a reproach to the heathen, and for what cause the people whom thou hast loved is given over unto ungodly nations?!
Compton Gage

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