Category: Thought

“…only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period of the twentieth century in a way that men, in some strange way, are responding.

“Something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee — the cry is always the same: ‘We want to be free.‘“

Martin Luther King, Jr., a day before his assassination, in a speech delivered at Bishop Charles Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee.

“Being confident of our own future, we are now free of that inordinate fear of communism which once led us to embrace any dictator who joined us in that fear.”

James Earl Carter, Jr., Commencement Address, Notre Dame University, May 22, 1977

The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.

William Shakespeare, As You Like It (c.1599-1600), Act V, scene 1, line 34.

“Good literature erects bridges between different peoples, and by having us enjoy, suffer, or feel surprise, unites us beneath the languages, beliefs, habits, customs, and prejudices that separate us.”

Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel Lecture, 2010

“It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority. For there is a reserve of latent power in the masses which, if it is called into play, the minority can seldom resist.”

Lord Acton, “The History of Freedom in Antiquity,” 1877.

“Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.”

William Shakespearen, Julius Caesar (1599), Caesar, Act II, scene ii.

“The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern. The law of liberty tends to abolish the reign of race over race, of faith over faith, of class over class.”

Lord Acton, Letter to Mary Gladstone (April 24, 1881).

“The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.”

Lord Acton, “The History of Freedom in Antiquity,” 1877.

“Literature creates a fraternity within human diversity and eclipses the frontiers erected among men and women by ignorance, ideologies, religions, languages, and stupidity.”

Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel Lecture, 2010

“You can’t make facts fit the rules, it is the other way round. The rules have to be adopted to fit the facts.”

Mario Vargas Llosa, The Time of the Hero, 1963