Categories
Thought

Julia Ward Howe, the American abolitionist and poet, born on this day in 1819, from “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”

“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.

“He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat:
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.

“In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.”

Categories
Thought

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

“To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so.”

Categories
Thought

Bob Dylan, born on this day in 1941

“A hero is someone who understands the responsibility that comes with his freedom.”

Categories
Thought

Victor Hugo

“All the forces in the world are not so powerful as an idea whose time has come.”

Categories
Thought

George Mason

“That the members (of the three branches of government) may be restrained from oppression by feeling and participating in the burdens of the people, they should at fixed periods be reduced to a private station, return into that body from which they were originally taken, and the vacancies be supplied by frequent, certain, and regular elections, in which all or any part of the former members shall be again eligible or ineligible, as the laws shall direct.”

Categories
Thought

Bobby Sands, Irish hunger striker

“They have nothing in their whole imperial arsenal that can break the spirit of one Irishman who doesn’t want to be broken.”

Categories
Thought

John Stuart Mill, born on this day in 1806

“A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.”

Categories
Thought

T. E. Lawrence, known as Lawrence of Arabia

“All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible.”

Categories
Thought

Pope John Paul II (born Karol Józef Wojtyła on this day in 1920 in Poland)

“The historical experience of socialist countries has sadly demonstrated that collectivism does not do away with alienation but rather increases it, adding to it a lack of basic necessities and economic inefficiency.”

Categories
Thought

Adam Smith

“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.”