You know, there are two kinds of politics in the world: the politics of love and the politics of fear. Love is about cooperation, sharing and inclusion. Fear and the politics of fear is about narrow ideologies that separate us, militarize us, imprison us, exploit us, control us, overcharge us, demean us, bury us alive in debt and anxiety and then bury us dead in cancers and wars.

The politics of love and the politics of fear are now pitted against each other in a naked struggle that will define not only the 21st century but centuries to come.

Granny D (from a speech given in Hood River, Oregon on Aug. 16, 2003)

This hour in history needs
a dedicated circle of non-conformists.
The saving of our world from pending doom
will come not from the actions
of a conforming majority,
but from the creative maladjustment
of a dedicated minority.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.  (1929—1968)
Civil Rights Leader

Hope is different from optimism.
Hope is a tough virtue, not a psychological predisposition.
Hope insists on taking facts and reason into account
and still insisting that improvement ...
is always a real possibility.
~E.J. Dionne Jr.
Washington Post
August 26, 2003

It is possible to read the history of this country
as one long struggle to extend the liberties
established in our Constitution
to everyone in America. 

~Molly Ivins (1944-2007)
Author and Syndicated Columnist

The activist is not the man who says the river is dirty.
The activist is the man who cleans up the river.

Ross Perot

Even when conservatives have all the marbles,
they still act as if they're under siege.
Now that they are under siege,
it is no time for them to act as if
they're losing their marbles.   

Maureen Dowd
New York Times Columnist
7/19/2003

America is a country
ready to be taken,
in fact, longing to be taken
by political leaders ready to restore
democracy and trust
to the political process

Arianna Huffington, Columnist

"It was as if Osama bin Laden, hidden in some high mountain redoubt, were engaging in long-range mind control of George Bush, chanting...

'Invade Iraq, you must invade Iraq."

--Richard Clarke, Bush's former counterterrorism coordinator, on Bush's response to 9/11

I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.

I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat!

If we ever pass out as a great nation we ought to put on our tombstone 'America died from a delusion that she had moral leadership.'

--Will Rogers (1879-1935)

Many politicians are in the habit of laying it down as a
self-evident proposition that no people ought to be free
till they are fit to use their freedom.
The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved
not to go into the water till he had learned to swim.

Thomas B. Macaulay (1800-1859)

Fury is an entirely appropriate response to a system that sends young people to kill other young people in a war that never should have been waged. Yet the American Right is forever trying to pathologise anger as something menacing and abnormal, dismissing war opponents as hateful and, in the latest slur, "wild-eyed". This is much harder to do when victims of wars begin to speak for themselves: no one questions the wildness in the eyes of a mother or father who has just lost a son or daughter, or the fury of a soldier who knows that he is being asked to kill, and to die, needlessly.
~Naomi Klein
Canadian Journalist

Non-voting
is a
fruitless
temper
tantrum.

~Judge Bruce Wright
1919-2005

The nation was not founded
by habitual groupthinkers.
But it stands a fair chance
of being destroyed by them.

~ Barbara Ehrenreich
   NY Times, July 15, 2004

As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and  more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious  day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."

~ H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)