“One day, we will have to stand before the God of history. And we will talk in terms of things we've done. And its seems to me that I can hear the God of history saying, 'That was not enough. For I was hungry, and you fed me not. I was naked, and you clothed me not. I was devoid of a decent sanitary house to live in, and you provided no shelter for me. And consequently, you cannot enter the kingdom of greatness.'" Martin Luther King
“The evil effect of science upon men is principally this, that by far the greatest number of those who wish to display a knowledge of it accomplish no improvement at all of the understanding, but only a perversity of it. It serves most of them as a tool of vanity.”
Immanuel Kant
“Knowledge without wisdom is a load of books on the back an ass”
Chinese Proverb
"There was a Princeton study by Martin Gilens and Ben Page. The largest empirical study of actual policy decisions by our government in the history of our government. And what they did is they related our actual decisions to what the economic elite care about, what the organized interest groups care about, and what the average voter cares about.And when they look at the economic elite, you know, as the percentage of economic elite who support an idea goes up, the probability of it passing goes up. As the organized interests care about something more and more, the probability of it passing goes up. But as the average voter cares about something, it has no effect at all, statistically no effect at all on the probability of it passing.If we can go from zero percent of the average voters caring about something to 100 percent and it doesn't change the probability of it actually being enacted. And when you look at those numbers, that graph, this flat line, that flat line is a metaphor for our democracy.Our democracy is flatlined. Because when you can show clearly there's no relationship between what the average voter cares about, only if it happens to coincide with what the economic elite care about, you've shown that we don't have a democracy anymore."Lawrence Lessig"It [big money] mattered enormously. It mattered in the selection of candidates. You know, long before we even heard their names, the candidates were selected if they were basically comfortable working for big-money donors. And that in itself gets you out of the realm of inspirational leadership. And then, of course, it mattered in the drowning of ads and the sense that people outside of any accountable power, super PACs outside of any accountable power, were really sort of running the system."Zephyr Teachout
"When the morning skies grow red,
and over us their radiance shed
Thou, O Lord, appeareth in their light
when the alps glow bright with splendor,
pray to God, to Him surrender
for you feel and understand
that He dwelleth in this land.
In the sunset Thou art night
and beyond the starry sky
Thou, O loving father, ever near,
when to Heaven we are departing
joy and bliss Thou'lt be imparting
for we feel and understand
that Thou dwellest in this land.
When dark clouds enshroud the hills
and gray mist the valley fills
yet Thou art not hidden from thy sons
pierce the gloom in which we cower
with Thy sunshine's cleansing power
then we'll feel and understand
that God dwelleth in this land."
Schweizerpsalm
"It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. 'Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.'"
Abraham Lincoln
