A violent act pierces the atmosphere, leaving a hole through which the cold, damp draft of its memory blows forever.                                ––Jane Stanton Hitchcock

 

Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time, there would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed. I suppose the big problem is that we would fall down and worship each other.                  ––Thomas Merton

 

In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good a heart.    ––Anne Frank

 

Liberty is the air America breathes ... In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential freedoms ... freedom of speech and expression … freedom of worship ... freedom from want ... freedom from fear.

               —Franklin D. Roosevelt (inscribed at the Statue of Liberty)

 

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.                                —Benjamin Franklin

 

People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.                                                                  ––Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

 

Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.         ––Rainer Maria Rilke

 

The world is getting to be such a dangerous place, a man is lucky to get out of it alive.         ––W.C. Fields

 

You have to know, not fear, that some day you are going to die. Until you know this and embrace it, you are useless.      

                                                   ––Brad Pitt in The Fight Club

 

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not the absence of fear.      ––Mark Twain

 

To understand the world one must not be worrying about one’s self. ––Albert Einstein

 

There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.                          ––Mohandas Gandhi

 

Men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all the other alternatives.  ––Abba Eban

 

The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.   ––Helen Keller

 

A religious man is a person who holds God and man in one thought at one time, at all times, who suffers harm done to others, whose greatest passion is compassion, whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair.                                                                                      ––Abraham Joshua Heschel