The Quotable Reverend Dana

A good friend of mine who is a Lutheran pastor in South Dakota asks some good questions:

At a ministerial association meeting today, I expressed reservations about the upcoming “National Day of Prayer.” This is partly because the proposed agenda called for prayers for our leaders, our government, and our military, but not the poor, the unemployed, and the oppressed. It is also because I find only praying “God Bless America,” when so much national sin continues without repentance, deeply troubling to my conscience. On May 3rd, will there also be prayers for the innocent people our government has imprisoned and tortured in our name?

The Quotable Terence Malick

Discovered this beautiful quote over at Andrew Sullivan’s blog The Dish.
It is from the screenplay of Terence Malick’s movie Tree of Life and discusses consciousness:

Reptiles emerge from the amphibians, and dinosaurs in turn from the reptiles. Among the dinosaurs we discover the first signs of maternal love, as the creatures learn to care for each other. Is not love, too, a work of the creation? What should we have been without it? How had things been then? Silent as a shadow, consciousness has slipped into the world.

The Quotable Desmond Tutu

“We say in Africa, ‘A person is a person through other persons.’ We are made for togetherness. We are made for fellowship. We are different precisely to know our need of one another.”

The Quotable Jawaharlal Nehru

This is not simply an Indian declaration…it is a quintessentially human statement of equanimity in the face of a momentous occasion:

“Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance. It is fitting that at this solemn moment, we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity.”

The Quotable Øystein Dahle

A friend read the recent quotable from Al Gore and suggested the quote below, which I’ve taken a liking to:

“Socialism collapsed because it did not allow prices to tell the economic truth. Capitalism may collapse because it does not allow prices to tell the ecological truth”

The Quotable Al Gore

“While we believe that capitalism is fundamentally superior to any other system for organizing economic activity, it is also clear that some of the ways in which it is now practiced do not incorporate sufficient regard for its impact on people, society and the planet.”

The Quotable Tim Vine

I have a dentist appointment coming up soon. Like most this is not something that I look forward to. This funny quote on dentists helps a bit:

Now, most dentist’s chairs go up and down, don’t they? The one I was in went back and forwards. I thought ‘This is unusual’. And the dentist said to me ‘Mr Vine, get out of the filing cabinet.

The Quotable Kishore Mahbubani

“Before the onset of contemporary globalization, when humanity lived in separate countries, it was like living on separate boats. The international order essentially needed rules to ensure that the 192 different countries (boats) did not collide with each other and instead tried to cooperate. Today, we no longer live on 192 different boats. Instead, we live on 192 cabins on the same boat. However, we have no captain or crew to take care of this boat. We would never sail out to sea without a captain or crew. Yet the world is sailing into the future by weakening the institutions of global governance precisely at the time when they need to be strengthened.”

The Quotable Steve Jobs

“Remembering you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

The Quotable George Monbiot

“Everything has been globalized except our consent. Democracy alone has been confined to the nation state. It stands at the national border, suitcase in hand, without a passport.”

The Quotable Dan Amira

Washington State appears to be next in line to legalize gay marriage. I am particularly happy about Washington because it is one of the states where I may someday settle. In a story on this development, New York Magazine’s Dan Amira makes a pithy quip on the common complaint by conservatives that gays marrying is an existential threat to the institution:

But what about the threat of gay marriage to the sanctity of Newt Gingrich’s ability to marry a woman, cheat on her, divorce her, marry his mistress, cheat on her, ask her for an open marriage, divorce her, and marry his second mistress? What about that?

This has to be one of the most succinct and devastating ownings on hypocrisy I’ve seen in some time. Nicely done.

The Quotable Mahatma Gandhi

One of my great heroes is cited as the source for the quote below which articulates an article of faith that animates my efforts to defend human rights:

“All humanity is one undivided and indivisible family.”

We are taught this plain truth by the religions of our ancestors but how often does this ideal rise above the practical considerations of everyday life? How often in your daily life do you recognize the fact that you are a special part of a vast family of immense diversity and spectacular beauty?

The Quotable Todd Glass

Comedian Todd Glass came out of the closet during a stand-up show recently. Here he explains why:

“I cannot listen to stories about kids killing themselves any longer without thinking [to myself], ‘When are you going to have a little blood on your shirt for not being honest about who you are?’”

We must come out of the shadows and teach those that fear to love life.

The Quotable Charlie Chaplin

From The Great Dictator:

“Can you hear me? Wherever you are, look up. The clouds are lifting. The sun is breaking through. We are coming out of the darkness into the light. We are coming into a new world, a kindlier world, where men will rise above their hate, their greed and brutality. Look up. The soul of man has been given wings, and at last he is beginning to fly. He is flying into the rainbow—into the light of hope, into the future, the glorious future that belongs to you, to me, and to all of us. Look up. Look up.”

The Quotable Prospero

Saw ‘My Week with Marilyn’ this past weekend and the movie far exceeded my expectations. Within the movie there was a famous quote that some attendees actually quoted aloud from Shakespeare’s play The Tempest:

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d tow’rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

The Quotable Thomas Weiss

This quote hints at the central problem for me with respect to global governance.

…Global governance is a useful analytical tool—if I were choosing an expensive word, I would say a good “heuristic” device—to understand what is happening. But it has no prescriptive power about where we should be headed and what we should be doing. Agency and accountability are absent. It is a hodge-podge including any stakeholder with an interest in whatever topic is at hand.

Global governance certainly is not the continuation of traditional power politics. But it also certainly does not reflect an evolutionary process leading to constructing institutional structures able to provide global public goods and to address contemporary or future global threats. Scott Barrett’s insightful book, Why Cooperate?, puts it well: global governance is “organized volunteerism.”

Where is there serious study of efforts to build institutions that enshrine the rule of law with enforcement mechanisms at the supranational level?

The Quotable Pablo Casals

Excellent quote for the start of this new year.

“Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that will never be again. And what do we teach our children? We teach them that two and two make four, and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also teach them what they are?

We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all the years that have passed, there has never been another child like you. Your legs, your arms, your clever fingers, the way you move.

You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel. And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is, like you, a marvel?

You must work, we must all work, to make the world worthy of its children.”

The Quotable Johnny B. Truant

From a great article on actually living in our postmodern world aptly entitled ‘You are dying, and your world is a lie.‘

We seek out edges so that we can reconnect with who we really are.
We are not averages and statistics.
We are not the upper, middle, or lower class.
We are not citizens, or constituents, or the governed.
We are not megaplex Christmas shoppers.
We are human.

The Quotable Mordechai Kaplan

To believe in God means to accept life on the assumption that it harbors conditions in the outer world and drives in the human spirit which together impel man to transcend himself. To believe in God means to take for granted that it is man’s destiny to rise above the brute and to eliminate all forms of violence and exploitation from human society. In brief, God is the Power in the cosmos that gives human life the direction that enables the human being to reflect the image of God.

The Quotable Leonard Cohen

I have run into several excellent quotations recently. This is the latest:

Ring the bells that still can ring, Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack, a crack in everything, That’s how the light gets in.