"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed." — Dwight D. Eisenhower 🌱📷

"Love is like the sea. It’s a moving thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from the shore it meets, and it’s different with every shore." — Zora Neale Hurston 🌱📷

"A truth that's told with bad intent Beats all the lies you can invent." — William Blake 🌱📷

"I defected from a totalitarian regime, and like hell am I going to be cowed again, and have to be careful about what I say. … Speaking out is the patriotic thing to do. When you see something wrong, don’t be afraid.” — Martina Navratilova 🌱📷

By my friend and former colleague Milt Priggee.

"Since 1789, no fundamentally new political ideas have emerged beyond the French Revolution's complex ideological package of liberty, equality and fraternity." — Yuval Noah Harari 🌱📷

"He is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name, and with the means which he helps to supply, because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject.” — John Stuart Mil🌱📷

"One may smile, and smile, and be a villain." — Hamlet, Act I, Scene 5. 🌱📷

"Any body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody." — Thomas Paine 🌱📷

"No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up." — Lily Tomlin 🌱📷

"A people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please." — Hannah Arendt 🌱📷

"Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not bombs, not anything. You can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him." — Robert A. Heinlein 🌱📷

"Cheating is not the American way. It is small, while we are large; cheap, while we are richly endowed. It is destructive, while we are creative. It is doomed to fail, while our gifts and responsibilities call us to achieve. It sabotages trust and weakens the bonds of spirit." — Terrence McNally 🌱📷

“Patriotism consists not in waving the flag, but in striving that our country shall be righteous as well as strong.” — James Bryce 🌱📷

"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." — Carl Schurz (1829-1906), German immigrant, Union general, U.S. Senator and Interior Secretary

I'll celebrate our country's independence with glee, but "250 years of freedom" runs smack up against the the "three-fifths" clause, the Cherokee Removal, Harriet Tubman, Susan B. Anthony...

"No one — and I mean no one — has the right to sit in judgment of who's American enough." — Michelle Obama 🌱📷

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." — John Adams 🌱📷

"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it." — Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850) 🌱📷

"Most of the people who say such terrible things about us actually are a positive force, because they allow sensible people to realize how stupid and vile their beliefs are." — Larry Kramer 🌱📷

And the crowd goes wild.

"I have known the joy and pain of friendship. I have served and been served. I have made some good enemies for which I am not a bit sorry. I have loved unselfishly, and I have fondled hatred with the red-hot tongs of Hell. That's living." — Zora Neale Hurston 🌱📷

"Fall in love with yourself, with life and then with whoever you want." — Frida Kahlo 🌱📷

"Nothing is more important than empathy for another human being's suffering. Nothing. Not a career, not wealth, not intelligence, certainly not status. We have to feel for one another if we're going to survive with dignity." — Audrey Hepburn 🌱📷

"Equality means more than passing laws. The struggle is really won in the hearts and minds of the community, where it really counts." — Barbara Gittings, 1932-2007, pioneering lesbian and LGBTQ activist 🌱📷

"Personally, coming out was one of the most important things I've ever done, lifting from my shoulders the millstone of lies that I hadn't even realized I was carrying." — Ian McKellen 🌱📷

“There is no intensity of love that does not involve the risk of crippling hurt. It is a duty to take this risk, to love and feel without defense or reserve.” — William S. Burroughs 🌱📷

"I feel like it's everybody's responsibility to use whatever platform they have to try to make our society better, whether you're an accountant or an activist or an athlete or whatever it is. Be exactly who you want to be. It’s not worth it to be any other way.” — Megan Rapinoe 🌱📷

I'm ordering my pet unicorn THIS VERY MINUTE to stop gouging it with his horn.

“I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren't trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.” — Umberto Eco 🌱📷