#ace

It is often attempted to palliate slavery by comparing the state of slaves with our poorer countrymen: if the misery of our poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin; but how this bears on slavery, I cannot see; as well might the use of the thumb-screw be defended in one land, by showing that men in another land suffered from some dreadful disease. Those who look tenderly at the slave owner, and with a cold heart at the slave, never seem to put themselves into the position of the latter; what a cheerless prospect, with not even a hope of change! picture to yourself the chance, ever hanging over you, of your wife and your little children — those objects which nature urges even the slave to call his own — being torn from you and sold like beasts to the first bidder! And these deeds are done and palliated by men, who profess to love their neighbours as themselves, who believe in God, and pray that his Will be done on earth! It makes one's blood boil, yet heart tremble, to think that we Englishmen and our American descendants, with their boastful cry of liberty, have been and are so guilty... ↗

— Charles Darwin

#race #change

We have held the peculiar notion that a person or society that is a little different from us, whoever we are, is somehow strange or bizarre, to be distrusted or loathed. Think of the negative connotations of words like alien or outlandish. And yet the monuments and cultures of each of our civilizations merely represent different ways of being human. An extraterrestrial visitor, looking at the differences among human beings and their societies, would find those differences trivial compared to the similarities. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#culture #different #equality #happiness #humanity

The Grace of God and the human will are co-operant, but not on equal terms. Grace has the pre-eminence. ↗

— William Burton Pope

#god #grace #prevenient-grace #salvation #equality

This is the basis, and I am not being tried for whether I am a Communist, I am being tried for fighting for the right of my people, who are still second-class citizens in this United States of America ↗

— Paul Robeson

#america #equal-rights #fighting #injustice #race

Let today be the day you learn the grace of letting go and the power of moving on. ↗

— Steve Maraboli

#inspirational #let-go #life #moving-on #power

So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more dangerous to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun. ↗

— Jon Krakauer

#complacency #inspirational #change

I looked over and saw this man on the extreme right aisle sort of galloping to the podium. He was tall, he was thin, and the way he was galloping it looked as though he was going someplace much more important than the podium. ↗

— Betty Shabazz

#extreme #galloping #going #i #important

Experience has shown, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny. ↗

— Thomas Jefferson

#complacency #corruption #decline #misgovernment #political-philosophy

The strength of a man isn't seen in the power of his arms. It's seen in the love with which he EMBRACES you. ↗

— Steve Maraboli

#happiness #inspirational #love #men #relationships

Just as the wave cannot exist for itself, but is ever a part of the heaving surface of the ocean, so must I never live my life for itself, but always in the experience which is going on around me. ↗

— Albert Schweitzer

#around #cannot #ever #exist #experience