#eric

Read through the most famous quotes by topic #eric




For too long we seem to have surrendered personal excellence and community value in the mere accumulation of material things. Our gross national product now is over 800 billion dollars a year, but that gross national product, if we judge the United States of America by that, that gross national product counts air pollution, and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic squall. It counts Napalm, and it counts nuclear warheads, and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our city. It counts Whitman's rifles and Speck's Knifes and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet, the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play; it does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worth while. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.


Robert F. Kennedy


#gnh #inspirational #social-change #beauty

Song for the Puberty Rite of a Girl Named Cowaka: A poor man takes the songs in his hand And drops them near the place where the sun sets. See, Cowaka, run to them and take them in your hand, And place them under the sunset.


Frances Densmore


#old-songs #path #music

...the values ascribed to the Indian will depend on what the white writer feels about Nature, and America has always had mixed feelings about that. At one end of the spectrum is Thoreau, wishing to immerse himself in swamps for the positive vibrations; at the other end is Benjamin Franklin, who didn't like Nature. [p.91]


Margaret Atwood


#native-americans #nature #nature

My God, what do we want? What does any human being want? Take away an accident of pigmentation of a thin layer of our outer skin and there is no difference between me and anyone else. All we want is for that trivial difference to make no difference. What can I say to a man who asks that? All I can do is try to explain to him why he asks the question. You have looked at us for years as different from you that you may never see us really. You don’t understand because you think of us as second-class humans. We have been passive and accommodating through so many years of your insults and delays that you think the way things used to be is normal. When the good-natured, spiritual-singing boys and girls rise up against the white man and demand to be treated like he is, you are bewildered. All we want is what you want, no less and no more. (Chapter 13).


Shirley Chisholm


#have-and-have-nots #human-rights #race-relations #nature

How do you and your mother manage to get your hair exactly the same shade? It's uncanny." "I'll have you know, I'm a natural blonde!" "How could I know that? You wouldn't let me turn the lights on.


Kara Lennox


#harlequin #series #nature

For four centuries now, the American people have resigned themselves to natural disasters and acts of God: floods, prairie fires, blizzards, tornados, hurricanes, dust bowls, epidemics, academics, lawyers, and politicians.


Markham Shaw Pyle


#american-history #politics #nature

The gold of life is for those bold and brave in life.


Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha


#author #book #gold #higherlife #ifeanyi

I know not why any one but a schoolboy in his declamation should whine over the Commonwealth of Rome, which grew great only by the misery of the rest of mankind. The Romans, like others, as soon as they grew rich, grew corrupt; and in their corruption sold the lives and freedoms of themselves, and of one another.


Samuel Johnson


#boswell #corrupt #corruption #freedom #johnson

Could it be that the great Bonaparte is incapable of fathering a child? that it is not I who am at fault but you?


Carolly Erickson


#good-one #josephine-bonaparte #life

Did you ever stand on a street corner in American at five o'clock in the morning? I did.


Jack Kerouac


#atop-an-underwood #early-morning #early-stories-and-other-writings #first-day #jack-kerouac