great idea! i have a whole document dedicated to good quotes on my laptop haha. so, i'll just post my top three:

"..there may still be two superpowers on the planet: the United States and world public opinion."
- the Gray Lady (the New York Times)

"Free speech is meaningless if the commercial cacophony has risen to the point where no one can hear you."
- Naomi Klein

"No agnostic ever burned anyone at the stake or tortured a pagan, a heretic, or an unbeliever."
- Daniel J. Boorstin

Oh Standing Ovation!

haha wow thanks, DrD. i do love it when we agree ;)

Nice ones, bliss. I especially like the Daniel J. Boorstin one.

A monologue from "Tooth and Nail," a play about South African Apartheid in the 1980s. Saul is a photographer, speaking with Sifiso, a revolutionary. Throughout the play, Saul is accused both by Sifiso and "the Voices" of not fighting, or of disgusting methods (such as jumping on top of coffins to get a photo), but he always explains why he needs to tell the story. In this monologue, he explains to Sifiso some problems he is having with his photography.

Saul: When I took photographs of the police in action in Atteridgeville, they were the most brutal photographs I could create. Shot in cold rage with the perfect lens. My whole body, my whole mind was in that photograph. Impossible to misread, all ambiguity drained out of the image. As brutal an indictment of apartheid thugs as I could muster. Nazi faces twisted with hatred and pleasure as they clutched the necks of their child victims. Do you remember?
Sifiso: Yes.
Saul: Well, when I was in detention, I received a surprise visitor, the policeman from the photograph. He was standing there as if posing for his next picture. The image come to life, the photograph in my cell.
I thought he was going to beat me, or take some revenge, but no, he just wanted to know if he could arrange to get a copy of that photograph. His children wanted a photograph of their daddy in action. He told me he quite liked it.

"If you're in the gay community, you know there's nothing more sickening than a funeral service in which the minister basically accuses the dead man of being a victim of 'divine punishment'"-- Diamanda Galás

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe" - Albert Einstein

"Those who are willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both" - Benjamin Franklin

"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism" - Thomas Jefferson

"If people insist on living as if there's no tomorrow, there really won't be one" - Kurt Vonnegut

"I am a strong advocate for free thought on all subjects, yet it appears to me (whether rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments against Christianity and theism produce hardly any effect on the public; and freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men's minds, which follows from the advance of science."
-Charles Darwin

“Do what you feel in your heart to be right - for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

“Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.” – Calvin, ‘Calvin and Hobbes’

"An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind." - Gandhi

Darn it Tessa, you took my Ben Franklin one!
Ah, well.

Kateliness, the one from Calvin and Hobbes is awesome. I love Calvin!

*high fives Dragonfly0879*

There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened. - Douglas Adams

"How fortunate for leaders that men do not think" -Adolph Hitler (I think it pretty much sums up the reason why he was able to be successful in doing horrible things.)

"I don't think the human mind can comprehend the past and the future. They are both just illusions that can manipulate you into thinking theres some kind of change. " -Bob Dylan

"Always remember that others may hate you but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself." -Richard Nixon

"Let judges secretly despair of justice: their verdicts will be more acute. Let generals secretly despair of triumph; killing will be defamed. Let priests secretly despair of faith: their compassion will be true." -Leonard Cohen

"Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds." - Albert Einstein

"Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." - Josef Stalin (Sadly, this is so true.)

"In war, truth is the first casualty." - Aeschylus

"Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth." - Gandhi

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace." - Jimi Hendrix

Sorry for taking your quote, kate! If it makes you feel any better, I was going to put that Gandhi quote you used in here. I guess we just have a similar taste in quotes!

i thought someone had already posted that Jimi Hendrix quote?

That's alright tessa! Great minds think alike, quote-wise at least ;)

"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires." - Susan B. Anthony

"Homophobia is like racism and anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in that it seeks to dehumanize a large group of people, to deny their humanity, their dignity and personhood. " - Coretta Scott King

"It is one thing to show a man that he is in an error, and another to put him in possession of the truth." - John Locke

"Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?"- Abe Lincoln

"I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of the old Revolutionary maxim. Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God." - Susan B. Anthony

Love it, kate.

"Everybody's journey is individual. If you fall in love with a boy, you fall in love with a boy. The fact that many Americans consider it a disease says more about them than it does about homosexuality."-- James Baldwin

Here's some of my favorite quotes from Isaac Asimov.

"Creationists make it sound as though a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night."

"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."

"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right."

"John Dalton's records, carefully preserved for a century, were destroyed during the World War II bombing of Manchester. It is not only the living who are killed in war."

"Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do."

"and on the third day, God created the remington bolt action rifle, so that man could fight the dinosaurs and the homosexuals." - a bumper sticker i found on Facebook

bliss, that's from the movie Mean Girls :)

"I know of no one who has done more for humanity than Jesus. In fact, there is nothing wrong with Christianity. The trouble is with you Christians. You do not begin to live up to your own teachings." - Mohandas Gandhi

"The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter." - Mark Twain

"When you are kind to someone in trouble, you hope they'll remember and be kind to someone else. And it'll become like a wildfire." - Whoopi Goldberg

Great quotes, Dragonfly. I agree with the Gandhi one particularly.

"What heterosexual discourse does is sexualize all homosexual activity. There is no friendship, intimacy, or care; a gay man could only ever want sex from another man, as if a straight man could only ever want sex from a woman."-- Paraphrased from a lecture delivered by English Professor NW. Taken from the notes of Cinders.

A few Gandhi favourites:

'Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.'

'I object to violence because when it appears to good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent'

'The weak can never forgive; forgiveness is the attribute of the strong'

'Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it'

'You must be the change you want to see in the world'

'There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.' - Nelson Mandela.

'It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.' - Albus Dumbledore. (yes... Harry Potter. Sorry about that).

'I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.' - Douglas Adams.

'It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.' - Jane Austen.

'A true friend stabs you in the front.' - Oscar Wilde.

'The truth is rarely pure and never simple.' - Oscar Wilde.

'Always forgive your enemies. Nothing annoys them so much.' - Oscar Wilde.

'It's a little bit cheesy, but nicely displayed' - Frank Zappa (I use this one about one time a day).

'The only cure for grief is action.' - George Henry Lewes.

Ha! I love Jane Austen... and Albus Dumbledore ;)

"Ships in harbor are safe... but that's not what ships are built for." - John Shedd