Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable… Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.
Martin Luther King Jr.
We pay a price for everything we get or take in this world; and although ambitions are well worth having, they are not to be cheaply won, but exact their dues of work and self denial, anxiety and discouragement.
L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
I’ve always been amazed that the very people forced to live in the worst parts of town, go to the worst schools, and who have it the hardest are always the first to step up, to defend us. They serve so that we don’t have to. They offer to give up their lives so that we can be free. It is remarkably their gift to us. And all they ask for in return is that we never send them into harm’s way unless it is absolutely necessary.
Michael Moore, Fahrenheit 9/11
There were things I wanted to tell him. But I knew they would hurt him. So I buried them, and let them hurt me.
Whoever causes the loss of a single soul is as though he caused the loss of a world entire, and whoever saves one is as though he saved a universe.
The Talmud
One day you will do things for me that you hate. That is what it means to be family.
Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated: A Novel
Loyalty means nothing unless it has at its heart the absolute principle of self-sacrifice.
Woodrow T. Wilson
lines, lyrics and literary fragments that call for a pause