Quotes
"When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. And when I ask why they have no food, they call me a communist."Bishop Helder Camara
"I have three things I'd like to say today. First, while you were sleeping last night, 30,000 kids died of starvation or diseases related to malnutrition. Second, most of you don't give a shit. What's worse is that you're more upset with the fact that I said shit than the fact that 30,000 kids died last night"American Preacher Tony Campolo
"Advertising enjoins everyone to consume, while the economy prohibits the vast majority of humanity from doing so. The command that everybody do what so many cannot becomes an invitation to crime."Eduardo Galeano
"Non-cooperation with evil is a sacred duty."Mahatma Gandhi
"The more I see, the more I know. The more I know, the less I understand."Changing Man - Paul Weller
"If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito" Dalai Lama
"The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall." Ernesto 'Che' Guevara
"For many in Old Labour the day Blair dies is the day that Judas will be found muttering in the depths of hell, 'I bet he comes and sits next to me.'" Mark Thomas
"Americans have different ways of saying things. They say "elevator", we say "lift" ... they say "President", we say "stupid psychopathic git." Alexei Sayle
"Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won't come in." Alan Alda
"Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant." Robert Louis Stevenson
"I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized who was telling me this." Emo Phillips
"All that is gold does not glitter, not all who wander are lost." JRR Tolkien
"Your mother was a hamster and your father smells of elderberries!" Monty Python & the Holy Grail
"There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread." Mahatma Gandhi
"Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.”"Bishop Desmond Tutu
"The idols of today are unmistakable - self-esteem without effort, fame without achievement, sex without consequences, wealth without responsibility, pleasure without struggle and experience without commitment." Rabbi Dr. Jonathan Sacks
"If you're a cowboy and you're dragging a guy behind your horse, I bet it would really make you mad if you looked back and the guy was reading a magazine." Jack Handey
"All around you, people will be tiptoeing through life, just to arrive at death safely. But dear children, do not tiptoe. Run, hop, skip, or dance, just don't tiptoe." US college professor
"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." Ralph Waldo Emerson
"You should never have your best trousers on when you go out to fight for freedom and truth." Henrik Ibsen
"[Tony Blair] has dishonored the UK, undermined the UN and international law and helped to make the world a more dangerous place" Clare Short
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."George Orwell
"They do say, Mrs. M, that verbal insults hurt more than physical pain. They are, of course, wrong, as you will soon discover when I stick this toasting fork into your head."Edmund Blackadder
"I want to go back to my own kids and look them in the face again knowing that I've done all I can to try and save the children of Iraq and other countries who are dying because of my government's unjust, amoral, fear - and money - driven policies. These children and people of other countries are every bit as valuable and worthy of love as my precious wife and children."Brian Haw
"Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering."Yoda (Star Wars)
"Love is a harsh and dreadful thing to ask of us, but it is the only answer."Dorothy Day
"I honestly think it is better to be a failure at something you love than to be a success at something you hate."George Burns
"All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing"Edmund Burke
"The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community [even if their intentions are ever so earnest], but the person who loves those around them will create community"Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"Europeans are much keener on using the state to fight poverty than Americans, and much less inclined to draw a line between the deserving and the undeserving poor"John Micklethwait & Adrian Wooldridge (in "The Right Nation")
"Championship strugglers Hull City part company with boss Phil Parkinson after six moths in charge."BBC Sport website headline 04/12/06
"Today we gave another lesson in dignity to the imperialists, it is another defeat for the empire of Mr Danger"Hugo Chavez, re-elected President of Venezuela, 3 December 2006
"Our foreign policy must have an ethical dimension and must support the demands of other peoples for the democratic rights on which we insist for ourselves. The Labour government will put human rights at the heart of our foreign policy."Robin Cook, Foreign Secretary, 12 May 1997
"In the poor we meet Jesus in his most distressing disguises"Mother Teresa
"There was a great question in my mind. Why was so much done in remedying social evils instead of avoiding them in the first place?"Dorothy Day
"Any residual patriotism I harboured was eventually knocked out of me by the sight of the neo-Nazi National Front marching through the streets in the 1970s, using the Union Jack as a symbol of their bigotry. The image of football hooligans rampaging through foreign cities, chanting my country’s name, didn’t help either. If these people were patriots, as they claimed to be, then I knew for sure that I wasn’t."Billy Bragg
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."Mahatma Gandhi
"Morris dancing is the most fatuous, tenth-rate entertainment ever devised by man. Forty effeminate blacksmiths waving bits of cloth they've just wiped their noses on. How it's still going on in this day and age I'll never know."Edmund Blackadder
"In some ways I admire football fans because in what other business can you serve up crap and then have people come back for more?"Simon Jordan, Chairman, Crystal Palace
"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried."G K Chesterton
"Why should you just accept that life is just work and work and work until you die? If you actually stop to question your regular routine, you’d be pissed off. All you’re doing is making someone else a lot of money. I’m not trying to be Billy Bragg or even to be political necessarily, we just want people to wake up."Tom Clarke of The Enemy
"US Public Health Service statistics show that eight out of ten drug users are white, but of those in jail for drugs only one in ten is white"Eduardo Galeano
"Never believe governments, not any of them, not a word they say; keep an untrusting eye on all they do"Martha Gellhorn
"The root of war is fear"Thomas Merton
"No man born with a living soul can be working for the clampdown.
Kick over the wall, cause governments to fall, how can you refuse it?
Let fury have the hour, anger can be power, d'you know that you can use it? "
Joe Strummer
"A Christian doesn’t avoid the questions; a Christian embraces them. In fact, to truly pursue the living God, we have to see the need for questions. Questions are not scary. What is scary is when people don’t have any. What is tragic is faith that has no room for them."Rob Bell, author of Velvet Elvis
"We're in the stickiest situation since Sticky the Stick Insect got stuck on a sticky bun."Edmund Blackadder
"The unexamined life is not worth living."Socrates
"Boyhood, like measles, is one of those complaints which a man should catch young and have done with, for when it comes in middle life it is apt to be serious."P G Wodehouse
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."Friedrich Nietzsche
"The United States of America was established as a white society, founded upon the genocide of another race and then the enslavement of yet another."Jim Wallis
"The socialism I believe in is everyone working for each other, everyone having a share of the rewards. It’s the way I see football, the way I see life."Bill Shankly
"The reality of car culture promoted by the likes of Top Gear is not high-performance thrills in glamorous cars, but a wilting bunch of flowers by a busy roadside."Mark Lynas
"What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?"Mahatma Gandhi
"Well-designed congestion charges are the most efficient way to achieve any given reduction of road use. How much of a reduction is desirable is an open question, but congestion charging can deliver no matter what the answer is."Tim Harford, economist & Sunday Times columnist
"I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve immortality by not dying."Woody Allen
"The greatest evil is not done in those sordid dens of evil that Dickens loved to paint ... but is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried and minuted) in clear, carpeted, warmed, well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices."C.S. Lewis
"Those who cannot forgive others break the bridge over which they themselves must pass."Confucius
"Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind."Dr Seuss
"The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing."Albert Einstein
"Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation."Robert F Kennedy
"When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares."Henri Nouwen
"Ha ! I laugh at danger and drop ice cubes down the vest of fear."Edmund Blackadder
"Noam Chomsky is a hero of mine, just because I can’t believe that anyone has a brain that size and can lift his head up."Thom Yorke, Radiohead
"We must never be satisfied with mere protest or complaint about the things we believe are wrong. Rather we must do the harder, more creative, and ultimately more prophetic work of finding and offering alternatives."Jim Wallis
"My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch."Jack Nicholson
"You have a class of young strong men and women, and they want to give their lives to something. Advertising has these people chasing cars and clothes they don't need. Generations have been working in jobs they hate, just so they can buy what they don't really need. We don't have a great war in our generation, or a great depression, but we do, we have a great war of the spirit. We have a great revolution against the culture. The great depression is our lives. We have a spiritual depression."Tyler Durden, Fight Club
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."Arthur Schopenhauer
"Tories always seem to have regarded a bit of homosexual slap and tickle as little more significant than killing the odd fox or crushing a trade union. As long as the servants didn’t find out and you still used the correct knife and fork, no harm was done."Julian Clary
"An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics."Plato
"If the Bible were made into a movie, there are lots of parts I wouldn't watch. Too graphic, too much detail, excessive violence. You'd think God would have gone for a more family-friendly rating, something Christians could recommend that their friends could go see, but instead we have a book crammed full of shocking stories about people doing unbelievably destructive things. Genocide, polygamy, incest, cutting people up into pieces and mailing the chunks to different parts of the country - and that's just the first few books."Rob Bell
"The case against speed starts with the economy. Modern capitalism generates extraordinary wealth, but at the cost of devouring natural resources faster than Mother Nature can replace them."Carl Honore
"If a player doesn't want to come to Sunderland then all well and good, but if he decides he doesn't want to come because his wife wants to go shopping in London, then it's a sad state of affairs. It's not a football move, it's a lifestyle move. It tells me the player is weak and his wife runs his life."Roy Keane
"If you steal a $500 television set, you can go to jail. Apparently if you steal $500 million from your corporation and your pension holders and everyone else, then nothing happens."US Senator Patrick Leahy
"A low voter turnout is an indication of fewer people going to the polls."George W Bush
"You must be the change you wish to see in the world."Gandhi
"Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing."Arundhati Roy
"The best argument against democracy is a five minute talk with the average voter."Winston Churchill
"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it."Edward R Murrow
"They have to show respect as governments towards this amazing planet because we haven't got anywhere else to live."KT Tunstall
"Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the dangers of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of 'crackpot' than the stigma of conformity. And on issues that seem important to you, stand up and be counted at any cost."Chauncey Depew
"I would censor everything about the Madeleine McCann case. The newspapers are planting staged scenarios in our minds that are no longer grounded in any kind of truth. It's emotional porn."Comedian Rich Hall
"There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not."Bobby Kennedy
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable."John F Kennedy
"I never wanted to get married. The last thing I wanted was infinite security and to be the place an arrow shoots off from. I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the colored arrows from a Fourth of July rocket."Sylvia Plath
"On this most auspicious of nights, permit me then, in lieu of the more commonplace sobriquet, to suggest the character of this dramatis persona. Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a by-gone vexation, stands vivified and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin van-guarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it's my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V."V from V for Vendetta
"Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting."Aldous Huxley
"No-one can make you feel inferior without your consent."Eleanor Roosevelt
"The executive who works from 7.00 a.m. to 7.00 p.m. every day will be both very successful and fondly remembered by his wife’s next husband."John Capozzi
"I feel that if the kids are still alive when my husband gets home from work, then, hey, I’ve done my job. When Sears comes out with a riding vacuum cleaner, then I’ll clean the house."Roseanne Barr
"Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable."Sydney Harris
"Boredom ought to be one of the seven deadly sins."Frederick Buechner
"This is the true joy of life; the being used for a purpose recognised by yourself as a mighty one, being a force of Nature rather than a feverish selfish little cloud of ailments complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy."George Bernard Shaw
"Eternity is long. Especially towards the end."Woody Allen
"In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing."Mark Twain
"If you bungle raising your children, I don't think whatever else you do well matters very much."Jackie Kennedy
"I could go to a little beach with my son and eat fish and do nothing, and live in paradise for my whole life. I could do that now. I tried, but it gave me a bad conscience.....how can you be happy when there are so many people starving? I would have to have a lobotomy or cut my heart out. I cannot be happy in this world."Manu Chao
"Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile."Albert Einstein
"The seductions of imperialism are drawing the United States toward the abyss where all the great democracies have found their end."Francis de Pressensé, French Chamber of Deputies, c. 1900
"A bayonet is a tool with a worker on each end.”"Labour movement slogan, c. 1914
"You can't be a Real Country unless you have a BEER and an airline - it helps if you have some kind of a football team or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a BEER.”"Frank Zappa
"It is a peculiarly accepted notion that the United States, the only country ruthless enough ever to have used atomic weapons – and used them against a civilian population – should be trusted with a monopoly on weapons of mass destruction.”"Mark Kurlansky
"Ryan O'Leary had to come on in the second half because Simon Ford was feeling his groin at half-time.”"Kilmarnock Manager Jim Jeffries
"Companies should only pursue charitable endeavours with an underlying intention of making money for investors.”"Peter Brabeck-Letmathé, Nestlé CEO
"Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.”"Bishop Desmond Tutu
"I am thoroughly fed up with the anti-alcohol propaganda on every broadcast news programme at this time of year. Look at George W Bush. As a wealthy alcoholic, he was a relatively harmless parasite on society. Then he sobered up, found God and killed millions. Leave alcohol alone - it does much less harm than religion.”"Craig Murray, British Ambassador to Uzbekistan 2002-2004
"When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said, ‘Let us pray.’ We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.”"Jomo Kenyatta, first Kenyan President
"The only way for a woman, as for a man, to find herself, to know herself as a person, is by creative work of her own.”"Betty Friedan
"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous than standing armies....if the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of currency....first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of their property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”"Thomas Jefferson 1743-1826
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in a final sense a theft from those who are hungry and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.”"US President Dwight Eisenhower
"Take those televangelists who trot out a Bible verse and tell you that God wants you to be rich, and somehow the way the whole get-rich system that "God created" works is that you send them money. Well, it works for them. It doesn't seem to occur to them that Jesus was a homeless ex-carpenter turned preacher. Perhaps Jesus didn't know how the system worked.”"Rick McKinley
"Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It's what separates us from the animals....except the weasel.”"Homer Simpson
"If those in charge of our society - politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television - can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves.”"Howard Zinn
"That the leading Democratic candidates are a woman and a black man is of supreme irrelevance; the fanatical Condoleezza Rice is both female and black.”"John Pilger
"The human heart refuses to believe in a universe without purpose”"Immanuel Kant
"A modern revolutionary group heads for the television station"Abbie Hoffman
"There is no reason to think a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens cannot change the world; indeed, that's the only thing that ever has."Margaret Mead p>
"Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone."John Maynard Keynes
"Happiness is when what you think, what you say and what you do are in harmony."Gandhi
"Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind."Albert Einstein
"I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the centre."Kurt Vonnegut
"I want to share something with you: the three little sentences that will get you through life. Number one: Cover for me. Number two: Oh, good idea, boss! Number three: It was like that when I got here."Homer Simpson
"I think they were absolute fucking scum - especially Thatcher, who I think should be shot as a traitor to the people. I still think that, and nothing will ever change my opinion. We're still feeling the effects of what they did to the country now, and probably always will: the whole breakdown of communities, trade unions, the working class - the dismantling of lots of things."Paul Weller
"Isn't it weird? All these banking fat cats rushing round trying to cover their butts and then who goes bust? Bear Stearns! Just thought that was funny."redpillboy
"I don’t mind being criticised, but hearing yourself described as the next James Blunt – that hurts."Paolo Nutini
"I thought Thatcher was fantastic."Tory leader David Cameron
"If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it."Edward L Bernays, early PR guru and nephew of Sigmund Freud
"Journalists used to question the reasons for war and expose abuse of power. Now, like toothless babies, they suckle on the sugary teat of misinformation and poop it into the diaper we call the six o'clock news."Kent Brockman, TV newsreader, The Simpsons
"I am afraid I misjudged the way our readers would respond to the start of the war, and our line has clearly been too confrontational and too critical for many of them...I am very sorry about this, it means we'll drop below two million for the month and that is desperately unfortunate...I will just have to get those readers back as fast as I can. One thing I won't be doing is sitting here defiantly telling myself how I'm right and they are all wrong. The readers are never wrong. Repulsive, maybe, but never wrong."Piers Morgan, Daily Mirror Editor, 2003
"A religion that takes no account of practical affairs and does not help to solve them is no religion."Gandhi
"I come bearing an olive branch in one hand and the freedom fighter’s gun in the other. Don’t let the olive branch fall from my hand."Yasser Arafat
"There is no flag large enough to hide the shame of killing innocent people."Howard Zinn
"If you're a serious revolutionary, you don't want a coup. You want changes to come from below, from the organised population"Noam Chomsky
"Greed: It ain't going anywhere. People can change anything they want to. And that means everything in the world. Without people you're nothing. That's my spiel."Joe Strummer 1952-2002
"Mixing the church and state is like mixing ice cream with cow manure. It may not do much to the manure, but it sure messes up the ice cream."Tony Campolo
"A nation that continues to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death"Dr, Martin Luther King
"Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your own parrot to the town gossip"Will Rogers
"I would no more teach my kids military training than teach them arson, robbery or assassination"Eugene Debs 1855-1926
"I don't want my photograph taken with a war criminal"Paul Weller on being told that Tony Blair wanted to be photographed with him
"I was eighteen when [Margaret Thatcher] got in. Eighteen and just started at the Post Office and living with my mum and dad and frightened of chatting up women and now I was thirty. All that time. All that time she'd strutted across my and millions of other lives, the symbol of every rotten selfish vindictive side of the human condition she could rake up and cultivate, like an evil scientist nurturing a test tube of greed and releasing it across the whole planet. And now she was gone. Maggie Maggie Maggie, out out out. It took eleven years but we did it. For a moment it all seemed to be over, how I imagine it felt on VE Day."Mark Steel
"None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone"Ralph Waldo Emerson
"I stand by this man. I stand by this man because he stands for things. Not only for things, he stands on things. Things like aircraft carriers and rubble and recently flooded city squares. And that sends a strong message, that no matter what happens to America, she will always rebound—with the most powerfully staged photo ops in the world"Stephen Colbert (about George Bush)
"Nobody gets into heaven without a letter of reference from the poor."Reverend James Forbes
"Your problem is how you are going to spend this one odd and precious life you have been issued. Whether you're going to live it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over people and circumstances, or whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it, and find out the truth about who you are."Anne Lamott
"But somehow school makes people flee subjects in terror, so years later they'll still reject Shakespeare or Dickens or Jane Austen, "because I hated it at school". That's quite an achievement, to be given the job of enthusing kids about a subject and then to make them hate it so much that even 30 years later they can't bear to think about it. It would be like a car salesman being so useless that not only did he fail to sell any cars, but half the people who came in the showroom never got in one again and 30 years later still went everywhere by skateboard."Mark Steel
"The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums"G K Chesterton
"Switching from coal to nukes is like giving up smoking and taking up crack"Dan Becker
"I can't tell the difference between politicians, they all look exactly the same to me. They all went to the same public school, they all went to the same university - and they're all trying to pander to the mainstream."Paul Weller
"The purpose of music is to elevate the spirit and inspire. Not to help push some product down your throat. It puts you in tune with your own existence. For me (music) is deep reality, someone who's telling me where he's been that I haven't and what it's like there - somebody whose life I can feel."Bob Dylan
"A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on."William S. Burroughs
"The best way to combat terrorism is by maintaining and strengthening the freedoms that terrorism seeks to destroy."Archbishop Desmond Tutu
"The Queen could, if she so chose,open parliament by whipping off the crown and saying: "You know what? This is absolutely taking the piss, isn't it? This hat's got to be worth at least nine hospitals. And I don't even need it: there's loads more of these things back at the Tower. Tell you what, let's flog this one to a Russian oligarch and use the money for saving lives or researching sustainable energy sources or something." She could do that. She's the Queen. But no. She'd rather sit there balancing a pile of unimaginable riches on her head while we scrabble for beans in the dirt."Charlie Brooker
"We may have words to say about this government about individual disputes, but let us be clear about one thing: the Tories would be an absolute disaster for working men and women."Tony Woodley, Joint General Secretary of Unite
"Political leaders seem intent on suppressing and ignoring the strong evidence that biofuels are a major factor in recent food price rises. It is imperative that we have the full picture. While politicians concentrate on keeping industry lobbies happy, people in poor countries cannot afford enough to eat."Robert Bailey, policy adviser at Oxfam
"Many climate-change sceptics like to think they are proudly independent people, refusing to be cowed by UN-sponsored orthodoxy from the IPCC. In fact, the arguments of climate sceptics have largely been moulded by a far more sinister force - the US-based conservative think tanks. A recent academic survey of environmentally sceptical books found that 92 per cent were linked with these think tanks."Mark Lynas
"I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage."Billy Bragg
"If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American President would have been hanged."Noam Chomsky
"Travel, and you will see the meaning of things."Moroccan proverb
"I think what people really mean when they say they are against organised religion is that they're against hypocritical religion, misguided religion, blind or unthinking religion, religion of rules and laws rather than love, religion that comes diced and preprocessed and shrink-wrapped like ground beef. And that's what I'm against.."Brian McLaren
"I think there are three great issues facing the world today - conflict, poverty and climate change. All are killing poor people in poor countries; they are often interrelated and all three need companies and individuals to take action and governments the world over to show courage and vision in getting a grip on the problems"Harriet Lamb, Director of the Fairtrade Foundation
"I once naively believed in British justice: you were innocent until proven guilty. Sadly, this is no longer the case. I'm just one of the million completely innocent people whose DNA is stored on the national police database - the largest of its kind in the world - and there's nothing I can do about it."Janet Street-Porter
"It is not because of polar bears that I will be joining the climate camp outside the coal plant at Kingsnorth. It is not because of butterflies or frogs or penguins or rainforests, much as I love them all. It is because everything I have fought for and that all campaigners for social justice have ever fought for - food, clean water, shelter, security - is jeopardised by climate change. Those who claim to identify a conflict between environmentalism and humanitarianism have either failed to read the science or have refused to understand it."George Monbiot
"Whenever a leading politician makes a comment about anything cultural, it's along the lines of Tony Blair's assessment of British music: 'a valuable and integral part of our trade across the world.' Or the minister of culture extolling an award-winning British film by saying, 'This shows the importance of the film industry as a source of foreign earnings.' The idea that anyone might paint or write or sing for a purpose other than boosting their share price seems beyond their comprehension. If Blair was asked what he thought of the Mona Lisa, he'd probably say, 'It should be applauded as one of the leading exporters of smiles throughout Europe.'"Mark Steel
"Either Christianity itself is flawed, [or] untrue, or our modern, Western, commercialised, industrial-strength version of it is in need of a fresh look, a serious revision."Brian D. McLaren
"Our choice is clear. We can say, as some clearly do, sorry Africa I need your land to grow fuel for my car rather than food for your people; sorry about the flooding Bangladesh but times are hard and dealing with climate change will just have to wait; and sorry Indonesia but our desire for new markets for our companies is more important than your right to protect local jobs. Alternatively we restate, with determination, our belief that the first and over-riding purpose of our trade policy should be the alleviation of global poverty; and that building a sustainable world needs to go hand in hand with building a fairer one. To do anything less at such a time would surely be morally intolerable."Murray Benham, Head of Campaigns, World Development Movement
"I have no country to fight for. My country is the earth. I am a citizen of the world."Eugene Debs
"And if McCain is not enough to win the Bush fanclub vote, he's gone Dubya or nothing with his choice of running mate Sarah Palin, Alaska's environmental Antichrist. Her hobbies include killing bears and other endangered species, and promotes the no holds barred drilling of Alaska for oil."SchNews Issue 645
"Thousands of decent Americans came to the two nominating conventions to express the dissenting opinion of millions of their compatriots who believe, with good cause, that their democracy is evaporating. They were intimidated, arrested, beaten, pepper-gassed; and they were patronised or ignored by those paid to keep the record straight."John Pilger
"The ship is safest when it's in port. But that's not what ships were made for."Paolo Coelho
"You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do."Anne Lamott
"Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one."Eleanor Roosevelt
"Democracy is about people being empowered to take charge of their own lives and share in the powers that affect them."US political theorist Benjamin Barber
"A People's Bank, based on the Post Office and its network of 14,500 branches, would provide the public service which the banking system has failed to deliver. Britain created the first postal savings bank in 1861, and by the early 20th century many other nations had followed suit. The core idea is simple: use the one state institution that can be found in most neighbourhoods and rural areas - the post office - to encourage small savings and a habit of thrift. The major remnant of such a system, the post office card account, is currently - and disgracefully - out to tender, with bidders including some of the discredited organisations that have squandered our trust. The government must award the tender to the Post Office. The new card should have greater functionality, including deposit making, direct debit, free ATM cash access and a debit card. "Labour MP Jon Cruddas
"We will face far more serious recessions than this if we don't tackle the environmental crisis now. A world of runaway climate change would be far more traumatic than anything we have experienced so far. The global economy would be shattered by the cost of falling food production, environmental refugess and extreme weather events. Whether this is a recession or a downturn, it can be the turning point. We can and must chart a better course and come out of this storm with a greener, more progressive and stronger economy, and a fairer society. This can only be achieved by developing new arguments, making tougher demands on our politicians and developing new alliances. We're on the right side of the debate about the future, so let's take on the doom-mongers. They don't know the way out. We do."Stephen Hale, Green Alliance Director
"Since 1970, more Americans have been killed by privately owned firearms than the combined number of deaths in all the wars in US history. Americans have a reputation around the world for being violent and - if that stereotype is true, as the statistics indicate - I submit that it's probably not a good idea to put 200 million guns in their hands without knowing exactly who among them owns those firearms."Tony Campolo
"I personally think referees should be wired up to a couple of electrodes and they should be allowed to make three mistakes before you run 50,000 volts through their genitals."John Gregory
"I have been held without trial by the US for 6 years, 1 month and 12 days. That is 2,234 days (very long days, and often longer nights). Of this, about 550 days were in a torture chamber in Morocco, and about 150 in the 'Dark Prison' in Kabul. Still there is no end in sight, no prospect of a fair trial...It is long past time to end this matter. I have been next to committing suicide this past while. That would be one way to end it, I suppose."Binyam Mohamed, Guantanamo Detainee, in a letter to Prime Minister Gordon Brown
"The dawn of the dumb has broken in earnest. Two mistakes occur - first Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross overstep the mark with an ill-advised bit of juvenilia, then someone decides to broadcast it. Two listeners complained, but that's by the by: it shouldn't have gone out. But then the Daily Mail - not so much a newspaper as an idiot's guidebook issued in bite-size daily instalments - uses the incident as the starting point for a full-blown moral crusade. Suddenly everyone's complaining, whether they heard the broadcast or not, largely on the basis of hysterical, boggle-eyed descriptions of what the pair said. Poor Andrew Sachs, who, having been wronged, graciously accepted their apologies and called for everybody to move on, looked bewildered by the sheer number of cameras stuck in his face. Because, by then, apologies weren't enough. The Mail was so incensed, it printed a full transcript of the answerphone prankery under the heading "Lest We Forget" - and helpfully included outtakes that weren't even broadcast, so its readers could be enraged by things no one had heard in the first place. This was like making a point about the cruelty of fox-hunting by ripping a live fox apart with your bare hands, then poking a rabbit's eye out with a pen for good measure. "Charlie Brooker
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary."H L Mencken
"Going to war to prevent war is the most stupid thing I've ever heard"The King Blues
"I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes"Winston Churchill
"If I had found the FBI didn't have a file on me, it would have been tremendously embarrassing and I wouldn't have been able to face my friends."Howard Zinn
"If it's a choice between popularity and principle, I'll choose principle any time."Arthur Scargill
"During the years of prosperity, our politicians did so much to attack rights and freedoms. It's going to be even harder during times of austerity."Shami Chakrabarti, Director of Liberty
"Tea, though ridiculed by those who are naturally coarse in their nervous sensibilities, will always be the favourite beverage of the intellectual."Thomas De Quincy (1875-1959)
"global eating trends are clearly unsustainable, whether in terms of producing (and sharing) enough food to feed a still-growing world population or of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. People who have up to now dismissed vegetarianism and veganism as mere 'lifestyle choices' may over the next few years be forced to think again."Chris Brazier, New Internationalist Co-Editor
"We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect."Aldo Leopold
"Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves."Henry David Thoreau
"War cannot be humanised. It can only be abolished."Albert Einstein
"I am totally confident not that the world will get better, but that we should not give up the game before all the cards have been played. The metaphor is deliberate; life is a gamble. Not to play is to foreclose any chance of winning. To play, to act, is to create at least a possibility of changing the world."Howard Zinn
"...the visions, plans and practical applications of radical imagination that really excite me are the ones which look at the whole picture. They draw inspiration from the renewables industry in Germany that employs 250,000 people - more than Britain's energy sector in total, alongside community-based wind-power and composting projects. A practical and radical social justice that's grounded in ecology. We haven't ruined this planet yet - history is still being made."Mel Evans of Climate Camp
"According to one British Government insider, Chinese officials engaged in the UN climate talks don't speak English, but they do know the word 'Kingsnorth' - the new coal-fired power station Britain is threatening to build."Jess Worth, New Internationalist Co-operative
"You see, the thing about heaven is that heaven is for people who like the sort of things that go on in heaven. Like, well, singing, talking to God, watering pot plants."Edmund Blackadder
"The greatest crime since World War II has been US foreign policy."Ramsey Clark, former US Attorney General
"Aid has always been an instrument of foreign policy. During the Cold War, it was used to buy the loyalties of states that might otherwise have crossed to the other side. Even today, the countries that receive the most money tend to be those that are of greatest strategic use to the donor nation, which is why the US gives more to Israel than it does to sub-Saharan Africa."George Monbiot
"So while we buy our Fairtrade coffee, wine and bananas, let's also recognise that if we want trade justice, we are going to have to go much further and tackle the major injustices in the global trading system. In other words, ethical shopping is only part of the answer. In the end we need a political solution to a political problem."Murray Benham, WDM Head of Campaigns
"If you do an advert then you are off the artistic register forever."Bill Hicks
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."George Santayana
"Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad."Brian O'Driscoll, Irish Rugby Union captain
"If only we'd stop trying to be happy, we could have a pretty good time."North American novelist Edith Wharton
"There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it."Oscar Wilde
"Do not indulge in dreams of having what you have not, but reckon up the chief of the blessings you do possess and thankfully remember how you would crave them if they were not yours."Marcus Aurelius
"What would the environment of a country look like if it were governed by the Creator of the universe? You can bet there would be no slums or endangered species."Scott A Bessenecker
"The day someone stands for election in a relatively rich country, says 'vote for me and consume less stuff', gets elected and means it, will be the day liberal democracy has a future. That could be the same day we conclude that $15 trillion spirited from nowhere to sustain financial markets might better have been spent on almost anything else; that the force of arms is helpless against the force of nature; that progress gained by the few at the expense of the rest is no progress at all. The Age of Possibility would then truly be upon us."David Ransom, Co-editor of New Internationalist
"In November [1967] the police began 'intensive helicopter training' over London. Officers dressed in militaristic berets and battledress-type uniforms with shoulder flashes marked 'Police'. This was the first faint whisper of what would become a powerful trend among the police to abandon their 'citizen in uniform' appearance and kit themselves out in militaristic or stormtroop outfits which emphasised their separation from the rest of us."Peter Hitchens
"I think President Obama is an intelligent man, compared to the previous US President."Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez
"Obama tells the world that we should 'look forward, not backwards'. The slogan is bizarre. How should the victim feel when we tell him that we are going to look only forward? We won't admit what we did to him, and we won't even say we're sorry."Clive Stafford-Smith (about the US President's stance on CIA torturers) P>
"If passion is eliminated, faith no longer exists."Soren Kierkegaard
"One rather unamusing irony of global warming is that the retreat of the northern polar ice cap is sparking a new petroleum gold rush, bringing further fossil fuels onto world markets which - when burned - will inevitably make the climate change problems worse. According to some estimates, a quarter of the world's undiscovered oil and gas reserves lie under the Arctic Ocean, in areas which have historically been seen as undrillable because of thick drifting ice floes."Mark Lynas
"It is perhaps ironic that the Home Secretary should seem so hellbent on collecting the nation's DNA while still reeling from the embarrassment of her husband's presumed attempts to spill his at the taxpayer's expense."Mark Thomas
"Do not go gentle into that good night, old age should burn and rave at close of day; rage, rage against the dying of the light."Dylan Thomas
"Having someone from the journalist profession passing judgement on anyone's expenses is a bit like having Satan heading a commission on sin."Ann Widdecombe MP
"In the end, the best thing about religion is that it produces heretics."Christian Friedrich Hebbel, German playwright 1813-1863
"Let's stop calling it climate change, it's far too mild. It's like calling a foreign invasion 'unwanted visitors'."George Monbiot
"If a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged, a liberal is a conservative who has been twatted by the police."George Monbiot
"Animal production is one of the leading causes of deforestation, climate change, water pollution and general environmental degradation. We need to let people know that eating animal products has grave personal and global consequences."Moby
"If anyone is "ruining" the American family, it's all the employers who refuse to recognise that their employees have family responsibilities as well as jobs. I'm thinking of two categories of employers that often overlap: those who don't pay enough for their employees to live on, thus forcing them to work second jobs, and those who abuse their salaried employees with expectations of ten or more hours of work per day."Barbara Ehrenreich
"We would be better protected from terrorism and global instability if the UK's armed forces stopped going abroad to make trouble."George Monbiot
"Coal-fired power stations are death factories. Close them."James Hansen, NASA
"In times of change learners inherit the earth - while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to lead a world that no longer exists."US Philosopher Eric Hoffer
"I'll tell you what scares the shit out of Tesco. It's not the farmers - they can squash us. It's not the government - they've bought them. It's the consumers. If they decide to go somewhere else, Tesco is stuffed, and they know it. Thet's where the power is. I wish more people would realise it."UK Farmer Peter Lundgren
"We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, but we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself."Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"Christians should be troublemakers, creators of uncertainty, agents of a dimension incompatible with society."Jacques Ellul
"The assumption is often made that those who struggle with doubts and questions, those who drift away from the church or even from mainstream christianity, are in some way spiritually substandard; that they lack the grit or piety to pursue the christian faith. Yet the reality is quite often the reverse: it is the doubters, the people who have outgrown the hand-me-downs of religious certainty yet who continue to ask the questions, who are on a genuine faith journey."Dave Tomlinson
"As you stand there with a picture of the President defaced to look like Hitler, and compare the effort to increase healthcare to the Nazis, my answer to you is, as I've said before, it is a tribute to the First Amendment that this kind of vile, contemptible nonsense is so freely propagated. Ma'am, trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table. I have no interest in doing so."Barney Frank, to a rabid opponent of Obama's healthcare reforms
"Thou shalt not use poetry, art or music to get into girls' pants....use them to get into their heads."Dan le Sac vs Scroobius Pip
"While there's a weak correlation between global warming and population growth, there's a strong correlation between global warming and wealth."George Monbiot
"The American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) announced this week that it will receive a six-figure grant from Coke to develop educational material to teach consumers about the role beverages and sweeteners can play in a healthy, active lifestyle."AAFP president-elect Lori Heim
"Won't ever turn away from having something to say, not in this lifetime."Sonic Boom Six
"To paraphrase a great wartime leader, never in the field of financial endeavour has so much money been owed by so few to so many. And, one might add, so far with little real reform."Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, on the bank bailouts
"Many of those targeted by the police have committed no crime and are guilty only of non-violent direct action. So it is worth reminding ourselves that protest is legal. Sorry if this sounds obvious, but you might have gained the impression that if three police units are spying on and targeting thousands, then those people must be up to something illegal."Mark Thomas
"Our track record with climate change is abysmal but former generations did end slavery and apartheid, and we did land someone on the moon. It’s the challenge for our generation and this is how we’re going to be remembered and personally, I find that very exciting. We have an enormous responsibility and what we do in the next few months will set history. We’re not lacking the knowledge, power or technology - it’s having a system and getting that in place quickly. Once we set off on the path then it will change everything – we just need to start and turn the ship around."Franny Armstrong, Director of The Age Of Stupid
"Civil disobedience has an honourable history, and when the urgency and moral clarity cross a certain threshold, then I think that civil disobedience is quite understandable, and it has a role to play. And I expect that it will increase, no question about it."Al Gore
"The huge rise in surveillance and data collection by the state and other organisations risks undermining the long-standing traditions of privacy and individual freedom which are vital for democracy."Lord Goodlad, Chair of the House of Lords Select Committee on the Constitution
"US double standards are evident in other areas of policy. The government vehemently criticises human rights violations in Venezuela, yet remains silent about abuses in neighbouring Colombia, its favoured ally, when all international bodies agree that the situation is far worse in the latter. It demanded that political prisoners in Cuba should be released while it maintained a prison camp of dubious legality on that very island."Grace Livingstone, author of America's Backyard
"The Conservative energy policy is all wind and no turbines."Gordon Brown
"The time for changing your light-bulbs and hoping for the best is over. It is time to take collective action. For some people, that will mean joining Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth or the Campaign Against Climate Change and helping them pile on the pressure. But those who can go further – by taking non-violent direct action – should do so. Every coal train should be ringed with people refusing to let it pass. Every new runway should be blockaded. The cost of trashing the climate needs to be raised. It works. Look at Britain. Three years ago, eight new coal power stations were being planned, and the third runway at Heathrow was all but inevitable. A few thousand heroic young people took direct action against them. Now all the new coal power stations have been cancelled, and the third runway is dead in the water. Here in the fifth largest economy in the world, they have stopped coal and airport expansion. Politicians felt the heat. That was done by a few thousand people. Imagine what tens or hundreds of thousands could do. There need to be parallel movements to this in every country on earth (and a much bigger one in Britain). Copenhagen had one value, and one value alone. It has shown us that if we don't act in our own self-defence now, nobody else will."Johann Hari
"Do the rich think they can go to another planet when they've destroyed this one?"Hugo Chavez
"Motherhood hits most women like a car crash. Nothing in our culture recognises, let alone encourages, the characteristics you will need once a bawling infant has been tenderly placed in your arms."Madeleine Bunting in the Guardian
"Get your teeth into a small slice, the cake of liberty"Ian Dury & the Blockheads
"No one should be going around offending people's faiths for the sake of it, but if a British novelist or playwright has something to say about Islam or any other religion, they have every right to do so and should get the full protection of the state to ensure that the principle of free speech is not compromised one iota. Although it might be worth using the pen-name 'Jeffrey Archer' just in case things turn nasty."John O'Farrell
"Crystal Palace manager Neil Warnock is in the pub with Arsene Wenger, Alex Ferguson and Rafa Benitez. Warnock gets up and gets a round in. Wenger gets up and gets the next one, then Ferguson, then Benitez. Warnock then goes up and buys himself a pint and sits down. They all ask him, "what's going on?" To which Warnock replies, "this is the 5th round, lads, and you're not ****kin' in it :-)"English FA Cup Joke 2010 :-)
"Mrs Thatcher, where you're going in a few years time, you won't have to worry about coal cos it'll be bloody roasting where you're going. And I hope the miners have a bloody day out when it happens, because I'll be there with them having a pint."from When Coal Was King by Ricky Tomlinson
"The success of a society cannot be measured by narrow economic indicators, but should take account of factors affecting the quality of life for all people: personal freedom, social equity, health, happiness and human fulfilment."UK Green Party Statement of Core Principles
"Queen of England, I'm talking to you - the time for empires is over, haven't you noticed? Return the Malvinas to the Argentinian people."Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez
"In fact there is no military solution to this challenge in Afghanistan."US General William Caldwell
"The anti-union lobby claim they don't mind unions as long as they're responsible, but it's more accurate to say they don't mind unions as long as they're ineffective. They'd be happy if a union was like a church group, and told its members "We've all been given a 40 per cent wage cut, so in response we're going to have some lovely Madeira cake and a game of whist.""Mark Steel
"The taser is not the thing that replaces the gun; it's what replaces all the other things that police might do other than use a gun, like talk to you."Ex-Toronto Mayor John Sewell
"Certainty of death, small chance of success, what are we waiting for?"Gimli from Lord of the Rings
"Wouldn't it be nice to have someone [in the Commons] who is doing more than paying lip service to climate change?"Thom Yorke from Radiohead backing Tony Juniper, Green Party candidate for Cambridge
"Every asshole who ever chanted 'Drill baby drill' should have to report to the Gulf Coast today for clean up duty"Bill Maher
"Seeing perfectly edible, good quality food destined for landfill is upsetting however you look at it. Most obviously, it could have provided a tasty, nutritious meal to a person who is going hungry or is eating unhealthily. An estimated four million Britons suffer nutritional deficiencies because they can't afford healthy food, and one in seven pensioners is seriously malnourished. Meanwhile, enough square meals to feed several armies are going into the bins every night."Katharine Hibbert
"Scrapping Trident would save a shed-load of money, while also puncturing once and for all the fantasy that Britain remains a world power."Will Self
"I find television very educating. Everytime somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book."Groucho Marx
"The meek will inherit the earth, but not the mineral rights."John Paul Getty
"We cannot be free if our food and its sources are controlled by someone else. The condition of the passive consumer of food is not a democratic condition. One reason to eat responsibly is to live free."Wendell Berry