Hidden Missives

The last of the human freedoms is to choose one’s attitudes.

— Viktor Frankl

We must rapidly begin the shift from a ‘thing-oriented society’ to a ‘person-oriented society’.

— Martin Luther King Jr.

If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have paradise in a few years.

— Bertrand Russell

Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other.

— Mark Twain (via kari-shma)

(Source: kari-shma)

This kind of attack was expected after the government’s response to governor Taseer’s assassination. Because of the government’s very weak response … it has encouraged the hardliners in society.

— Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies Amir Rana • Explaining how the response to the assassination of Salman Taseer, who fought a blasphemy law unpopular with Christians in the country, may have led to today’s assassination of Shahbaz Bhatti. Before his death, Taseer fought in favor of a pardon for a Christian mother of four who had been sentenced to death for reportedly saying blasphemous things about Prophet Muhammad. After Taseer’s death, Pakistani officials have stayed away from changing the law. Some feel that the effect of this has encouraged some to take more hardline approach to minority groups. Sigh. source (via • follow)

Muammar Gaddafi is not a president to resign, he does not even have a parliament to dissolve … [I hold] no position from which to step down.

— Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi • Explaining that he can’t step down from office because he’s not currently in any political position. Let your brain chew on that one for a second while we invent an office for him to step down from. How about “Chief Asshole”? Works for us. How about you guys? source (via • follow)

An act so absolute as that of killing involves not only the killer but as well, those who have formed him.

— Elie Wiesel, Dawn

We reward people a lot for being rich, for being famous, for being cute, for being thin… one of the values I think we need to instill in our country, in our children, is a sense of ‘usefulness’, in other words, are we useful, are we making other peoples’ lives a little bit better?

—

Barack Obama (via corruptpolitics)

Oh Obama why you so right tho?

(via aintitgrand)

(Source: presidentialquotes.org)

It seems to me that the great difficulty of writing is to make the language of the educated mind express our confused ideas, half feelings, half thoughts, when we are little more than bundles of instinctive tendencies.

— Helen Keller, The Story of my Life

Christianity is a faith that has no interest in power or no meaning in an environment of power or wealth. The moral imperative is a delusion, and I think it’s a distraction; [Christianity] is not a faith of morals or principles; it’s about a relationship, service in love to God and other people. If it were about morals and virtues, I don’t think Jesus would have pissed off so many Jews; he was doing things that were considered obscene. He was doing work on the Sabbath, he was a messy angry person. He definitely wasn’t guided by principles… Morals, principles and laws are when faith is reduced to standards and those standards basically just bind us, and we become prejudicial, racist, self-serving when we’re guided by these laws… When a developed country uses Christianity in its policies, in government, in maintaining corporate wealth, that’s a bastardized rendering of a faith.

— Sufjan Stevens (via baobabtrees)