Dissident Veteran For Peace: Reality, Temptation, & Nothing

Dissident Veteran For Peace

"I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America." —Alexis de Tocquevile. Democracy in America, Book I, Chapter XV.

With a nod to the Most Rev. Dom Helder Camara: When I support Palestinians some call me an 'anti-Semite', when I try to explain why I stand in solidarity with Palestinians they call me a Nazi.

"WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives." —Major General Smedley Butler, USMC (ret.)

"... no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end." —character of O'Brien in 1984, part 3, ch. 3 by George Orwell.

"Every prophet has realized that nobody loves you for being the enemy of their illusions. Every prophet has realized that most of us want peace at any price as long as the peace is ours and somebody else pays the price. That is why the prophet Jeremiah said, ' "Peace, peace," they say, when there is no peace,' ..." —The Rev. William Sloane Coffin. "Not to Bring Peace, But a Sword."

Sunday, October 11, 2015

Reality, Temptation, & Nothing

Not everybody is able to see me ... I'm real and most earthlings can bear very little reality.

-Character of Proginoskes in A Wind in the Door (Crosswicks, 1973) by Madeleine L'Engle, p. 81.

The temptation ... is to stay an immature pleasure-seeker. When we seek our own pleasure as the ultimate good we place ourselves as the center of the universe ... nothing created is the center.

-Character of Proginoskes, p. 178.

When everything is nothing there will be no more war, no illness, no death. There will be no more poverty, no more pain, no more slums, no more starvation ...

-Character of Echthros-Mr. Jenkins in A Wind in the Door, p. 187.

Labels: art and literature, Madeleine L'Engle, philosophy, psychology, quotations, religion