There were many such stories, and he understood just how important they were, and listened with patience and with respect. A life without stories would be no life at all. And stories bound us, did they not, one to another, the living to the dead, people to animals, people to the land?

-Alexander McCall Smith, In the Company of Cheerful Ladies

"An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all."
--Oscar Wilde

If we cant persuade nations with comparable values of the merit of our cause, we had better re-examine our reasoning

Robert S. MacNamara - U.S Minister of Defense during the Vietnam war
Comment made regarding the Vietnam war in a movie Fog of War in which he looks back at his life from age 85

It's not about charity, it's about justice.


And that's too bad.
Because you're good at charity. Americans, like the Irish, are good at it. We like to give, and we give a lot, even those who can't afford it.


But justice is a higher standard. Africa makes a fool of our idea of justice; it makes a farce of our idea of equality. It mocks our pieties, it doubts our concern, it questions our commitment.


-Bono, addressing the National Prayer Breakfast in DC

"I shall never make
Myself, or my friends, or my way of life
Or private contentment, or any
Preference of my nature, an obstacle
To the needs of a more true and living world
Than so far I have understood."

-The Countess, in Christopher Fry's play The Dark is Light Enough

"Perhaps there is another kind of writing, I only know this one; in the night, when fear does not let me sleep."

- Franz Kafka

"If wishes were horses then beggars would ride."

- Dan's Grandma, on the occasion of him starting a sentence with the words 'i wish' (in fact, on *every* occasion on which he started a sentence with 'i wish')