All respect for the office of the presidency aside, I assumed that the obvious and unadulterated decline of freedom and constitutional sovereignty, not to mention the efforts to curb the power of judicial review, spoke for itself. The greatest power is not money power, but political power. What I fear most is power with impunity. I fear abuse of power, and the power to abuse.
I write for those women who do not speak, for those who do not have a voice because they were so terrified, because we are taught to respect fear more than ourselves. We’ve been taught that silence would save us, but it won’t. People are losing the capacity to listen to words or follow ideas. If there hadn’t been women we’d still be squatting in a cave eating raw meat, because we made civilization in order to impress our girlfriends. I do not wish women to have power over men; but over themselves. I say this everywhere I go: I admire and respect Hillary. She has been a lawyer, a law professor, First Lady of Arkansas, First Lady of the United States, a U.S. Senator, Secretary of State. Anyone who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without feminine upheaval. Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex, the ugly ones included. I guess at the end of the day, all women like to be appreciated and treated with respect and kindness.
The demand to be loved is the greatest of all arrogant presumptions. Everyone should be respected as an individual, but no one idolized. Popularity should be no scale for the election of politicians. If it would depend on popularity, Donald Duck and The Muppets would take seats in senate. I firmly believe that respect is a lot more important, and a lot greater, than popularity. Once you figure out what respect tastes like, it tastes better than attention. But you have to get there. Power without a nation’s confidence is nothing.
We have the best government that money can buy. Republicans and Democrats have used accounting gimmicks and competing government analyses to deceive the public into believing that 2 + 2 = 6. If our leaders cannot agree on the numbers, if ‘facts’ are fictional, how can they possibly have a substantive debate on solutions? Those who cannot understand how to put their thoughts on ice should not enter into the heat of debate. In common with all Protestant or Jewish cultures, America was developed on the idea that your word is your bond. Otherwise, the frontier could never have been opened, ’cause it was lawless. A man’s word had to mean something.
Someone once told me that if you respect a person, listen to their opinion. And if you do not respect someone, then do not listen to their opinion. And that works both ways. We all require and want respect, man or woman, black or white. It’s our basic human right. One of the most sincere forms of respect is actually listening to what another has to say. Freedom of expression – in particular, freedom of the press – guarantees popular participation in the decisions and actions of government, and popular participation is the essence of our democracy. It is a paradox that every dictator has climbed to power on the ladder of free speech. Immediately on attaining power each dictator has suppressed all free speech except his own. It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it. Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself. Arrogance, ignorance, and incompetence. Not a pretty cocktail of personality traits in the best of situations. No sirree. Not a pretty cocktail in an office-mate and not a pretty cocktail in a head of state. In fact, in a leader, it’s a lethal cocktail. It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.
In Republics, the great danger is, that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority. The relationship between the government of the United States and social and indigenous movements has always been difficult. Not just in Bolivia but worldwide. We need to have bilateral relations characterized by mutual respect. Society does not consist of individuals but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand. The new republic should be based on diversity, respect and equal rights for all. There are horrible people who, instead of solving a problem, tangle it up and make it harder to solve for anyone who wants to deal with it. Whoever does not know how to hit the nail on the head should be asked not to hit it at all. One thing that I feel very, very strongly is that we talk about Islamic countries, Islamic people, Islamic leaders, as either moderates or extremists. It’s almost like there are only two categories of Muslims. And actually, that doesn’t show respect. It shows lack of understanding of the diversity of Muslim thought. A fascist is one whose lust for money or power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends. Race hate isn’t human nature; race hate is the abandonment of human nature. Intolerance is itself a form of violence and an obstacle to the growth of a true democratic spirit. I believe mutual respect for one another and cooperation should be the basis for relationships with foreign nations. Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. Be modest, be respectful of others, try to understand.
America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves. True security is based on people’s welfare – on a thriving economy, on strong public health and education programs, and on fundamental respect for our common humanity. Development, peace, disarmament, reconciliation and justice are not separate from security; they help to underpin it. The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles. If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law. Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe. If once you forfeit the confidence of your fellow-citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. Our government… teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek. Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent.
We’re not a fragile people. We’re not a frightful people. Our power doesn’t come from some self-declared savior promising that he alone can restore order as long as we do things his way. We don’t look to be ruled. Government’s first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives. In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but organized robbery? This world of ours… must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect. We should all consider each other as human beings, and we should respect each other.
What we have to do… is to find a way to celebrate our diversity and debate our differences without fracturing our communities. The test of our social commitment and humanity is how we treat the most powerless of our fellow citizens, the respect we accord to our fellow human beings. That is what reveals our true culture. The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government. The way forward is always found through greater respect for the equal rights of all. There is no contradiction between effective law enforcement and respect for civil and human rights. Dr. King did not stir us to move for our civil rights to have them taken away in these kinds of fashions. Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other. Revolutions are the locomotives of history. We must respect the past, and mistrust the present, if we wish to provide for the safety of the future. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.
Sincerely,
History of Time
This letter is constructed by various quotes from these people:
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Walter Annenberg, Isabel Allende, Audre Lorde, Orson Welles, Mary Shelley, Michelle Obama, Karl Marx, Sofia Vergara, Friedrich Nietzsche, Albert Einstein, Julius Erving, Pink, Catherine the Great, Mark Twain, J. C. Watts, Maisie Williams, Aretha Franklin, Bryant H. McGill, Corazon Aquino, Herbert Hoover, Aung San Suu Kyi, Graydon Carter, James A. Baldwin, James Madison, Evo Morales, David Miliband, Henry A. Wallace, Mahatma Gandhi, Narendra Modi, Lakhdar Brahimi, Abraham Lincoln, Ban Ki-moon, Winston Churchill, Frederick Douglas, Louis D. Brandeis, Edward Abbey, Barack Obama, Martin Luther King, Jr., Ronald Reagan, Saint Augustine, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Malala Yousafzai, Hillary Clinton, Azim Premji, Thomas Jefferson, Martin O’Malley, Dorothy Height, Carl Jung, Joseph Joubert, Jimi Hendrix
Each new quote have a bold word in its sentence or sentences. These are all actual quotes, and I have not modified anything, besides constructing the layout of the text and putting the sentences together.
No Name Zero 