“We learn from history that we don’t learn from history.”

Dear Child of God, I write these words because we all experience sadness, we all come at times to despair, and we all lose hope that the suffering in our lives and in the world will ever end.

Don’t raise your voice, improve your argument.

Forgiveness does not relieve someone of responsibility for what they have done. Forgiveness does not erase accountability. It is not about turning a blind eye or even turning the other cheek.

Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.

Forgiveness is simply about understanding that every one of us is both inherently good and inherently flawed.

Within every hopeless situation and every seemingly hopeless person lies the possibility of transformation

Be nice to whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity.

We are made for loving. If we don’t love, we will be like plants without water.

We are made for goodness. We are made for love. We are made for friendliness. We are made for togetherness. We are made for all of the beautiful things that you and I know.

A person is a person through other persons.

In the end what matters is not how good we are but how good God is. Not how much we love Him but how much He loves us. And God loves us whoever we are, whatever we’ve done or failed to do, whatever we believe or can’t.

We do not heal in isolation. When we reach out and connect with one another—when we tell the story, name the hurt, grant forgiveness, and renew or release the relationship—our suffering begins to transform.

Though wrong gratifies in the moment, good yields its gifts over a lifetime.

Like when you sit in front of a fire in winter – you are just there in front of the fire. You don’t have to be smart or anything. The fire warms you.

Differences are not intended to separate, to alienate. We are different precisely in order to realize our need for one another.

The history of this country was made largely by people who wanted to be left alone. Those who could not thrive when left to themselves never felt at ease in America.

History is a cyclic poem written by time upon the memories of man.

Does a poet create, originate, initiate the thing called a poem, or is his behavior merely the product of his genetic and environmental histories?

The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling – their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability. Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.

We could be history in the making.

A myth is far truer than a history, for a history only gives a story of the shadows, whereas a myth gives a story of the substances that cast the shadows.

I know this will come as a shock to you, Mr. Goldwyn, but in all history, which has held billions and billions of human beings, not a single one ever had a happy ending.

Railing against the past will not heal us. History has happened. It’s over and done with. All we can do is to change its course by encouraging what we love instead of destroying what we don’t.