Decided Quotes - page 71
The truth is that it is a culture of dependency as promulgated by the race-baiters and new plantation overseers of the inner city that has created what we're seeing play out in Baltimore. There is where the blame lies, but there are very few who are willing to admit just that. Remember what ESPN sports commentator Stephen A. Smith said? He wished that for one voting cycle, the black community would vote Republican. Heck, they could do no worse - and look, even the people of the State of Maryland decided to try something different and elected a Republican governor. Who, when finally asked, immediately activated the National Guard to quell the violence and chaos which the Democrat Mayor of Baltimore failed to comprehend, and control. Perhaps what we're witnessing in Baltimore is the pure definition of insanity - continuing to do the same thing and expect different results.
Allen West (politician)
I wondered where the illusion of the second moon had come from, but I only wondered for a moment, and then I dismissed it from my thoughts. Perhaps it was an afterimage, I decided, or a ghost: something that had stirred in my mind, for a moment, so powerfully that I believed it to be real, but now was gone, and faded into the past like a memory forgotten, or a shadow into the dusk.
Neil Gaiman
In Saudi Arabia, everything bad was the fault of the Jews. When the air conditioner broke or suddenly the tap stopped running, the Saudi women next door used to say the Jews did it. The children next door were taught to pray for the health of their parents and the destruction of the Jews. Later, when we went to school, our teachers lamented at length all the evil things Jews had done and planned to do against Muslims. When they were gossiping, the women next door used to say, "She's ugly, she's disobedient, she's a whore--she's sleeping with a Jew." Jews were like djinns, I decided. I had never met a Jew. (Neither had these Saudis.)
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Whilst I was saddened by the thought of losing the aid of my kind mistress, I was gladdened by the invaluable instruction which, by the merest accident, I had gained from my master. Though conscious of the difficulty of learning without a teacher, I set out with high hope, and a fixed purpose, at whatever cost of trouble, to learn how to read. The very decided manner with which he spoke, and strove to impress his wife with the evil consequences of giving me instruction, served to convince me that he was deeply sensible of the truths he was uttering. It gave me the best assurance that that I might rely with the utmost confidence on the results which, he said, would flow from teaching me to read.
Frederick Douglass
[W]hat should be the policy of the State, how the Society should be organised in its social and economic side are matters which must be decided by the people themselves according to time and circumstances. It cannot be laid down in the Constitution itself because that is destroying democracy altogether.
Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar
Because I wasn't Asian enough- they decided to hire an Asian Consultant. Because I was fucking it up as an Asian. She would follow me around: "Margaret! Use chopsticks! And when you're done eating, you can put them in your hair. Now you're wearing shoes, which is something we don't do in the house. Now I'm just going to leave this abacus right here..."
Margaret Cho
We heard- a shithouse rumor?- that we dominated the heights surrounding Lerida and Balaguer (this was different); the newspapers reported that the offensive was gaining ground everywhere; the Non-Intervention Committee met again and issued another of its 'decisions.' This time it was decided once more to withdraw all foreign 'volunteers' from Spain, but England's perfidious hand could be seen as plain as day, for wasn't Mr. Chamberlain interested in concluding an agreement with Banjo-Eyes? And wasn't the 'withdrawal' contingent upon British and French concession of belligerent rights to Franco, which would tip the scales even farther in his favor by legalizing what already existed- the shipment of arms, munitions, planes and tanks and men into his territory?
Francisco Franco
Before I was signed, I just wanted to get into the system, even though I didn't know what that meant. After I got signed I found that I was confused by all the mixed messages from the label about what I'd have to do to keep their support. I fought and fought to maintain my identity and grow as an artist at the same time, but when I realized that to get their support on Timbre I'd have to start working with schlocky writers and totally sell out, I decided to pack up my marimba and split.
Sophie B. Hawkins
In the summer of 1989, neither Helmut Kohl nor I anticipated ... that everything would happen so fast. We didn't expect the wall to come down in November. And by the way, we both admitted that later. I don't claim to be a prophet. This happens in history: it accelerates its progress. It punishes those who are late. But it has an even harsher punishment for those who try to stand in its way. It would have been a big mistake to hold onto the Iron Curtain. That is why we didn't put any pressure on the government of the GDR. When events started to develop at a speed that no one expected, the Soviet leadership unanimously – and I want to stress "unanimously” – decided not to interfere in the internal processes that were under way in the GDR, not to let our troops leave their garrisons under any circumstances. I am confident to this day that it was the right decision.
Mikhail Gorbachev
In spite of muzzling the press, imprisoning thousands, and engaging in torture, kidnapping and murder, the Gonzalez government was still vulnerable to the accusation of being "soft on Basques." To demonstrate the sincerity of its stance, the new government decided to have the entire twenty-three-person directorate of Herri Batasuna arrested.
Mark Kurlansky
When I was in Vietnam, so many of our villages were being bombed. Along with my monastic brothers and sisters, I had to decide what to do. Should we continue to practice in our monasteries, or should we leave the meditation halls in order to help the people who were suffering under the bombs? After careful reflection, we decided to do both-to go out and help people and to do so in mindfulness. We called it engaged Buddhism. Mindfulness must be engaged. Once there is seeing, there must be acting. ...We must be aware of the real problems of the world. Then, with mindfulness, we will know what to do and what not to do to be of help. p. 91.
Nhat Hanh
If, in the middle of World War II, a general could be writing a poem, then maybe I was not so irrelevant after all. Maybe the general was doing more for victory by writing a poem than he would be by commanding an army. At least, he might be doing less harm. By applying the same logic to my own condition, I decided that I might be relevant in what I called a negative way. I have clung to this concept ever since - negative relevance. In moments of vain-glory I even entertain the possibility that if my concept were more widely accepted, the world might be a better place to live in. There are a lot of people who would make better citizens if they were content to be just negatively relevant.
Robert Penn Warren
He had had many conversations during his long life. Some were fascinating and stayed with him more than a century later. Others were less so. As a younger man he had tolerated those as part of the cost of doing business-a sort of tax that all people must pay in order to take part in civilized society. When he had turned one hundred, he had decided to stop paying that tax. Henceforth he would engage only in conversations that really interested him-which, with a few exceptions for close friends and family members, meant conversations with a purpose.
Neal Stephenson
I believe that the people of this country have decided this matter in their minds, and have determined that they will take their full share in the disposition of these new lands and in the work of civilisation they have to carry out there. I think they are justified in that determination-justified by the spirit of the past, justified by that spirit which has shown that the spirit of travel and adventure and enterprise distinguishing the Anglo-Saxon race has made us peculiarly fit to carry out the work of colonisation.
Joseph Chamberlain
[I]f as a nation we had decided we would repudiate on ethical and moral grounds the hydrogen bomb, we would then have to repudiate all the alliances based upon the possession of the hydrogen bomb by all the other allies. ... Those who desire that Great Britain should have no allies, and only Russia should have allies, are enemies of Great Britain and, not only that, they are enemies of the working class movement. We are only able to have an influence on the rest of the world if we have friends in the rest of the world.
Aneurin Bevan
The Peasants' Revolt came as feudalism was breaking down in Britain, just as capitalism is breaking down today. Mass unemployment, the destruction of the welfare state, the health service and comprehensive education, would not be accepted, any more than would nuclear weapons based on British soil. We will not be satisfied until there is justice in Ireland. We will not allow the House of Lords to prevent us from doing what we want to do, nor the Community in Brussels, nor American generals in the Pentagon to decide what our future can be. The only way we can change Britain and the world is when working people gather together and decide whether they will change it. When we have decided we will change it, no power on earth can stop us.
Tony Benn
"Do you believe in the civic religion of America?” Think of it like this: how could the Catholic Church hold itself together if a significant number of Catholics decided that Jesus Christ, St. Peter, and St. Paul were villains? It couldn't. A nation is not a religion, but it has to hold its founders in esteem - and this is especially true of America, which was not founded on a tribe, as most other nations were. You don't have to believe that Washington, Jefferson, and the Founders were without sin - of course they weren't - but you do have to believe that what they did was good, even heroic. Certainly not villainous.
Rod Dreher
Those of us who decided to work for democracy in Burma made our choice in the conviction that the danger of standing up for basic human rights in a repressive society was preferable to the safety of a quiescent life in servitude. Ours is a nonviolent movement that depends on faith in the human predilection for fair play and compassion.
Some would insist that man is primarily an economic animal interested only in his material well-being. This is too narrow a view of a species which has produced numberless brave men and women who are prepared to undergo relentless persecution to uphold deeply held beliefs and principles. It is my pride and inspiration that such men and women exist in my country today.
Aung San Suu Kyi
