I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

– Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”

“I do not go outdoors… As far as I’m concerned, the whole point of living in New York City is indoors. You want greenery? Order the spinach.”
– David Rakoff

“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom”
– Søren Kierkegaard

“Cultural capital has become the currency of social mobility.”
-Elizabeth Currid-Halkett

Alice: Which way should I go?

Cat: That depends on where you are going.

Alice: I don’t know.

Cat: Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.

Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

“To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden, or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Nirvana is not the distant other shore – it’s right here.  Of course, we are usually sort of somewhere else.  But, as in some prize drawings, you must be present to win.”

– Lama Surya Das

“When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.”
– Abraham Joshua Heschel

“No person hands out their money to passers-by, but to how many do each of us hand out our lives! We’re tight-fisted with property and money, yet think too little of wasting time, the one thing about which we should all be the toughest misers.”
– Seneca

“And the only thing to do with a sin is to confess, do penance and then, after some kind of decent interval, ask for forgiveness.”
– Joseph J. Ellis