Any action or thought which injures the human imagination is evil. -- Kenneth Patchen, poet

There is also in each of us the maverick, the darling stubborn one who won't listen, who insists, who chooses preference or the spirited guess over yardsticks or even history. I suspect this maverick is somewhat what the soul is, or at least that the soul lives close by. -- Mary Oliver, poet

I've made it my task to seek out my elders and learn things to help me get through the world with some sense, some panache, some style, some grace, some courage. In your life, sooner or later, you've got to say what you are going to authentically inherit and what you are going to put into the world. -- Utah Phillips, The Progressive (sept. 2003)

Never confuse knowledge with wisdom. By wisdom I mean wrestling with how to live. -- Cornel West

What good is freedom if the structure of work makes it so there is almost no time in which to be free, that is, no time to pursue your interests, have friends, enjoy a book or movie, or even a hobby, enjoy nature? -- Karla Mantilla, off our backs (Jan/Feb 2004)

As an entry in any intergalactic design competition, industrial civilization would be thrown out at the qualifying round. -- David Orr, Orion (Jan/Feb 04)

Today's artist is a universal enquirer and trickster. -- Craig Cox

You can't claim you're the party of smaller government and then clamor to make laws about love. If there's one area I don't want the U.S. government to add to its list of screw-ups, it's love... What business is it of the state how consenting adults choose to pair off, share expenses, and eventually stop having sex with each other. -- Bill Maher, The Boston Globe (Feb 14, 2004)

When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty. -- Penny Bright, The Ecologist (March 2004)

Poverty by itself does not make people kill. To poverty must be added indignity, hopelessness, and grievance. -- Amy Chua, Amnesty Now, (summer 2003)

Most Americans seem to act as if their country were just 'one among equals,' as if their society were ordinary and benign, like a great big New Zealand, and not the society with the largest military machine and htem ost brutal and unforgiving socioeconomic order. -- Rick Fantasia, Smith Alumnae Quarterly, (winter 2003/04)

Art is our memory of love. The most an artist can do... is to say, let me show you what I have seen, what I have loved, and perhaps you will see it and love it too. -- Anne Bevan, Western North Carolina Woman (June 2003)

The reason for despair today is that we've been forced to deny who we are. To reclaim our true natures, we have to step into the unknown and risk being different. -- Sarah Patterson

You sometimes don't get accolades for the good things you do because the universe is balancing out the bad things you got away with. -- Leslie Powell, The Interesting Times, (vol 1, #1)

My world is made meaningful not by what I can evaluate and define, but by what I can appreciate and adore. I find there is a profound difference in what I find interesting and what I find important. -- Ann E. Hossler, Sacred Journey, (June 2004)

Animals are kinder to one another than we have been led to believe and nature has more space for people like us than we have been led to believe. -- Joan Roughgarden, biologist and transwoman

Democracy invites us to take risks. It asks that we vacate the comfortable seat of certitude... We are nothing but whiners if we are not able to put our concerns and convictions on the line with a willingness to honestly listen and learn something beyond our own assumptions. -- Terry Tempest Williams, Orion, (March/April 2004)

I will only ever be drawn to people who suffer from that special and fertile anguish called self-doubt, or the thirst for the ideal, and desire for the soul's mystical fire. Self-satisfaction because of some material accomplishment will never be for me: The truly great are those who quest for better spiritual selves. -- Isabelle Eberhardt

... when women speak we aren't always angry, we are not always bitches... We are just speaking the truth, which is a very frightening thing for a patriarchal society. -- Margaret Cho, Curve magazine

Love is a choice - not simply, or necessarily, a rational choice, but a willingness to be present to others without pretense or guilt. -- Carter Heyward, Our Passion For Justice (1984)