Sarah.Chessman's Wisdom Page

What use is a fine house if you havent got a tolerable planet to put it on?

Life's most persistent and urgent question is: what are you doing for others?

The Master's tools will never dismantle the Master's House.

To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. [...] And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

Many who had been ahead of their time, had to wait for her in very uncomfortable quarters.

The first thing you must do is forget that I’m Black. Second, you must never forget that I’m Black.

No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert. What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen? Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer?

We all have the power to give love. And if we do so, we change the kind of person we are, and we change the kind of world we live in.

I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.