Relevant Quotes

Quotes that have touched me recently:

“A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.”
- Edward Abbey

“The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools.”
-Thucydides

“Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.”
-Howard Zinn, misattributed to Thomas Jefferson, who said something else to that effect.

"If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together."
-Aboriginal activists group, Queensland, 1970s

And one poem:

First They Came . . .

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

First They Came… is a poem attributed to Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) about the inactivity of German intellectuals following the Nazi rise to power and the purging of their chosen targets, group after group.