Mark

“Hate can be a deeply stimulating emotion. The world becomes easier to understand and much less terrifying if you divide everything and everyone into friends and enemies, we and they, good and evil. The easiest way to unite a group isn't through love, because love is hard, It makes demands. Hate is simple. So the first thing that happens in a conflict is that we choose a side, because that's easier than trying to hold two thoughts in our heads at the same time. The second thing that happens is that we seek out facts that confirm what we want to believe - comforting facts, ones that permit life to go on as normal. The third is that we dehumanize our enemy.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“The wisdom of Martin Luther King Jr. had been long forgotten. “The church must be reminded that it is not to be the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state—never its tool,” King said. “As long as the church is a tool of the state it will be unable to provide even a modicum of bread for men at midnight.”
― Jon Ward, Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Failed a Generation

“Mr. Avery said it was written on the Rosetta Stone that when children disobeyed their parents, smoked cigarettes and made war on each other, the seasons would change: Jem and I were burdened with the guilt of contributing to the aberrations of nature, thereby causing unhappiness to our neighbors and discomfort to ourselves.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“Vision is not enough, it must be combined with venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps, we must step up the stairs.”
― Václav Havel