3
" The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers. I could regard them in no other light than a band of successful robbers, who had left their homes, and gone to Africa, and stolen us from our homes, and in a strange land reduced us to slavery. I loathed them as being the meanest as well as the most wicked of men. As I read and contemplated the subject, behold! that very discontentment which Master Hugh had predicted would follow my learning to read had already come, to torment and sting my soul to unutterable anguish. As I writhed under it, I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing. It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy. it opened my eyes to the horrible pit, but to no ladder upon which to get out. in moments of agony, I envied my fellow-slaves for their stupidity. I have often wished myself a beast. I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own. Any thing, no matter what, to get rid of thinking! It was this everlasting thinking of my condition that tormented me. There was no getting rid of it. It was pressed upon me by every object within sight or hearing, animate or inanimate. The silver trump of freedom had roused my soul to eternal wakefulness. Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever. It was heard in every sound and seen in every thing. It was ever present to torment me with a sense of my wretched condition. I saw nothing without seeing it, I heard nothing without hearing it, and felt nothing without feeling it. It looked from every star, it smiled in every calm, breathed in every wind, and moved in every storm. "
― Frederick Douglass , Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
9
" If I tear the sun from the sky and bring all the stars cascading down, would that line of your lips curve to a smile or a frown? With my hands burnt to a crisp and prosthetics in their place, would you hold me close and allow comfort in your embrace? If I fashioned a band from that sun and those stars, would you kiss these lines on my flesh? These irrevocable scars? I've fashioned for you this band of infinite light! Yet upon your finger it is not nearly so bright... You are my stars, sun and light. You are blazing fire in hopeless night. You are a reflection of perfection if my soul stood a mirror. Your affection is my infection, if only you could be nearer. You stand as a darling of your race, while I lay as an emotion with a face. What I sought and seek is not easily found, Yet from your lips escapes the perfect sound. My name and yours, yours and mine, Not even softest silk could be so fine. And yet, I see you standing there, Indecisive and fiddling with your hair. Your eyes are downward cast and your tears and my tears flow, What I would do to see them glow…and for you to know. "
10
" This was all very well: Columbanus's success indicates the appeal of his mission. But his activities, for the first time, brought the nature of Celtic monasticism firmly to the attention of the Church authorities -- to western bishops in general, and to the Bishop of Rome in particular. The Irish monks were not heretical. But they were plainly unorthodox. They did not look right, to begin with. They had the wrong tonsure. Rome, as was natural, had 'the tonsure of St Peter', that is, a shaven crown. Easterners had the tonsure of St Paul, totally shaven; and if they wished to take up an appointment in the West they had to wait until their rim grew before being invested. But the Celts looked like nothing on earth: they had their hair long at the back and, on the shaven front part, a half-circle of hair from one ear to the other, leaving a band across the forehead. "
― Paul Johnson , A History of Christianity
18
" But everyone has a voice, and everyone sings. Oh, we all do it differently. Some of us sing quietly, alone, only in the dead of night or in the shower. Some of us sing a cappella, and some stand on a stage beside a band and let the whole world share their song. Some of us, some of us don’t sing at all, like that. We sing with other instruments: There’s song in stores, and in art, and in getting up before the dawn and putting food onto the table. There are angry songs and sad songs and songs that make you want to dance. But everybody has a song to sing, their own personal story leaked into the world. And mine is one of love. "
20
" This is why it is so fundamental for us right now to grab hold of this idea of power and to democratize it. One of the things that is so profoundly exciting and challenging about this moment is that as a result of this power illiteracy that is so pervasive, there is a concentration of knowledge, of understanding, of clout. I mean, think about it: How does a friendship become a subsidy? Seamlessly, when a senior government official decides to leave government and become a lobbyist for a private interest and convert his or her relationships into capital for their new masters. How does a bias become a policy? Insidiously, just the way that stop-and-frisk, for instance, became over time a bureaucratic numbers game. How does a slogan become a movement? Virally, in the way that the Tea Party, for instance, was able to take the " Don't Tread on Me" flag from the American Revolution, or how, on the other side, a band of activists could take a magazine headline, " Occupy Wall Street," and turn that into a global meme and movement. The thing is, though, most people aren't looking for and don't want to see these realities. So much of this ignorance, this civic illiteracy, is willful. There are some millennials, for instance, who think the whole business is just sordid. They don't want to have anything to do with politics. They'd rather just opt out and engage in volunteerism. There are some techies out there who believe that the cure-all for any power imbalance or power abuse is simply more data, more transparency. There are some on the left who think power resides only with corporations, and some on the right who think power resides only with government, each side blinded by their selective outrage. There are the naive who believe that good things just happen and the cynical who believe that bad things just happen, the fortunate and unfortunate unlike who think that their lot is simply what they deserve rather than the eminently alterable result of a prior arrangement, an inherited allocation, of power. "
