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1 " Remember one thing as South Africa prepares to go to the polls this week and the world grapples with the ascendancy of the African National Congress leader Jacob Zuma: South Africa is not Zimbabwe.In South Africa, no one doubts that Wednesday's elections will be free and fair. While there is an unacceptable degree of government corruption, there is no evidence of the wholesale kleptocracy of Robert Mugabe's elite. While there has been the abuse of the organs of state by the ruling ANC, there is not the state terror of Mugabe's Zanu-PF. And while there is a clear left bias to Zuma's ANC, there is no suggestion of the kind of voluntarist experimentation that has brought Zimbabwe to its knees. "
― Mark Gevisser
2 " One of the things about Ike that makes him so indisputably a hero is that he doesn't leave his own contradictions to the effete disputations of armchair scholars. He grapples with them himself, in his own lifetime. "
― Mark Leyner , The Sugar Frosted Nutsack
3 " You mean the day they stop needing the church," Vittoria challenged, moving toward him. " Doubt is your last shred of control. It is doubt that brings souls to you. Our need to know that life has meaning. Man's insecurity and need for an enlightened soul assuring him everything is part of a master plan. But the church is not the only enlightened soul on the planet! We all seek God in different ways. What are you afraid of? That God will show himself somewhere other than inside these walls? That people will find him in their own lives and leave your antiquated rituals behind? Religions evolve! The mind finds answers, the heart grapples with new truths. My father was on your quest! A parallel path! Why couldn't you see that? God is not some omnipotent authority looking down from above, threatening to throw us into a pit of fire if we disobey. God is the energy that flows through the synapses of our nervous system and the chambers of our hearts! God is in all things! "
4 " To be American is to be part of a dialogical and democratic operation that grapples with the challenge of being human in an open-ended and experimental manner. Although America is a romantic project in which a paradise, a land of dreams, is fanned and fueled with a religion of vast possibility, it is, more fundamentally, a fragile experiment-precious yet precarious-of dialogical and democratic human endeavor that yields forms of modern self-making and self-creating unprecedented in human history. From Thomas Jefferson to Elijah Muhammad, Geronimo to Dorothy Day, Jane Adams to Nathaniel West, it holds out the possibility of self-transformation and self-reliance to New World dwellers willing to start anew and recast themselves for the purpose of deliverance and betterment. This purpose requires only a restlessness, energy and boldness that galvanizes people to organize and mobilize themselves in a way that makes new opportunities and possibilities credible and worth the "
― Cornel West
5 " Cascando" why not merely the despaired ofoccasion ofwordshedis it not better abort than be barrenthe hours after you are gone are so leadenthey will always start dragging too soonthe grapples clawing blindly the bed of wantbringing up the bones the old lovessockets filled once with eyes like yoursall always is it better too soon than neverthe black want splashing their facessaying again nine days never floated the lovednor nine monthsnor nine livessaying againif you do not teach me I shall not learnsaying again there is a lasteven of last timeslast times of begginglast times of lovingof knowing not knowing pretendinga last even of last times of sayingif you do not love me I shall not be lovedif I do not love you I shall not lovethe churn of stale words in the heart againlove love love thud of the old plungerpestling the unalterablewhey of wordsterrified againof not lovingof loving and not youof being loved and not by youof knowing not knowing pretendingpretendingI and all the others that will love youif they love youunless they love you "