Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics,
but I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time there was no one left to speak for me.
Reverend Niemoeller, a German Lutheran pastor, was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Dachau in
1938.Reverend Niemoeller was freed by the Allied Forces in 1945.
Once upon a time…
there was a country that had a very well known leader...
These are some of the facts about this leader:
He spent some time in jail due to political reasons.
He wrote a book about racial issues.
His party was declared illegal for some time.
His country was poor until he industrialized it.
He promoted the creation and manufacturing of the first national car.
He promoted the development of science in his country.
He created many large national projects, including highways and large buildings.
He made sure that his country hosted a world Class sporting event.
Large and impressive stadiums were built for that purpose.
He had to deal with a severe currency devaluation.
He insisted that the problems of his country were due to a conspiracy by foreign powers and obscure elements.
He criticized the major powers of the world.
Most of the countries in the world criticized him, but some said he was right.
He reduced political opposition to an insignificant level,
and the press was controlled by him.
His party ruled the country.
He had a number two who called for reforms and caused the jealousy of other big shots in the party.
His number two, who had been with him for around 17 years, was finally removed under accusations of
homosexuality and treason.
... and the rest of the story is very well known....
Does this sound familiar?
Do you know who he is?
Are you sure?
Think twice, because you may be wrong …
The answer is ........... (see below)
.
.
"If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are
people who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightening. That
struggle might be a moral one; it might be a physical one; it might be both moral and physical, but it must be
struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will. People might not get all that they
work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get."
Frederick Douglas, Abolitionist, 1857
To tyrannize for the country is to tyrannize over the country.
Tagore
Freedom is not something that anybody can be given; freedom is something people take and people are as free as they want to be.
James Baldwin, "Notes For a Hypothetical Novel," Nobody Knows My Name,1961
Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.
Oscar Wilde, 1895
It is the duty of every good citizen to point out what he thinks erroneous in the commonwealth.
James Otis, 1764
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.
Edward Abbey
What has commonly been called rebellion has more often been nothing but a glorious struggle in opposition to the lawless power of rebellious kings and princes.
Sam Adams (Patriot and Brewer), 1776
The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.
Steve Biko
The man who fights for his ideals is the man who is alive.
Cervantes
The dying order always likes to give a few kicks before it goes down.
Banazir Bhutto, 1989
You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man's freedom. You can only be free if I am free.
Clarence Darrow
He who says it cannot be done should get out of the way of the one who is doing it.
Chinese Proverb
United jaws crush the bone
Kigezi proverb, southwest Uganda
Cross the river in a crowd and the crocodile won't eat you.
proverb from Madagascar
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.
Martin Luther King, Jr.- Letter from a Birmingham Jail
The hottest places in hell are reserved for whose who, in a period of moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.
Dante Alighieri
Who struggles can fail. Who doesn't struggle has already failed!
- Bertolt Brecht
I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order then to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.
Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail, Alabama, April 16, 1963
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands in times of challenge and controversy
Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love, 1963
Loyalty to petrified opinions never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul in this world-and never will.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
What the public wants is called 'politically unrealistic.' Translated into English, that means power and privilege are opposed to it.
Noam Chomsky
Any excuse will serve a tyrant.
Aesop, The Wolf and the Lamb
You more likely regret that you hadn't spoke up - then what you said.
Ronald J. Neroda (10-97)
Take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.
Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize winner and survivor of a Nazi concentration camp
Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility
Dietrich Bonhoffer
My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there.
Charles F. Kettering
When spiders unite, they can tie down a lion.
Ethiopian Proverb
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
-H. L. Mencken
"The incestuous relationship between government and big business thrives in the dark."
-Jack Anderson
"Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things."
-Russell Baker
"We must remember that a right lost to one is lost to all."
-William Reece Smith, Jr.
"If we do not maintain Justice, Justice will not maintain us."
-Francis Bacon
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhwre. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes."
-Mahatma Ghandi
"If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual."
-Frank Herbert
"If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
-John Stuart Mill
"In a democracy dissent is an act of faith. Like medicine, the test of its value is not in its taste, but in its effects."
-J. W. Fulbright
If we do not change our direction, we are likely to end up where we are headed.
Ancient Chinese proverb
Poverty is the worst form of violence
Mohandas Gandhi
El pueblo unido jamas sera vencido.
The people united will never be defeated
We move from the quicksands of social injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
If you want peace, work for justice.
Pope Paul VI
Whatever you do will seem insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.
Gandhi
The man who has got everything he wants is all in favor of peace and order.
Jawaharlal Nehru
Politicians tend to be magnanimous in victory only when the opposition has been humiliatingly crushed; when the loser can claim to have won, the resentment and annoyance continue to rankle.
Simon Hoggat, 1983.
Slavery is so intolerable a condition that the slave can hardly escape deluding himself into thinking that he is choosing to obey his master's commands when, in fact, he is obliged to. Most slaves of habit suffer from this delusion and so do some writers, enslaved by an all too personal style.
W. H. Auden, poet. The Dyer's Hand, Writing (1962).
The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake.
O'Brien in George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-four"
An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws.
Thomas Paine, 1795.
The power of a movement lies in the fact that it can indeed change the habits of people. This change is not the result of force but of dedication, of moral persuasion.
Steve Biko (1946-77)
The future depends on what we do in the present.
Mahatma Gandhi
Those who forget the lessons of history are condemned to repeat them.
Santayana, Spanish philosopher.
"No uprising fails. Each step is a step in the right direction"
- Filipino peasant saying
" An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come "
-Victor Hugo
" No free government, or the blessings of liberty can be preserved to any people, but by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles"
- George Mason
"In the long run it is ideas and not men who rule the world"
-John Meynard Keynes
" The good of the people is the highest law" -Cicero
" They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"
- Benjamin Franklin
" Men's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary"
- Reinhold Niebuhr
" All lawful authority, legislative and executive originates from the people. Power in the people is like light in the sun, native, original, inherent and unlimited by any thing human."
- James Burgh
" No written law has ever been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion."
-Carrie Chapman Catt
"No cause is left but the most ancient of all, the one in fact, that from the beginning of our history has determined the very existence of politics, the cause of freedom versus tyranny"
- Hannah Arendt
"When I refuse to obey an unjust law, I do not contest the right of the majority to command but I simply appeal from the sovereignty of the people to the sovereignty of mankind."
Alexis de Tocqueville
"If, my countrymen, you wait for a constitution which absolutely bars a power of doing evil, you must wait long, and when obtained it will have no power of doing good."
-Oliver Ellsworth
"A government ought to contain in itself every power requisite to the full accomplishment of the objects committed to its care, and to the complete execution of the trusts for which it is responsible, free from every other control, but a regard to the public good and to the sense of the people."
-Alexander Hamilton
"There is no ideal freedom which will someday be given to us all at once, as a pension comes at the end of one's life. There are liberties to be won painfully, one by one, and those we still have are stages, most certainly inadequate, but stages nevertheless on the way to total liberation."
-Albert Camus, 1958