"One catfish does not make a creek, nor one hero a nation."
--W. C. Brann (ca. 1895)

"As long as a person has a notion that he is guided by immediate direction from heaven, it makes him incorrigible and impregnable in
all his misconduct."
--Jonathan Edwards (1740)

The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon,
     A fireball of lightning that shook all our hills,
Who're all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves?
     The radio says, "They're just deportees"
--Woody Guthrie (1948)

"I made a point of always teaching undergraduates because they are not a captive audience. . . .  I always tried out my research ideas first in the classroom to get feedback from people who didn't have to listen to me if I didn't make it interesting." 
-- Edmund S. Morgan (2000)

"Wearied with war, and tired with human butchery, they sat down to rest, and called it peace.”
--Thomas Paine (1792)

"Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it."
--Russell Baker (1965)

"[W]hen I taught my first class I felt confident, eager, and enthusiastic. If anything, I may feel less confident today but no less eager, no less enthusiastic. I find it easier to teach than to talk or write about teaching. I have no formulas to offer, no models, few new pedagogical strategies. Whatever instructional techniques we may employ, the key to good teaching remains the commitment, the spirit, the enthusiasm, the passion, the sensitivity, and, yes, the doubts and skepticism, we bring to the classroom"
--Leon Litwack (2000)

"Teaching is my job.  Teaching, in its largest sense means searching out the truth, telling it to all who are willing to learn, and building it into the life of the community.  Truth is often unpleasant, annoying and unpalatable to those who hold a disproportionate amount of worldly goods, who are power hungry, and who are pushing a cause to the detriment to the many."
-- Scott Nearing (1972)

"Perhaps the most poignant of all the performances of this tragedy is that of which Athens was guilty when she transformed herself from the 'the liberator of Hellas' into a 'tyrant city.' . . . Because military skill and prowess are edged tools which are apt to inflict fatal injuries on those who misuse them." 
-- Arnold Toynbee (1946)

"The most shocking act, closely examined, is just a louder version of some habitual gesture."
--Susan Choi (2004) 

"I had a very pleasant three years at Yale. I must say I did take it seriously, and 
consequently it took me a while to get over it."
-- Will D. Campbell (1976)

"One of the greatest problems of history is that the concepts of love and power are usually contrasted as polar opposites. . . . What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive . . . Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice."
--Martin Luther King, Jr. (1967)

"The Queen cries, but sins on."
--Thomas Jefferson (from Paris, 1787)

"If you desire peace, cultivate justice, but at the same time cultivate the fields to produce more bread; otherwise there will be no peace." 
--Norman Borlaug (1970)

“Through our airplanes we were able to dwarf distance and place time in chains. Through our submarines we were able to penetrate oceanic depths. It seems that I can hear the God of the universe saying, ‘Even though you’ve done all of that, I was hungry and you fed me not.’" 
--Martin Luther King, Jr. (1968)  

"One thing for certain every thing you eat come from some kind of farm. Every thing you wear come from a farm, no matter whether you are white, black, red, yellow, whatever. Yore fore father work hard and died poor so you can have what you got now." 
--Eddie Stimpson, Jr. (1996)

"The deadliest blow the enemy of the human soul can strike is to do fury honor. . . . Official acceptance is the one unmistakable symptom that salvation is beaten again, and is the one surest sign of fatal misunderstanding, and is the kiss of Judas." 
-- James Agee (1941)