As I mentioned in my entry yesterday, each year at our Passover Seder we put together a series of readings and activities focused on a theme (or set of themes).
We pull the readings from an Haggadah named A Different Night.
In addition to going around the table asking people to read selections from the Haggadah we also pass around 3 x 5 cards with quotes on them that I have selected and Ellen has approved which each person reads and is encouraged to comment on.
The themes this year start with the broad issue of freedom from slavery which is the foundational message associated with Passover. We include some thoughts on the revolutionary activities going on in the Middle-East. We also will touch on the issue of how the Bible and the Exodus story deals with how Jews were dealt with as strangers in a strange land and the general issue of the ‘other’ in society. Finally we will talk a bit about the issue of the role of women in society. It remains my contention that how women are treated is a societal “canary in the coal mine”. That is, how well societies deal with women tell one a lot about the society in general.
The quotes we will be using follow:
Eric Hoffer
In times of change, learners inherit the Earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.
Helen Keller
The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next.
Thomas Jefferson
We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.
King Whitney Jr.
Change has a considerable psychological impact on the human mind. To the fearful it is threatening because it means that things may get worse. To the hopeful it is encouraging because things may get better. To the confident it is inspiring because the challenge exists to make things better.
Benjamin Franklin.
Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.
Frederick Douglass.
Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want rain without thunder and lightning.
Edward Abbey.
Freedom begins between the ears.
Macaulay.
Many politicians are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who resolved not go into the water till he had learned to swim.
William Pitt, 1783.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
Mohandas K. Gandhi:
Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is.
Irene Peter
Just because everything is different doesn’t mean that everything has changed.
Margaret Mead
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
W. Edwards Deming
It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.
Winston Churchill
A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.
Trina Paulus, Hope for the Flowers
“How does one become a butterfly?” she asked pensively.
“You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.”
Lucretia Mott
The world has never yet seen a truly great and virtuous nation because in the degradation of woman the very fountains of life are poisoned at their source.
Estelle R. Ramey
Women’s chains have been forged by men, not by anatomy.
Grover Cleveland, 1905
Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote. The relative positions to be assumed by man and woman in the working out of our civilization were assigned long ago by a higher intelligence than ours.
Aung San Suu Kyi
The education and empowerment of women throughout the world cannot fail to result in a more caring, tolerant, just and peaceful life for all
Louis Carroll
“Thinking again?” the duchess asked, with another dig of her sharp little chin. “I have a right to think,” said Alice sharply, for she was beginning to feel a little worried. “Just about as much right,” said the Duchess, “as pigs have to fly.”
Robert Orben
Illegal aliens have always been a problem in the United States. Ask any Indian.
Rosellen Brown
A slave is one who waits for someone else to free him.
Gloria Steinem
However sugarcoated and ambiguous, every form of authoritarianism must start with a belief in some group’s greater right to power, whether that right is justified by sex, race, class, religion, or all four. However far it may expand, the progression inevitably rests on unequal power and airtight roles within the family.
Abigail Adams
If we mean to have heroes, statesmen and philosophers, we should have learned women.