March 2003

"Perhaps we think that we won't find another human being inside that person. Perhaps we think that there are some people in this world who I can't ever communicate with, and so I'll just give up before I try. And how sad it is to think that we would give up on any other creature who's just like us."

--Fred Rogers

"Difference of opinion leads to enquiry, and enquiry to truth."
"We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it."

--Thomas Jefferson

"The American ideal is not that we all agree with each other, or even like each other, every minute of the day. It is rather that we will respect each other's rights, especially the right to be different, and that, at the end of the day, we will understand that we are one people, one country, and one community, and that our well-being is inextricably bound up with the well-being of each and every one of our fellow citizens."

--C. Everett Koop
Former US Surgeon General

"I love America because it is a confused, chaotic mess-and I hope we can keep it this way for at least another thousand years. The permissive society is the free society, the open society. Who gave us permission to live this way? Nobody did. We did. And that's the way it should be-only more so. The best cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy."

--Edward Abbey
The Journey Home

"The great decisions of government cannot be dictated by the concerns of religious factions.... We have succeeded for 205 years in keeping the affairs of state separate from the uncompromising idealism of religious groups and we mustn't stop now. To retreat from that separation would violate the principles of conservatism and the values upon which the framers built this democratic republic."

--Senator Barry M. Goldwater

"The capacity for getting along with our neighbor depends to a large extent on the capacity for getting along with ourselves. The self-respecting individual will try to be as tolerant of his neighbor's shortcomings as he is of his own."

--Eric Hoffer

"If you have two religions in your land, the two will cut each other's throats; but if you have thirty religions, they will dwell in peace."

--Voltaire