Inspirational Advocates Day Quotes

To say nothing is saying something. You must denounce things you are against or one might believe that you support things you really do not.

Poetry empowers the simplest of lives to confront the most extreme sorrows with courage, and motivates the mightiest of offices to humbly heed lessons in compassion.

For years I've advocated keeping a gratitude journal, writing down five things every day that brought pleasure and gratefulness

When I was an undergraduate studying economics under Professor Arthur Smithies of Harvard, he asked me in class one day what policy I favored on a particular issue of the times. Since I had strong feelings on that issue, I proceeded to answer him with enthusiasm, explaining what beneficial consequences I expected from the policy I advocated. “And then what will happen?” he asked. The question caught me off guard. However, as I thought about it, it became clear that the situation I described would lead to other economic consequences, which I then began to consider and to spell out. “And what will happen after that?” Professor Smithies asked. As I analyzed how the further economic reactions to the policy would unfold, I began to realize that these reactions would lead to consequences much less desirable than those at the first stage, and I began to waver somewhat. “And then what will happen?” Smithies persisted. By now I was beginning to see that the economic reverberations of the policy I advocated were likely to be pretty disastrous— and, in fact, much worse than the initial situation that it was designed to improve. Simple as this little exercise might seem, it went further than most economic discussions about policies on a wide range of issues. Most thinking stops at stage one.

If the Pentateuch be true, religious persecution is a duty. The dungeons of the Inquisition were temples, and the clank of every chain upon the limbs of heresy was music in the ear of God. If the Pentateuch was inspired, every heretic should be destroyed; and every man who advocates a fact inconsistent with the sacred book, should be consumed by sword and flame. In the Old Testament no one is told to reason with a heretic, and not one word is said about relying upon argument, upon education, nor upon intellectual development—nothing except simple brute force. Is there to-day a christian who will say that four thousand years ago, it was the duty of a husband to kill his wife if she differed with him upon the subject of religion? Is there one who will now say that, under such circumstances, the wife ought to have been killed? Why should God be so jealous of the wooden idols of the heathen? Could he not compete with Baal? Was he envious of the success of the Egyptian magicians? Was it not possible for him to make such a convincing display of his power as to silence forever the voice of unbelief? Did this God have to resort to force to make converts? Was he so ignorant of the structure of the human mind as to believe all honest doubt a crime? If he wished to do away with the idolatry of the Canaanites, why did he not appear to them? Why did he not give them the tables of the law? Why did he only make known his will to a few wandering savages in the desert of Sinai? Will some theologian have the kindness to answer these questions? Will some minister, who now believes in religious liberty, and eloquently denounces the intolerance of Catholicism, explain these things; will he tell us why he worships an intolerant God? Is a god who will burn a soul forever in another world, better than a christian who burns the body for a few hours in this? Is there no intellectual liberty in heaven? Do the angels all discuss questions on the same side? Are all the investigators in perdition? Will the penitent thief, winged and crowned, laugh at the honest folks in hell? Will the agony of the damned increase or decrease the happiness of God? Will there be, in the universe, an eternal auto da fe?

And what’s the solution of preventing this debacle? Plenty of ‘em! The Communists have a patent Solution they know will work. So have the Fascists, and the rigid American Constitutionalists—who call themselves advocates of Democracy, without any notion what the word ought to mean; and the Monarchists—who are certain that if we could just resurrect the Kaiser and the Czar and King Alfonso, everybody would be loyal and happy again, and the banks would simply force credit on small business men at 2 per cent. And all the preachers—they tell you that they alone have the inspired Solution. “Well, gentlemen, I have listened to all your Solutions, and I now inform you that I, and I alone, except perhaps for Walt Trowbridge and the ghost of Pareto, have the perfect, the inevitable, the only Solution, and that is: There is no Solution! There will never be a state of society anything like perfect! “There never will be a time when there won’t be a large proportion of people who feel poor no matter how much they have, and envy their neighbors who know how to wear cheap clothes showily, and envy neighbors who can dance or make love or digest better.” Doremus suspected that, with the most scientific state, it would be impossible for iron deposits always to find themselves at exactly the rate decided upon two years before by the National Technocratic Minerals Commission, no matter how elevated and fraternal and Utopian the principles of the commissioners. His Solution, Doremus pointed out, was the only one that did not flee before the thought that a thousand years from now human beings would probably continue to die of cancer and earthquake and such clownish mishaps as slipping in bathtubs. It presumed that mankind would continue to be burdened with eyes that grow weak, feet that grow tired, noses that itch, intestines vulnerable to bacilli, and generative organs that are nervous until the age of virtue and senility. It seemed to him unidealistically probable, for all the “contemporary furniture” of the 1930’s, that most people would continue, at least for a few hundred years, to sit in chairs, eat from dishes upon tables, read books—no matter how many cunning phonographic substitutes might be invented, wear shoes or sandals, sleep in beds, write with some sort of pens, and in general spend twenty or twenty-two hours a day much as they had spent them in 1930, in 1630.

It was the end of the day before John, Steve, and I had a chance to take a breath, heading upstairs and ducking into my office. The minute the door shut behind us, Steve put his arms around us and began to cry, tears of pride and relief—and, frankly, love. He had succeeded in providing Pixar, the company he’d helped turn from a struggling hardware supplier into an animation powerhouse, with the two things it needed to endure: a worthy corporate partner in Disney and, in Bob, a genuine advocate.

These days, activists who advocate "a world without prisons" are often dismissed as quacks, but only a few decades ago, the notion that our society would be much better off without prisons--and that the end of prisons was more or less inevitable--not only dominated mainstream academic discourse in the field of criminology but also inspired national campaign by reformers demanding a moratorium on prison construction.

A significant proportion of Americans have never accepted the separation of Church and State and believe that the Constitution is inspired by the Christian God, in much the same way as the Bible, and should be interpreted in the same terms, as always lending support to Christianity. In fact, the Constitution is not a quasi-religious document. It is not something frozen in the past like the Bible. It is a set of directions, appropriate for their day, but in constant need of being amended to reflect the America of today rather than the America of the past. If, for example, the Second Amendment was to be taken absolutely literally, and therefore considered precisely in terms of the weapons available at the exact time when it was enacted (which were the weapons those who formulated it had in mind), then every advocate of the Second Amendment should own nothing except a Brown Bess musket! Why should the interpretation of the Constitution be frozen in time, while the weaponry of the day is constantly updated? A Constitution that does not move with the times is a hindrance. It’s unfit for purpose, just as 18th century weapons are unfit for purpose in the 20th century. No conservative would be seen dead with a Brown Bess. So why do they worship an ancient Constitution? It has ceased to be relevant.

Skip table Area Description Desirable features Key benefits eg Youth Services Organization Purpose ​–​Why do we exist beyond financial gain? ​–​Emotional appeal ​–​The emphasis shouldn’t change over time ​–​Calls for a togetherness ​–​Grabs attention ​–​Memorable ​–​Benefits selected stakeholders (eg employees, customers, society) ​–​Heart then head appeal ​–​Inspires selflessness ​–​Creates belonging ​–​Catalyst for collaboration ​–​Helps people find meaning ​–​Attracts followers ​–​Creates advocates ​–​To give hope to vulnerable young people Vision ​–​What would success look, feel and sound like? ​–​Brings purpose to life ​–​Evokes imagery ​–​Takes a long-term view ​–​Increases clarity ​–​Has uniqueness ​–​Presents a challenge ​–​Commercial reference ​–​Provides an impetus for and inspires action ​–​Creates focus beyond the day-to-day activities ​–​Provides a benchmark to measure progress against ​–​To become the most respected, innovative and sustainably funded youth services provider in xx countries