Inspirational Climate Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Inspirational Climate. Here they are! All 100 of them:

I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.
Haim G. Ginott (Teacher and Child: A Book for Parents and Teachers)
I’ve come to a frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It’s my personal approach that creates the climate. It’s my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or dehumanized.
Haim G. Ginott
Because I trust in the ever-changing climate of the heart. (At least, today I feel that way.) I think it is necessary to have many experiences for the sake of feeling something; for the sake of being challenged, and for the sake of being expressive, to offer something to someone else, to learn what we are capable of.
Jason Mraz
Ethical veganism results in a profound revolution within the individual; a complete rejection of the paradigm of oppression and violence that she has been taught from childhood to accept as the natural order. It changes her life and the lives of those with whom she shares this vision of nonviolence. Ethical veganism is anything but passive; on the contrary, it is the active refusal to cooperate with injustice
Gary L. Francione
It became visible as a firefly in the dark that the political climate was swiftly getting more and more oppressive.
Rafael Polo (Growing Up American)
Any serious social, political, and economic change must include veganism.
Gary L. Francione
Trees know when we are close by. The chemistry of their roots and the perfumes of their leaves pump out change when we're near...when you feel good after a walk in the woods, it may be that certain species are bribing you
Richard Powers (The Overstory)
We should always be clear that animal exploitation is wrong because it involves speciesism. And speciesism is wrong because, like racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-semitism, classism, and all other forms of human discrimination, speciesism involves violence inflicted on members of the moral community where that infliction of violence cannot be morally justified. But that means that those of us who oppose speciesism necessarily oppose discrimination against humans. It makes no sense to say that speciesism is wrong because it is like racism (or any other form of discrimination) but that we do not have a position about racism. We do. We should be opposed to it and we should always be clear about that.
Gary L. Francione
The Earth was singing her revolution. She was calling her brave men and women to her defense.
Rivera Sun (Steam Drills, Treadmills and Shooting Stars - a story of our times -)
Life (like love) is forgiving and hopeful and, like a bold flower pushing out from the narrow crevice in a rock, will take any gap we allow. However small or large.
Sally Andrew (The Fire Dogs of Climate Change: An Inspirational Call to Action)
You say that you love your children above everything else. And yet you are stealing their future.
Greta Thunberg (No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference)
People ask: Why should I care about the ocean? Because the ocean is the cornerstone of earth's life support system, it shapes climate and weather. It holds most of life on earth. 97% of earth's water is there. It's the blue heart of the planet — we should take care of our heart. It's what makes life possible for us. We still have a really good chance to make things better than they are. They won't get better unless we take the action and inspire others to do the same thing. No one is without power. Everybody has the capacity to do something.
Sylvia A. Earle
...Ponnammal set the example for the others by quietly doing what they did not care to do. Her spirit created a new climate in the place, and the time came when there was not one nurse who would refuse to do whatever needed to be done.
Elisabeth Elliot (A Chance to Die: The Life and Legacy of Amy Carmichael)
I felt the full breadth and depth of the ocean around the sphere of the Earth, back billions of years to the beginning of life, across all the passing lives and deaths, the endless waves of swimming joy and quiet losses of exquisite creatures with fins and fronds, tentacles and wings, colourful and transparent, tiny and huge, coming and going. There is nothing the ocean has not seen
Sally Andrew (The Fire Dogs of Climate Change: An Inspirational Call to Action)
I am opposed to animal welfare campaigns for two reasons. First, if animal use cannot be morally justified, then we ought to be clear about that, and advocate for no use. Although rape and child molestation are ubiquitous, we do not have campaigns for “humane” rape or “humane” child molestation. We condemn it all. We should do the same with respect to animal exploitation. Second, animal welfare reform does not provide significant protection for animal interests. Animals are chattel property; they are economic commodities. Given this status and the reality of markets, the level of protection provided by animal welfare will generally be limited to what promotes efficient exploitation. That is, we will protect animal interests to the extent that it provides an economic benefit.
Gary L. Francione
So it is always preferable to discuss the matter of veganism in a non-judgemental way. Remember that to most people, eating flesh or dairy and using animal products such as leather, wool, and silk, is as normal as breathing air or drinking water. A person who consumes dairy or uses animal products is not necessarily or usually what a recent and unpopular American president labelled an "evil doer.
Gary L. Francione
We should never present flesh as somehow morally distinguishable from dairy. To the extent it is morally wrong to eat flesh, it is as morally wrong — and possibly more morally wrong — to consume dairy
Gary L. Francione
For I believe that climate does thus react on man--as there is something in the mountain air that feeds the spirit and inspires.
Henry David Thoreau
Chaos should be regarded as extremely good news.” – Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche
Pema Chödrön (Living Beautifully: An Inspirational Journal)
...But it is the sufferings of the many which pay for the luxuries of a few.
Greta Thunberg (No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference)
The real power belongs to the people.
Greta Thunberg (No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference)
You lied to us. You gave us false hope. You told us that the future was something to look forward to. And the saddest thing is that most children are not even aware of the fate that awaits us. We will not understand it until it’s too late. And yet we are the lucky ones. Those who will be affected the hardest are already suffering the consequences. But their voices are not heard. Is my microphone on? Can you hear me?
Greta Thunberg (No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference)
It comes over me that I had then a strange alter ego deep down somewhere inside me, as the full-blown flower is in the small tight bud, and I just took the course, I just transferred him to the climate, that blighted him once and for ever.
Henry James (The Jolly Corner and Other Tales (Penguin Classics))
We face so many overlapping and intersecting crises that we can't afford to fix them one at a time. We need integrated solutions, solutions that radically bring down emissions while creating huge numbers of good, unionized jobs and delivering meaningful justice to those who have been most abused and excluded under the current extractive economy.
Naomi Klein (On Fire: The Case for the Green New Deal)
I could wish to spy the nakedness of their hearts, and through the different disguises of customs, climates, and religion, find out what is good in them, to fashion my own by. It is for this reason that I have not seen the Palais Royal - nor the facade of the Louvre - nor have attempted to swell the catalogues we have of pictures, statues, and churches - I conceive every fair being as a temple, and would rather enter in, and see the original drawings and loose sketches hung up in it, than the Transfiguration of Raphael itself.
Laurence Sterne (A Sentimental Journey)
Thank you for inviting me here today " I said my voice sounding nothing like me. "I'm here to testify about things I've seen and experienced myself. I'm here because the human race has become more powerful than ever. We've gone to the moon. Our crops resist diseases and pests. We can stop and restart a human heart. And we've harvested vast amounts of energy for everything from night-lights to enormous super-jets. We've even created new kinds of people, like me. "But everything mankind" - I frowned - "personkind has accomplished has had a price. One that we're all gonna have to pay." I heard coughing and shifting in the audience. I looked down at my notes and all the little black words blurred together on the page. I just could not get through this. I put the speech down picked up the microphone and came out from behind the podium. "Look " I said. "There's a lot of official stuff I could quote and put up on the screen with PowerPoint. But what you need to know what the world needs to know is that we're really destroying the earth in a bigger and more catastrophic was than anyone has ever imagined. "I mean I've seen a lot of the world the only world we have. There are so many awesome beautiful tings in it. Waterfalls and mountains thermal pools surrounded by sand like white sugar. Field and field of wildflowers. Places where the ocean crashes up against a mountainside like it's done for hundreds of thousands of years. "I've also seen concrete cities with hardly any green. And rivers whose pretty rainbow surfaces came from an oil leak upstream. Animals are becoming extinct right now in my lifetime. Just recently I went through one of the worst hurricanes ever recorded. It was a whole lot worse because of huge worldwide climatic changes caused by... us. We the people." .... "A more perfect union While huge corporations do whatever they want to whoever they want and other people live in subway tunnels Where's the justice of that Kids right here in America go to be hungry every night while other people get four-hundred-dollar haircuts. Promote the general welfare Where's the General welfare in strip-mining toxic pesticides industrial solvents being dumped into rivers killing everything Domestic Tranquility Ever sleep in a forest that's being clear-cut You'd be hearing chain saws in your head for weeks. The blessings of liberty Yes. I'm using one of the blessings of liberty right now my freedom of speech to tell you guys who make the laws that the very ground you stand on the house you live in the children you tuck in at night are all in immediate catastrophic danger.
James Patterson (The Final Warning (Maximum Ride, #4))
The future of the next generation relies on astronomers obtaining a full understanding of the rapidly changing human environmental conditions and the halting of biologically toxic corporate government policies. The overloading of the electromagnetic environment is one of these disastrous policies that must stop.
Steven Magee
To comprehend climate change, one must be educated and enlightened by the scientific evidence; those in disbelief follow the mantra of their tribe and cult for they lack resources to acquire an independent position.
R.J. Intindola
The notion that we should promote “happy” or “humane” exploitation as “baby steps” ignores that welfare reforms do not result in providing significantly greater protection for animal interests; in fact, most of the time, animal welfare reforms do nothing more than make animal exploitation more economically productive by focusing on practices, such as gestation crates, the electrical stunning of chickens, or veal crates, that are economically inefficient in any event. Welfare reforms make animal exploitation more profitable by eliminating practices that are economically vulnerable. For the most part, those changes would happen anyway and in the absence of animal welfare campaigns precisely because they do rectify inefficiencies in the production process. And welfare reforms make the public more comfortable about animal exploitation. The “happy” meat/animal products movement is clear proof of that. We would never advocate for “humane” or "happy” human slavery, rape, genocide, etc. So, if we believe that animals matter morally and that they have an interest not only in not suffering but in continuing to exist, we should not be putting our time and energy into advocating for “humane” or “happy” animal exploitation.
Gary L. Francione
So we can’t save the world by playing by the rules. Because the rules have to be changed. Everything needs to change. And it has to start today. So everyone out there: it is now time for civil disobedience. It is time to rebel.
Greta Thunberg (No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference)
Ponnammal set the example for the others by quietly doing what they did not care to do. Her spirit created a new climate in the place, and the time came when there was not one nurse who would refuse to do whatever needed to be done.
Elisabeth Elliot (A Chance to Die: The Life and Legacy of Amy Carmichael)
Under Capitalism the most important thing is to squeeze out more and more money for a few people to spend. This means that most of the other people -- as well as the earth and the sea and all the creatures and plants and goggas -- have to pay the price.
Sally Andrew (The Fire Dogs of Climate Change: An Inspirational Call to Action)
If we are ever going to see a paradigm shift, we have to be clear about how we want the present paradigm to shift. We must be clear that veganism is the unequivocal baseline of anything that deserves to be called an “animal rights” movement. If “animal rights” means anything, it means that we cannot morally justify any animal exploitation; we cannot justify creating animals as human resources, however “humane” that treatment may be. We must stop thinking that people will find veganism “daunting” and that we have to promote something less than veganism. If we explain the moral ideas and the arguments in favor of veganism clearly, people will understand. They may not all go vegan immediately; in fact, most won’t. But we should always be clear about the moral baseline. If someone wants to do less as an incremental matter, let that be her/his decision, and not something that we advise to do. The baseline should always be clear. We should never be promoting “happy” or “humane” exploitation as morally acceptable.
Gary L. Francione
We live in a strange world, where we think we can buy or build our way out of a crisis that has been created by buying and building things. Where a football game or a film gala gets more media attention than the biggest crisis humanity has ever faced. Where celebrities, film and pop stars who have stood up against all injustices will not stand up for our environment and for climate justice because that would inflict on their right to fly around the world visiting their favourite restaurants, beaches and yoga retreats.
Greta Thunberg (No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference)
Fear is one of the persistent hounds of hell that dog the footsteps of the poor, the dispossessed, the disinherited. There is nothing new or recent about fear—it is doubtless as old as the life of man on the planet. Fears are of many kinds—fear of objects, fear of people, fear of the future, fear of nature, fear of the unknown, fear of old age, fear of disease, and fear of life itself. Then there is fear which has to do with aspects of experience and detailed states of mind. Our homes, institutions, prisons, churches, are crowded with people who are hounded by day and harrowed by night because of some fear that lurks ready to spring into action as soon as one is alone, or as soon as the lights go out, or as soon as one’s social defenses are temporarily removed. The ever-present fear that besets the vast poor, the economically and socially insecure, is a fear of still a different breed. It is a climate closing in; it is like the fog in San Francisco or in London. It is nowhere in particular yet everywhere. It is a mood which one carries around with himself, distilled from the acrid conflict with which his days are surrounded. It has its roots deep in the heart of the relations between the weak and the strong, between the controllers of environment and those who are controlled by it. When the basis of such fear is analyzed, it is clear that it arises out of the sense of isolation and helplessness in the face of the varied dimensions of violence to which the underprivileged are exposed. Violence, precipitate and stark, is the sire of the fear of such people. It is spawned by the perpetual threat of violence everywhere. Of course, physical violence is the most obvious cause. But here, it is important to point out, a particular kind of physical violence or its counterpart is evidenced; it is violence that is devoid of the element of contest. It is what is feared by the rabbit that cannot ultimately escape the hounds.
Howard Thurman
We have not taken to the streets for you to take selfies with us, and tell us that you really admire what we do. We children are doing this to wake the adults up. We children are doing this for you to put your differences aside and start acting as you would in a crisis. We children are doing this because we want our hopes and dreams back.
Greta Thunberg (No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference)
History and time shape the world around us, and the earth is ever changing, Gaia is in torment. We cannot wait until it is too late. We must unite to save it.
Julie Ann Hartley (Love and the Third Degree 1: Zeda's Dawning (The Rockwell Chronicles))
It's a team, really: the wilderness and us.
Per Espen Stoknes (What We Think About When We Try Not To Think About Global Warming: Toward a New Psychology of Climate Action)
Those of us who are still children can’t change what you do now once we’re old enough to do something about it.
Greta Thunberg (No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference)
Worry about the choices of today first before you worry about the future; it's todays choices and decisions that are shaping the future.
Wayne Chirisa
Remember that nothing that’s any good works by itself, just to please you. You got to make the damn thing work. . . . Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.
David Lipsky (The Parrot and the Igloo: Climate and the Science of Denial)
When the air is angry, we have hurricanes. When the water is angry, we have typhoons. When the land is angry, we have earthquakes. When the sky is angry, we have thunderstorms. When the universe is angry, we have death. When the air is happy, we have warmth. When the water is happy, we have springs. When the land is happy, we have rivers. When the sky is happy, we have rain. When the universe is happy, we have life.
Matshona Dhliwayo
We children are doing this to wake the adults up. We children are doing this for you to put your differences aside and start acting as you would in a crisis. We children are doing this because we want our hopes and dreams back.
Greta Thunberg (No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference)
So we can’t save the world by playing by the rules. Because the rules have to be changed. Everything needs to change. And it has to start today. So everyone out there: it is now time for civil disobedience. It is time to rebel.
Greta Thunberg (No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference)
And yet the king and his people did not love McAllister. In truth, they hated him horribly, and, to my knowledge, the whole population, with the priests at the head, tried vainly for three months to pray him to death. The devil-devils they sent after him were awe-inspiring, but since McAllister did not believe in devil-devils, they were without power over him. With drunken Scotchmen all signs fail. They gathered up scraps of food which had touched his lips, an empty whiskey bottle, a cocoanut from which he had drunk, and even his spittle, and performed all kinds of deviltries over them. But McAllister lived on. His health was superb. He never caught fever; nor coughs nor colds; dysentery passed him by; and the malignant ulcers and vile skin diseases that attack blacks and whites alike in that climate never fastened upon him. He must have been so saturated with alcohol as to defy the lodgment of germs. I used to imagine them falling to the ground in showers of microscopic cinders as fast as they entered his whiskey-sodden aura. No one loved him, not even germs, while he loved only whiskey, and still he lived.
Jack London (South Sea Tales (Modern Library Classics))
The problem was that by 2014 no one was quite sure what those challenges were. Indeed, the earth had not warmed in sixteen years, and this had inspired the savvier environmentalists, Obama among them, to at least shift the branding of the seeming crisis from “global warming” to “climate change.
Jack Cashill ("You Lie!": The Evasions, Omissions, Fabrications, Frauds and Outright Falsehoods of Barack Obama)
Millions of people across the world live in a state of acute environmental crises caused by the lack of access to safe and usable water resources, because of natural disasters, socio-economic conditions, wars and conflicts. At Green the Gene, we are developing extremely simple yet highly technology and data intensive solutions tailored to address extremely specific problems faced by communities.
Madhav Datt
Many argue that individual action doesn't matter in an issue as global and enormous as the climate crisis. They are wrong. Individual actions matter, but perhaps not in the way you think. You alone will not solve the climate crisis. Neither will I. But if you intentionally live a more sustainable life and connect with your community about your practice of One Green Thing, you can build momentum for culture change to shift policy.
Heather White (One Green Thing: Discover Your Hidden Power to Help Save the Planet)
Black women are the tall trees that remain standing in a forest after a fire. They carry themselves like royal oak trees; mighty. untouchable. From below, you can see our tight spirals and our limbs stretching. We have been hurt; our sweet sap coughing out of our mouths and oozing down from our eyes. They cut off our sprouting gardens on our heads. We are trampled down in deforestation…What about the little trees watching our mothers and fathers fall from grace? Is America listening? Why have you lied?
Isabel Villarreal (Brown Clay)
Trump and much of his cohort, who appear to want the country to collapse. A depopulated, partitioned United States is easier to exploit and control, particularly in a chaotic era of climate change, which they anticipated decades ago. To them, the state is just something to sell. They do not care if the buyers are foreign or domestic. The United States of America is merely a landmass to split into oligarch fiefdoms. It inspires no sentimentality and requires no veneration. Its laws are irrelevant, its rights ephemeral, its population disposable. Its history can be rewritten.
Sarah Kendzior (They Knew: How a Culture of Conspiracy Keeps America Complacent)
Everything is linked,' said an enraptured Baremboim on stage; 'everyone is linked, all our actions have ramifications, and music is a teacher of this interconnected reality.' There was, however, in the letter a mundane, prosaic footnote that nibbled at the very edges of possible understanding, since understanding must always be preceded by human curiosity. Perhaps it will vanish in the charged space between one suicide bomber and the next military bulldozer that buries human beings alive within the imagined security of their own homes; perhaps it will join other shards of recollected moments of curiosity and discovery, to weld into a vessel of receptivity and response.
Wole Soyinka (Climate of Fear: The Quest for Dignity in a Dehumanized World (Reith Lectures))
For I believe that climate does thus react on man—as there is something in the mountain air that feeds the spirit and inspires. Will not man grow to greater perfection intellectually as well as physically under these influences? Or is it unimportant how many foggy days there are in his life? I trust that we shall be more imaginative, that our thoughts will be clearer, fresher, and more ethereal, as our sky—our understanding more comprehensive and broader, like our plains—our intellect generally on a grander scale, like our thunder and lightning, our rivers and mountains and forests-and our hearts shall even correspond in breadth and depth and grandeur to our inland seas.
Henry David Thoreau (Walking)
Christianity in its fullness and truth has been restored to the earth by direct revelation. The restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the most significant fact since the resurrection of Jesus Christ. What was restored? In a very real sense, the true Law of the Harvest was restored – the law of justice, the law of mercy, the law of love. It was restored in a free country under the influence of a God-inspired Constitution which created a climate of freedom, opportunity and prosperity. The basic virtues of thrift, self-reliance, independence, enterprise, diligence, integrity, morality, faith in God and in His Son, Jesus Christ, were the principles upon which this, the greatest nation in the world, has been built. We must not sell this priceless, divine heritage which was largely paid for by the blood of patriots and prophets for a mess of pottage, for a counterfeit, a false doctrine parading under the cloak of love and compassion, of humanitarianism, even of Christianity.
Howard W. Hunter
By posing climate change as a battle between capitalism and the planet, I am not saying anything that we don't already know. the battle is already under way, but right now capitalism is winning hands down. it wins every time the need for economic growth is used as the excuse for putting off climate action yet again, of for breaking emission reduction commitments already made. it wins when Greeks are told that their only path out of economic crises is to open up their beautiful seas to high-risk oil and gas drilling. it wins when Canadians are told our only hope of not ending unlike Greece is to allow our boreal forests to be flayed so we can access the semisolid bitumen from the Alberta tar sands . it wins when a park in Istanbul is slotted for demolition to make way for yet another shopping mall. it wins when parents in Beijing are told that sending their wheezing kids to school in pollution masks decorated to look like cute cartoon characters is an acceptable price for economic progress. it wins every time we accept that we have only bad choices available to us: austerity or extraction, poisoning or poverty.
Naomi Klein
The growth of international bureaucracies with power to determine many aspects of people’s lives is a dominant feature of our age. Even the European Union is increasingly powerless, as it merely transmits to its member states rules set at higher levels. Food standards, for example, are decided by a United Nations body called the Codex Alimentarius. The rules of the banking industry are set by a committee based in Basel in Switzerland. Financial regulation is set by the Financial Stability Board in Paris. I bet you have not heard of the World Forum for the Harmonisation of Vehicle Regulations, a subsidiary of the UN. Even the weather is to be controlled by Leviathan in the future. In an interview in 2012, Christiana Figueres, head of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, said she and her colleagues were inspiring government, private sector and civil society to make the biggest transformation that they have ever undertaken: ‘The Industrial Revolution was also a transformation, but it wasn’t a guided transformation from a centralized policy perspective. This is a centralized transformation.’ Yet
Matt Ridley (The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge)
The Sun ran a correction for their porn story. In a tiny box, on page two, where no one would see it. What did it matter? The damage had been done. Plus it cost Meg tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees. I rang Pa yet again. Don’t read it, darling— I cut him off. I wasn’t about to hear that nonsense again. Also, I wasn’t a boy anymore. I tried a new argument. I reminded Pa that these were the same shoddy bastards who’d been portraying him as a clown all his life, ridiculing him for sounding the alarm about climate change. These were his tormentors, his bullies, and now they were tormenting and bullying his son and his son’s girlfriend—did that not inspire his outrage? Why have I got to beg you, Pa? Why is this not already a priority for you? Why is this not causing you anguish, keeping you up at night, that the press are treating Meg like this? You adore her, you told me so yourself. You bonded over your shared love of music, you think she’s funny and witty, and impeccably mannered, you told me—so why, Pa? Why? I couldn’t get a straight answer. The conversation went in circles and when we hung up I felt—abandoned.
Prince Harry (Spare)
Page 25: …Maimonides was also an anti-Black racist. Towards the end of the [Guide to the Perplexed], in a crucial chapter (book III, chapter 51) he discusses how various sections of humanity can attain the supreme religious value, the true worship of God. Among those who are incapable of even approaching this are: "Some of the Turks [i.e., the Mongol race] and the nomads in the North, and the Blacks and the nomads in the South, and those who resemble them in our climates. And their nature is like the nature of mute animals, and according to my opinion they are not on the level of human beings, and their level among existing things is below that of a man and above that of a monkey, because they have the image and the resemblance of a man more than a monkey does." Now, what does one do with such a passage in a most important and necessary work of Judaism? Face the truth and its consequences? God forbid! Admit (as so many Christian scholars, for example, have done in similar circumstances) that a very important Jewish authority held also rabid anti-Black views, and by this admission make an attempt at self-education in real humanity? Perish the thought. I can almost imagine Jewish scholars in the USA consulting among themselves, ‘What is to be done?’ – for the book had to be translated, due to the decline in the knowledge of Hebrew among American Jews. Whether by consultation or by individual inspiration, a happy ‘solution’ was found: in the popular American translation of the Guide by one Friedlander, first published as far back as 1925 and since then reprinted in many editions, including several in paperback, the Hebrew word Kushim, which means Blacks, was simply transliterated and appears as ‘Kushites’, a word which means nothing to those who have no knowledge of Hebrew, or to whom an obliging rabbi will not give an oral explanation. During all these years, not a word has been said to point out the initial deception or the social facts underlying its continuation – and this throughout the excitement of Martin Luther King’s campaigns, which were supported by so many rabbis, not to mention other Jewish figures, some of whom must have been aware of the anti-Black racist attitude which forms part of their Jewish heritage. Surely one is driven to the hypothesis that quite a few of Martin Luther King’s rabbinical supporters were either anti-Black racists who supported him for tactical reasons of ‘Jewish interest’ (wishing to win Black support for American Jewry and for Israel’s policies) or were accomplished hypocrites, to the point of schizophrenia, capable of passing very rapidly from a hidden enjoyment of rabid racism to a proclaimed attachment to an anti-racist struggle – and back – and back again.
Israel Shahak (Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years)
In the light of the evidence it is hard to believe that most crusaders were motivated by crude materialism. Given their knowledge and expectations and the economic climate in which they lived, the disposal of assets to invest in the fairly remote possibility of settlement in the East would have been a stupid gamble. It makes much more sense to suppose, in so far as one can generalize about them, that they were moved by an idealism which must have inspired not only them but their families. Parents, brothers and sisters, wives and children had to face a long absence and must have worried about them: in 1098 Countess Ida of Boulogne made an endowment to the abbey of St Bertin 'for the safety of her sons, Godfrey and Baldwin, who have gone to Jerusalem'.83 And they and more distant relatives — cousins, uncles and nephews - were prepared to endow them out of the patrimonial lands. I have already stressed that no one can treat the phenomenal growth of monasticism in this period without taking into account not only those who entered the communities to be professed, but also the lay men and women who were prepared to endow new religious houses with lands and rents. The same is true of the crusading movement. Behind many crusaders stood a large body of men and women who were prepared to sacrifice interest to help them go. It is hard to avoid concluding that they were fired by the opportunity presented to a relative not only of making a penitential pilgrimage to Jerusalem but also of fighting in a holy cause. For almost a century great lords, castellans and knights had been subjected to abuse by the Church. Wilting under the torrent of invective and responding to the attempts of churchmen to reform their way of life in terms they could understand, they had become perceptibly more pious. Now they were presented by a pope who knew them intimately with the chance of performing a meritorious act which exactly fitted their upbringing and devotional needs and they seized it eagerly. But they responded, of course, in their own way. They were not theologians and were bound to react in ways consonant with their own ideas of right and wrong, ideas that did not always respond to those of senior churchmen. The emphasis that Urban had put on charity - love of Christian brothers under the heel of Islam, love of Christ whose land was subject to the Muslim yoke - could not but arouse in their minds analogies with their own kin and their own lords' patrimonies, and remind them of their obligations to avenge injuries to their relatives and lords. And that put the crusade on the level of a vendetta. Their leaders, writing to Urban in September 1098, informed him that 'The Turks, who inflicted much dishonour on Our Lord Jesus Christ, have been taken and killed and we Jerusalemites have avenged the injury to the supreme God Jesus Christ.
Jonathan Riley-Smith (The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading)
For human beings to destroy the biological diversity of God's creation; for human beings to degrade the integrity of the earth by causing changes in its climate, by stripping the earth of its natural forests or destroying its wetlands; for human beings to contaminate the earth's waters, its land, its air, and its life -- these are sins.
Patriarch Bartholomew
Organizations that create a climate such as that described in this chapter will naturally experience an acceleration of their OODA loops. So the question becomes how to install it. Boyd suggested, in his briefing “Organic Design for Command and Control,” that it will grow naturally if the senior management sets the proper conditions. He defines the two essential elements necessary for running any human organization along maneuver conflict—rapid OODA loop—lines as: •   Leadership—implies the art of inspiring people to enthusiastically take action towards uncommon goals. It must interact with the system to shape the character or nature of that system in order to realize what is to be done. •   Appreciation—refers to the recognition of worth or value, clear perception, understanding, comprehension, discernment, etc. It must not interact nor interfere with the system, but must discern (not shape) the character / nature of what is being done or about to be done.
Chet Richards (Certain to Win: The Strategy of John Boyd, Applied to Business)
Whether or not one believes in the accelerating dangers of the climate crisis, the end of fossil fuels, or the permanent annihilation of species of plants, insects and animals that essentially cover our ass by maintaining an inconceivably complex environment in which we have the freedom and responsibility to do pretty much whatever we’d like, it’s not too difficult to at least perceive the dangers of heightened tensions between cultures that now, for the first time, have the power to annihilate each other or the entire planet.
Darrell Calkins
What is workplace optimism? If you think it’s viewing the proverbial glass half full through rose-colored glasses and thinking positive thoughts, you’re mistaken. It is more than a positive attitude. Workplace optimism shapes attitudes. It shapes a person’s and even a team’s spirit. It is the spark that fuels esprit de corps. It evokes positive emotions in team members toward their work and others. Workplace optimism is a characteristic of climate. The climate feels optimistic. People are inspired by their work and the possibilities inherent in it. Workplace optimism is the belief that good things will come from hard work. Research shows that you can transform the work experience by focusing on the best positive potential realities.9 Rather than spend time focusing on what’s wrong or missing in the workplace, you can choose to focus on what’s right and possible in the workplace. Rather than ignoring the climate, you can observe how it’s influencing work quality and relationships. You can transform the work experience by simply recognizing and leveraging human nature.
Shawn Murphy (The Optimistic Workplace: Creating an Environment That Energizes Everyone)
Ctrl+Alt+Believe: Reboot System is for associations that are courageous and want to emerge from unconscious thoughts and become conscious about choice—associations that have a deep conviction to meet the visions and mission of their members in spite of changes in the business climate, globalism, technology, generational changes, and all that is yet to come.
Holly Duckworth (Ctrl+Alt+Believe: Reboot Your Association For Success)
Carson’s writing inspired a new, much more radical generation of environmentalists to see themselves as part of a fragile planetary ecosystem rather than as its engineers or mechanics, giving birth to the field of Ecological Economics. It was in this context that the underlying logic of extractivism—that there would always be more earth for us to consume—began to be forcefully challenged within the mainstream.
Naomi Klein (This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate)
Creating the Weather in the Classroom As Haim Ginott suggests, teachers “create the weather” in the classroom:   I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It’s my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture, or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate, or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child is humanized or dehumanized [p. x].
John Shindler (Transformative Classroom Management: Positive Strategies to Engage All Students and Promote a Psychology of Success)
Heat is heat.
Lailah Gifty Akita
It was our first time really talking to one another. We talked about the weather. Now, I dont like surface conversations about the weather. It seems to just be a way to have a polite conversation because there isn't really much else to say. Sometimes it's a way to buffer an awkward situation, or light enough of a topic to carry in passing and quickly abandon without anything left hanging. But this particular weather discussion was far from that. It was so eloquent. We talked about how the weather can inspire certain longings. It was laced with romantic intonations. You could sense the magnitude of how powerful this energy transfer between us in the climate we were existing in, already was and could be.
Kayko Tamaki
It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather…I possess a tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or dehumanized.
Barbara Coloroso (Kids Are Worth It!: Giving Your Child the Gift of Inner Discipline)
You are not planting a tree, you are planting a new tomorrow.
Saksham Loonker
It requires some courage to break a taboo [around the high likelihood of climate-induced collapse, as opposed to mere climate disruption]. It requires some courage to make people aware of darkness that they had not seen before or had turned away from. Especially when that darkness is not in the changing climate and the institutions that have damaged our world, but is also within us. Because we have all participated in both the creation of this disaster and the ignoring of it. Or being satisfied with ineffectual action that provided us with a believable myth of being a good person. As such, climate chaos is an invitation to go deeper into self-reflection and learn about why we have participated in such destruction. From that inquiry we may find ways of living that avoid making matters worse. Bringing attention to the darkness around us, ahead of us and inside of us is essential if we are then to light candles of wisdom. People who are bringing attention to the darkness are also lighting candles of wisdom. Candles only shine within darkness. As more candles are lit, so we can see each other anew. We can connect with what is burning inside our hearts and live from that truth more fully than before.
Jem Bendell
Now Jesus was not a Roman citizen. He was not protected by the normal guarantees of citizenship—that quiet sense of security which comes from knowing that you belong and the general climate of confidence which it inspires. If a Roman soldier pushed Jesus into a ditch, he could not appeal to Caesar; he would be just another Jew in the ditch. Standing always beyond the reach of citizen security, he was perpetually exposed to all the “arrows of outrageous fortune,” and there was only a gratuitous refuge—if any—within the state. What stark insecurity! What a breeder of complete civil and moral nihilism and psychic anarchy! Unless one actually lives day by day without a sense of security, he cannot understand what worlds separated Jesus from Paul at this point.
Howard Thurman (Jesus and the Disinherited)
Like many other world religions, nationalism requires its adapts to adhere to a strict dogma. They must also provide a sacrifice of blood and money to its altar. It is just that nationalism is clever enough not to call itself a religion. Science, inspired by the same mechanism is not reluctant to instill guilt, call in for prophets of doom to provide us with the reason for the end of the world, through climate change, and provide us with dates of when all hell will break loose as a punishment for our environmental crimes. How to find one’s way through the maze? It seems to me that it is only reason that doesn’t require any reasons for it is itself a reason. - On Nationalism and Science as Religions
Lamine Pearlheart (Awakening)
Wir haben keine Zeit mehr. Wir müssen jetzt alles ändern. Morgen ist es zu spät.
Theresa Hannig (Pantopia)
How do we live in—and change—a reality that includes climate change, mass shootings, and racism? How do we address income inequality, sexual predation, mass incarceration? By not turning away. By engaging. By cultivating kindness and compassion, by seeking justice, by loving the earth, and by tending the great interconnected web of which we are all a part. In such a deluge of spiritual thought, I felt charged, inspired to be better, more generous; I felt more dilated to beauty and suffering, and grateful for the slant of sunlight, the different greens of leaves, the sweetness of pets, the soft chuckling of our chickens, for my husband’s amusing Albert Einstein hair.
Michelle Huneven (Search)
le "féminisme voilé" me semble à la fois une supercherie et un oxymore : le voile, en effet, fait justement partie de ces marqueurs sexués et sexistes que l' "on" impose aux femmes, et rien qu'à elles. J'ai beau fouiller dans ma mémoire, jamais je n'ai croisé un homme aux cheveux soigneusement dissimulés sous un foulard, qu'il n'ôtait que dans le secret de son foyer, devant sa femme seule. Ce voile là s'appelle un slip et les femmes en portent aussi. [...] Quant à la pudeur, c'est un concept utilisé dans l'immense majorité des cas pour normer le comportement des femmes, tandis que les hommes restent libres de se balader dans les tenues qui leur plaisent, couvrant ou découvrant telle ou telle partie de leur corps en fonction de critères aussi objectifs et asexués que le climat.
Nadia Geerts (Et toujours ce fichu voile !)
Hellfire and brimstone don’t inspire us to change; they lead to guilt. Guilt is a coping mechanism that allows us to merely limp along with our anxiety. It’s what we feel when we engage in some action that goes against our deeper principles, but that we don’t actually intend to change. Guilt is an insincere self-apology for a painful internal fracture. It leads us to symbolic actions that allow us to function with this fracture. Why not just heal the fracture?
Peter Kalmus (Being the Change: Live Well and Spark a Climate Revolution)
Appreciative conversations inspire belief in the possibility of a strong and loving relationship or a climate where people thrive.
Cheri Torres (Conversations Worth Having: Using Appreciative Inquiry to Fuel Productive and Meaningful Engagement)
My research scoured over hundreds of different coronavirus research articles starting from the first SARS-COV-1. As someone with severe symptoms, I went to great lengths to find this information. With any highly infectious virus, what you don't know can hurt you. As our climate changes, the prevalence of infectious diseases will continue. But there are silver linings for the future and our economy.
Pamela Russell
What is Sapiens (The Sonnet) Soil can survive without sapiens, But there is no sapiens without soil. There is no us if nature goes off the rocker, Yet way more than nature, we value gas and oil. We started off using clothes as cover for privacy, And we ended up prioritizing clothes over integrity. Instead of loving people and using the products, We ended up loving products and abusing humanity. Sapiens is supposed to mean wise and aware, But in practice, sapiens is code for shallow. Sapiens has become just a synonym for show-off. Neither wise, nor aware, sapiens just means narrow. However, no error is ultimate if we're willing for reform. An expanding heart is the antidote to all narrow norm.
Abhijit Naskar (Mucize Misafir Merhaba: The Peace Testament)
I believe that climate knowledge, when infused with first hand experience, can inspire actually radical, and transformative climate solutions where no communities or individuals are left behind.
Vhon Michael
The climate emergency is the biggest challenge of our time, and we all have a unique role to play. Everyone is needed, and everyone is welcome. Come as you are. Start here. Start now. Discover and apply your Service Superpower. Let's be part of the solution, together.
Heather White (One Green Thing: Discover Your Hidden Power to Help Save the Planet)
Stepping out of eco-anxiety into action takes more than hope. It's about courage. Acknowledge the feelings of stress and despair, lean into compassion, and commit to action every day. Stand up for the next generation and our shared future.
Heather White (One Green Thing: Discover Your Hidden Power to Help Save the Planet)
Culture is power. The music we listen to, the social media we consume, the food we eat, the moves and television shows we watch-these all inform our values, behaviors, and worldviews. Culture is in a constant battle for our imagination. It is our most valuable tool to inspire the social change these times demand… As the old narrative of capitalism reveals its devastating failures, we urgently need more compelling and relatable stories that show us what a just, sustainable, and healthy world can look like. The old myths will die when we replace them with new ones. … A recent look at episodic TV shows found that in 2019 only three dealt with climate change (excluding docuseries that explicitly focus on climate); “a crisis that’s reshaping every aspect of human experience is being effectively ignored.” … Stories are like individual stars. For thousands of years, humans used the stars to tell stories, to help make sense of their lives, to orient them on the planet. Stories work in the same way. When many stars coalesce around similar themes, they form a narrative constellation that can disrupt business as usual. They reveal patterns and help illuminate what was once obscured. The powerful shine in one story can inspire other stories. HARNESSING CULTURAL POWER by Favianna Rodriguez
Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis)
Page 25: …Maimonides was also an anti-Black racist. Towards the end of the [Guide to the Perplexed], in a crucial chapter (book III, chapter 51) he discusses how various sections of humanity can attain the supreme religious value, the true worship of God. Among those who are incapable of even approaching this are: Some of the Turks [i.e., the Mongol race] and the nomads in the North, and the Blacks and the nomads in the South, and those who resemble them in our climates. And their nature is like the nature of mute animals, and according to my opinion they are not on the level of human beings, and their level among existing things is below that of a man and above that of a monkey, because they have the image and the resemblance of a man more than a monkey does. Now, what does one do with such a passage in a most important and necessary work of Judaism? Face the truth and its consequences? God forbid! Admit (as so many Christian scholars, for example, have done in similar circumstances) that a very important Jewish authority held also rabid anti-Black views, and by this admission make an attempt at self-education in real humanity? Perish the thought. I can almost imagine Jewish scholars in the USA consulting among themselves, ‘What is to be done?’ – for the book had to be translated, due to the decline in the knowledge of Hebrew among American Jews. Whether by consultation or by individual inspiration, a happy ‘solution’ was found: in the popular American translation of the Guide by one Friedlander, first published as far back as 1925 and since then reprinted in many editions, including several in paperback, the Hebrew word Kushim, which means Blacks, was simply transliterated and appears as ‘Kushites’, a word which means nothing to those who have no knowledge of Hebrew, or to whom an obliging rabbi will not give an oral explanation. During all these years, not a word has been said to point out the initial deception or the social facts underlying its continuation – and this throughout the excitement of Martin Luther King’s campaigns, which were supported by so many rabbis, not to mention other Jewish figures, some of whom must have been aware of the anti-Black racist attitude which forms part of their Jewish heritage. Surely one is driven to the hypothesis that quite a few of Martin Luther King’s rabbinical supporters were either anti-Black racists who supported him for tactical reasons of ‘Jewish interest’ (wishing to win Black support for American Jewry and for Israel’s policies) or were accomplished hypocrites, to the point of schizophrenia, capable of passing very rapidly from a hidden enjoyment of rabid racism to a proclaimed attachment to an anti-racist struggle – and back – and back again.
Israel Shahak (Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years)
YOU’RE THE ONE IN CHARGE “I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.” —JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
Cyndie Spiegel (A Year of Positive Thinking: Daily Inspiration, Wisdom, and Courage (A Year of Daily Reflections))
Pour continuer à vivre dans ce monde de fiction, nous jouons à cache-cache avec ce que nous connaissons. Dans cette schizophrénie qui nous touche, nous apercevons l’urgence d’agir sans croire en nos moyens d’action. Nous savons qu’une autre histoire a commencé mais nous continuons à faire comme si de rien n’était. Et le pire, c’est que c’est tellement agréable.
Philippe Squarzoni (Saison brune)
City leaders pour resources into beautiful spectacles for political reasons, rather than providing good roads, functioning sewers, relatively safe marketplaces, and other basic amenities of urban life. As a result, cities may look awe-inspiring but aren't particularly resilient against disasters like storm floods and drought. And the more a city suffers from the onslaughts of nature, the more contentious its political situation becomes. Then it's even harder to repair shattered dams and homes. This vicious cycle has haunted cities for as long as they've existed. Sometimes the cycle ends with urban revitalization, but often it ends in death.
Annalee Newitz (Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age)
It began again! It began when everything had ended, When there was nothing left that could be defended, The universe was rapturing in all possible ways, When days were like nights and nights felt like days, There was nothing left, so it seemed, And suddenly life from its brink of extinction was redeemed, By the memory of your kiss, by the memory of your smile, And everything came alive, everything; even if it was just for a while, Then my love Irma, the universe was recast in its original form, My universe, our universe, where your essences arise to ease me like some magical balm, So it began again, the romance that actually can never end, Because even universe cannot destroy what a heart chooses to defend, Now there is nothing except our love story, Because the universe ended and then began with our love story, And in this universe where everything exists just for you and me, The universe can be, the world can be, as long as in your eyes my reflection I see, Let the universe end, let the realms collapse, let all the stars turn dark, I shall not regret it, as long as my heart bears your mark, Of those feelings and emotions experienced together, Where in the season of our lives, our love was the climate and it was the permanent weather!
Javid Ahmad Tak (They Loved in 2075!)
We need to fix our relationship with the earth, before we can solve the world's problems.
Noel Jhinku
Green Recovery focuses on improving operations, reducing carbon emissions, creating green jobs, expanding renewable energy sources, etc., so it accounts for future environment and climate justice for the planet, and the livelihoods of everyone on it.
Ines Garcia (Sustainable Happy Profit)
A rock cannot absorb. It becomes complacent, unmoving, and stuck in its place. A sponge can take on and absorb, grow and expand, and adapt based on the climate around it.
Nate Green (Suck Less, Do Better: The End of Excuses & the Rise of the Unstoppable You)
I see you, Julia. Life can be fucking incredible; we just need courage to believe it.
Tami Egonu (The Meaning of Us (Love in a Hot Climate, #1))
By going beyond solidarity, individualised lifestyle changes, I saw the incredible transformation that comes from building community power. By building this power, we can see that settling for just making better choices within a harmful system is not enough; it is only when we come together that we can transform the system itself.
Mikaela Loach (It's Not That Radical: Climate Action to Transform Our World)
Many a time we seek drama in our surroundings to spark up our daily life. However, reality is not a fairy story, and is often anti-climatic. But there’s the comedy!
Felisa Tan (In Search for Meaning)
Our world has now reached the stage where it must choose either to believe and trust entirely in the Supreme Force behind our lives or not.
Peter Strother (Spiritual Beings or Economic Tools: Just Who Are We?)
Here is why the wellbeing economy comes at the right time. At the international level there have been some openings, which can be exploited to turn the wellbeing economy into a political roadmap. The first was the ratification of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015. The SDGs are a loose list of 17 goals, ranging from good health and personal wellbeing to sustainable cities and communities as well as responsible production and consumption. They are a bit scattered and inconsistent, like most outcomes of international negotiations, but they at least open up space for policy reforms. For the first time in more than a century, the international community has accepted that the simple pursuit of growth presents serious problems. Even when it comes at high speed, its quality is often debatable, producing social inequalities, lack of decent work, environmental destruction, climate change and conflict. Through the SDGs, the UN is calling for a different approach to progress and prosperity. This was made clear in a 2012 speech by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who explicitly connected the three pillars of sustainable development: ‘Social, economic and environmental wellbeing are indivisible.’82 Unlike in the previous century, we now have a host of instruments and indicators that can help politicians devise different policies and monitor results and impacts throughout society. Even in South Africa, a country still plagued by centuries of oppression, colonialism, extractive economic systems and rampant inequality, the debate is shifting. The country’s new National Development Plan has been widely criticised because of the neoliberal character of the main chapters on economic development. Like the SDGs, it was the outcome of negotiations and bargaining, which resulted in inconsistencies and vagueness. Yet, its opening ‘vision statement’ is inspired by a radical approach to transformation. What should South Africa look like in 2030? The language is uplifting: We feel loved, respected and cared for at home, in community and the public institutions we have created. We feel understood. We feel needed. We feel trustful … We learn together. We talk to each other. We share our work … I have a space that I can call my own. This space I share. This space I cherish with others. I maintain it with others. I am not self-sufficient alone. We are self-sufficient in community … We are studious. We are gardeners. We feel a call to serve. We make things. Out of our homes we create objects of value … We are connected by the sounds we hear, the sights we see, the scents we smell, the objects we touch, the food we eat, the liquids we drink, the thoughts we think, the emotions we feel, the dreams we imagine. We are a web of relationships, fashioned in a web of histories, the stories of our lives inescapably shaped by stories of others … The welfare of each of us is the welfare of all … Our land is our home. We sweep and keep clean our yard. We travel through it. We enjoy its varied climate, landscape, and vegetation … We live and work in it, on it with care, preserving it for future generations. We discover it all the time. As it gives life to us, we honour the life in it.83 I could have not found better words to describe the wellbeing economy: caring, sharing, compassion, love for place, human relationships and a profound appreciation of what nature does for us every day. This statement gives us an idea of sufficiency that is not about individualism, but integration; an approach to prosperity that is founded on collaboration rather than competition. Nowhere does the text mention growth. There’s no reference to scale; no pompous images of imposing infrastructure, bridges, stadiums, skyscrapers and multi-lane highways. We make the things we need. We, as people, become producers of our own destiny. The future is not about wealth accumulation, massive
Lorenzo Fioramonti (Wellbeing Economy: Success in a World Without Growth)
The kingdom of Bosnia forms a division of the Ottoman empire, and is a key to the countries of Roumeli (or Romeli). Although its length and breadth be of unequal dimensions, yet it is not improper to say it is equal in climate to Misr and Sham (Egypt and Syria). Each one of its lofty mountains, exalted to Ayuk, (a bright red star that * The peace of Belgrade was signed on the first of September, 1739. By this peace the treaty of Passarowitz was nullified, and the rivers Danube, Save, and Una re-established, as the boundaries of the two empires. See note to page 1. always follows the Hyades,) is an eye-sore to a foe. By reason of this country's vicinity to the infidel nations, such as the deceitful Germans, Hungarians, Serbs (Sclavonians), the tribes of Croats, and the Venetians, strong and powerful, and furnished with abundance of cannon, muskets, and other weapons of destruction, it has had to carry on fierce war from time to time with one or other, or more, of these deceitful enemies—enemies accustomed to mischief, inured to deeds of violence, resembling wild mountaineers in asperity, and inflamed with the rage of seeking opportunities of putting their machinations into practice; but the inhabitants of Bosnia know this. The greater part of her peasants are strong, courageous, ardent, lion-hearted, professionally fond of war, and revengeful: if the enemy but only show himself in any quarter, they, never seeking any pretext for declining, hasten to the aid of each other. Though in general they are harmless, yet in conflict with an enemy they are particularly vehement and obstinate; in battle they are strong-hearted ; to high commands they are obedient, and submissive as sheep; they are free from injustice and wickedness; they commit no villany, and are never guilty of high-way robbery; and they are ready to sacrifice their lives in behalf of their religion and the emperor. This is an honour which the people of Bosnia have received as an inheritance from their forefathers, and which every parent bequeaths to his son at his death. By far the greater number of the inhabitants, but especially the warlike chiefs, capudans, and veterans of the borders, in order to mount and dismount without inconvenience, and to walk with greater freedom and agility, wear short and closely fitted garments: they wear the fur of the wolf and leopard about their shoulders, and eagles' wings in their caps, which are made of wolf-skins. The ornaments of their horses are wolf and bearskins: their weapons of defence are the sword, the javelin, the axe, the spear, pistols, and muskets : their cavalry are swift, and their foot nimble and quick. Thus dressed and accoutred they present a formidable appearance, and never fail to inspire their enemies with a dread of their valour and heroism. So much for the events which have taken place within so short a space of time.* It is not in our power to write and describe every thing connected with the war, or which came to pass during that eventful period. Let this suffice. * It will be seen by the dates given in page 1, that the war lasted about two years and five months. Prepared and printed from the rare and valuable collection of Omer EfFendi of Novi, a native of Bosnia, by Ibrahim.* * This Ibrahim was called Basmajee^ the printer. He is mentioned in history as a renegado, and to have been associated with the son of Mehemet Effendi, the negotiator of the peace of Paasarowitz, and who was, in 1721, deputed on a special em-, bassy to Louis XV. Seyd Effendi, who introduced the art of printing into Turkey. Ibrahim, under the auspices of the government, and by the munificence of Seyd Effendi aiding his labours^ succeeded in sending from the newly instituted presses several works, besides the Account of the War in Bosnia.
Anonymous
Climate change is not a jigsaw puzzle on a coffee table which can be returned to when the schedule allows and the feeling inspires. It is a house on fire. The longer we fail to take care of it, the harder it becomes to take care of.
Johnathan Safran Foer, We Are the Weather
Now Jesus was not a Roman citizen. He was not protected by the normal guarantees of citizenship—that quiet sense of security which comes from knowing that you belong and the general climate of confidence which it inspires. If a Roman soldier pushed Jesus into a ditch, he could not appeal to Caesar; he would be just another Jew in the ditch. Standing always beyond the reach of citizen security, he was perpetually exposed to all the “arrows of outrageous fortune,” and there was only a gratuitous refuge—if any—within the state. What stark insecurity!
Howard Thurman (Jesus and the Disinherited)
Quand t'es en retard au travail, tu ne vas pas aller dans ta cuisine, te faire des crêpes et un café puis tranquillement en te relaxant. Tu ne vas pas allumer la télé et voire qu'est-ce qu'il y a là-dessus. Non, tu vas courir dans ta cuisine, prendre un déjeuner rapide puis rapidement aller au travail ! Alors, pourquoi est-ce que quand ça vient au changement climatique, les gens sont en train de manger leurs crêpes en regardant à la télé ?
SimplyAliceStories