"I chose to defend human rights because I cannot maintain my silence in the face of injustice."

--

Chen Guangcheng

#Rights Quotes #Silence Quotes #Faces Quotes

“You find very few critics who approach their job with a combination of information and enthusiasm and humility that makes for a good critic. But there is nothing wrong with critics as long as people don't pay any attention to them. I mean, nobody wants to put them out of a job and a good critic is not necessarily a dead critic. It's just that people take what a critic says as a fact rather than an opinion, and you have to know whether the opinion of the critic is informed or uninformed, intelligent of stupid -- but most people don't take the trouble.”
“There are three needs of the griever: To find the words for the loss, to say the words aloud and to know that the words have been heard.”
“Earthbound souls know only the underside of the atmosphere in which they live . . . but go higher - above the dust and water vapor - and the sky turns dark until one can see the stars at noon.”
“To achieve self actualization, do good things for other people that you would want to be done onto yourself”
“Citizens, thank you for all your birthday wishes. I am 88 years old today and still lucky to live in the greatest city in the world.”
“When you are fully conscious, drama does not come into your life anymore.”
“When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience, and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility.”

Source : Neil Postman (2005). “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business”, p.129, Penguin
“I thought I'd pay you a visit, my dear. Since you're so interesting." My mouth shifted into high gear, leaving my brain behind. "You know, you're the second guy in a few days to call me that. You should be more creative.”

You may also like:

Ai Weiwei
Contemporary artist
Charles Simic
Poet
Graydon Carter
Journalist
Jennifer Egan
Novelist
Liu Xiaobo
Literary critic
Philip Levine
Poet
Salman Rushdie
Novelist
Yusef Komunyakaa
Poet
Jerome A. Cohen
Law professor