ŷ������

“How do you defeat terrorism? Don’t be terrorized.”
― Salman Rushdie, Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002

“The fundamentalist seeks to bring down a great deal more than buildings. Such people are against, to offer just a brief list, freedom of speech, a multi-party political system, universal adult suffrage, accountable government, Jews, homosexuals, women's rights, pluralism, secularism, short skirts, dancing, beardlessness, evolution theory, sex. There are tyrants, not Muslims.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said that we should now define ourselves not only by what we are for but by what we are against. I would reverse that proposition, because in the present instance what we are against is a no brainer. Suicidist assassins ram wide-bodied aircraft into the World Trade Center and Pentagon and kill thousands of people: um, I'm against that. But what are we for? What will we risk our lives to defend? Can we unanimously concur that all the items in the preceding list -- yes, even the short skirts and the dancing -- are worth dying for?

The fundamentalist believes that we believe in nothing. In his world-view, he has his absolute certainties, while we are sunk in sybaritic indulgences. To prove him wrong, we must first know that he is wrong. We must agree on what matters: kissing in public places, bacon sandwiches, disagreement, cutting-edge fashion, literature, generosity, water, a more equitable distribution of the world's resources, movies, music, freedom of thought, beauty, love. These will be our weapons. Not by making war but by the unafraid way we choose to live shall we defeat them.

How to defeat terrorism? Don't be terrorized. Don't let fear rule your life. Even if you are scared.”
― Salman Rushdie, Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002

“�� the primitive comprehension that the state property represents a social one, their identification, and their equalization  could not resist the criticism of the time. The state property is not socialism. The state-monopoly property, as it was on the both sides of the Berlin Wall and which continues to be such one even after it dropped down, is not social property. There was never and nowhere any socialism! In the twentieth century, we passed through a system of utopian socialism as proof that this was not socialism that was not possible, but the utopia of the writers before Marx and after Marx. We were visited by a utopian socialism, which at the contemporary stage is simply capitalism—state, monopolistic.”
― Todor Bombov, Socialism Is Dead! Long Live Socialism!: The Marx Code-Socialism with a Human Face

“Of course, during the centuries the justice was always a rather elastic term, but always till now and “everywhere the justice is the same thing �� the usefully for the stronger�� (Plato, The Republic).”
― Todor Bombov, Socialism Is Dead! Long Live Socialism!: The Marx Code-Socialism with a Human Face

“The so-called “socialism�� exceeded the mangiest recommendations of Keynes! Such a regulated state capitalism, such an intervention of the state in the economy like “socialism�� does, Keynes had not even dreamed possible! The exceptional assistance of the state for the monopolies and their coalescence in a constitution—still after the receipt of Keynes! There is no better application of Keynes’s doctrine than the “socialism�� of the twentieth century! Keynesian doctrine is an ideology of étatism, which strangely, was proclaimed as an essence of socialism! Keynes—the ideologist of the national debt, of the chronic budgetary deficit, and the inflation! His idea is the militarization of the economy, increasing workmen’s taxes, regulation of incomes through a “moderate inflation�� in favor of the rich and the “solution�� of the economic crises by regulation of the money circulation. All that was so well carried and applied in the “socialist�� system that Keynes himself would have to wonder and to be proud of his “communist�� disciples! Actually, Keynes, by observing the Soviet Union, had understood well the role of the state and the monopoly of the capital and sincerely recognized, by contrast with Stalin and the others after him, that they were used in a wonderful manner for the confirmation and for the perpetuation of the sovereignty of capitalism but not for its abolition. His “planned capitalism�� is the same “planned socialism�� of the twentieth century!”
― Todor Bombov, Socialism Is Dead! Long Live Socialism!: The Marx Code-Socialism with a Human Face

“You don't have to stand up for your rights to get justice,
sometimes you can sit for your rights like Rosa Parks.”
― Harmon Okinyo

“Salah satu anggapan dasar buku ini adalah bahwa adat memiliki kaidah dan nilai-nilai yang lebih adil dan berkelanjutan dibanding janji-janji kemajuan yang diusung oleh kapitalisme.”
― Marsen Sinaga, Adat Berdaulat: Melawan Serbuan Kapitalisme di Aceh

“Abandoning civil society will leave the enemy in control, not by victory but by default.”
― Mike Klepper

“Incivility is contagious—often spreading by way of righteous indignation until even those without legitimate grievance have come down with symptoms and taken sides.”
― Diane Kalen-Sukra, Save Your City: How Toxic Culture Kills Community & What to Do About It

“To retain our dignity, we must sometimes refuse to live life at any cost”
― Dario Spini, War, Community, and Social Change: Collective Experiences in the Former Yugoslavia

“Today, as cities and suburbs reinvent themselves, and as cynics claim that government has nothing good to contribute to that process, it's important that institutions like libraries get the recognition they deserve. After all, the root of the word "library," liber; means both "book" and "free." Libraries stand for and exemplify something that needs defending: the public institutions that -- even in an age of atomization and inequality -- serve as bedrocks of civil society. Libraries are the kinds of places where ordinary people with different backgrounds, passions, and interests can take part in a living democratic culture. They are the kinds of places where the public, private, and philanthropic sectors can work together to reach for something higher than the bottom line.”
― Eric Klinenberg, Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life

“When civil society languishes, when the life of organizations and voluntary associations is curtailed, then sooner or later political parties will begin to languish as well, until, ultimately, they become degenerate ghettos whose only purpose is to elevate their members into positions of power.”
― Václav Havel, To the Castle and Back: Reflections on My Strange Life as a Fairy-Tale Hero

“The demise of our social ethics under the debris of political dirt has revealed over the time the public goods of prosperity or progression are nothing but a fairy tale.”
― Qamar Rafiq

“Am Vormittag vertrete ich die Meinung meines Blattes; aber am Abend denke ich, was ich will: Bei Nacht sind alle Journalisten blau”
― Honoré de Balzac, Illusions perdues; Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes; Le Père Goriot

“If each and one of us understands the essence of human values, we will be able to sustain our civilization by living in tranquility and embrace the opportunities that each of us can contribute to our society.”
― Saaif alam

“There is no such thing a person can reach his or her goals by taking shortcuts because it is considered as one form of cheating. The person must use his or her own unique knowledge and apply a great deal of effort simultaneously in order to achieve his or her goals successfully.”
― Saaif Alam

“Whole bodies of men are sometimes infected with an epidemical weakness of the head, or corruption of heart, by which they become unfit for the stations they occupy, and threaten the states they compose, however flourishing, with the prospect of decay, and ruin.”
― Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society

“And such is the power of the organization so introduced, that even when life shall appear to desert it, and its destruction by the barbarians inevitable, they will submit to its yoke. Despite themselves, they must dwell under the everlasting roofs which mock their efforts at destruction: they will bow the head, and, victors as they are, receive laws from vanquished Rome. ... Such is the work of civil order.”
― Jules Michelet, History of France

“The need to revive civic education in our modern democracies is of the utmost importance to our future ability to preserve our democratic institutions and civil society. It is critical to preserving the equality of fundamental rights of all people. It is critical to developing the capacity for effective action to address the many complex social, political, economic, and environmental challenges arrayed before us. It is critical if we are going to successfully navigate the Fourth Industrial Revolution and ensure it truly results in positive disruptions that work in the interests of the people by democratizing social, financial, and political edifices -- rather than simply intensifying the concentration of wealth, power, and influence.”
― Diane Kalen-Sukra, Save Your City: How Toxic Culture Kills Community & What to Do About It

“...[E]ven in cases where art institutions are not being actively menaced by the state there has nevertheless been a collapse of more classically political institutions, like churches and unions. The result is that--as Hito Steyerl discusses in "is the Museum a Factory?"--thins that usually were shown or done in union halls and church basements are now housed inside art institutions. This explains the anxiety lurking behind a question like "How can an institution address the dichotomy between art as cultural entertainment and art as political inquiry?" This anxiety is the anxiety of a host confronted with refugees who might not be able to return home anytime soon. Like police departments, or public school teachers, art institutions now seem expected to do the work of three or four different kinds of civil society organizations. Can we provide moral education, collective solace, and class-based advocacy in addition to our other mission of producing, collecting, and displaying works of art? Are we even doing these other things? Or just noticing a need that is going unmet but that exceeds our capacity to meet it? {written by Stephen Squibb]”
― Paper Monument, As radical, as mother, as salad, as shelter: What should art institutions do now?

“[Tolerance means] I’m going to stomach your right to be different, but if you disappear off the face of the earth I’m no worse off. [Patriotism means] love of country, which necessitates love of each other, that we have to be a nation that aspires for love, which recognizes that you have worth and dignity and I need you. You are part of my whole, part of the promise of this country.”
― Senator Cory Booker

“The function of the state and of its structures in such a society are limited only to that which cannot be performed by anyone else. [Quoting Valclad Havel]”
― Rebecca Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster

“Local and state governments can help civil society by building towns and cities in ways more conducive to neighborliness and community building. Walkability is a big thing. Mixing residential and commercial development would create real neighborhoods where people can walk to the corner store for a gallon of milk and run into their neighbors. It could allow for “third places�� like neighborhood pubs, barbershops, and sandwich shops.”
― Timothy P. Carney, Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse

“Civil society is, indeed, composed of individuals, acting freely.... But freedom entails responsibility, founded in the sentiments of sympathy that make us strive to look on our own and others' conduct from the standpoint of the impartial judge. The institutions of law and government exist in order to assign responsibilities and to ensure that they are not evaded or abused. Of course, this is something that liberals [(i.e. classical liberal)] too will acknowledge. But the difference of emphasis is crucial to the conservative position. Conservatism is about freedom, yes. But it is also about the institutions and attitudes that shape the responsible citizen, and ensure that freedom is a benefit to us all. Conservatism is therefore also about the limits to freedom.”
― Roger Scruton, Conservatism: An Invitation to the Great Tradition

“When society is organised from above, either by the top-down government of a revolutionary dictatorship, or by the impersonal edicts of an inscrutable bureaucracy, then accountability rapidly disappears from the political order, and from society, too.
Top-down government breeds irresponsible individuals, and the confiscation of civil society by the state leads to a widespread refusal among the citizens to act for themselves.”
― Roger Scruton, Conservatism: An Invitation to the Great Tradition

“The Union government from 2014 began systematic harassment and persecution of civil society. This harmed civil society but it also hurt India. NGOs provide the third largest workforce in the United States and more than 10 per cent of all
Americans work in an NGO.1 In 24 American states out of 50, NGOs
actually employ more workers than all the branches of manufacturing
combined. It is similar in the United Kingdom. In Europe, 13 per cent
of all jobs are in the NGO sector.2
To put this figure in perspective, consider that less than 10 per
cent of all jobs in India are in the formal sector. Surely this was then
a sector to be boosted and not obstructed, but obstruct is what Modi
did. Through his years, the attack on civil society continued as the
first two parts of this chapter will show. The third chronicles the
heroic and sustained resistance from marginalised communites:
Dalits, Muslims, Adivasis and farmers, which forced the government
ultimately to retreat on vital issues.”
― Aakar Patel, Price of the Modi Years

“The state of nature provides a standard for judging civil society, but not a practical and generally applicable prescription for reform.”
― Roger Masters

“Ліберальний індивідуалізм не унеможливлює і не заперечує людської схильності до спілкування; він просто означає, що соціальна взаємодія в ліберальному суспільстві в ідеалі буде переважно добровільною. Ви можете приєднатися до інших людей, але до яких саме груп �� це, наскільки можливо, питання особистого вибору. Саме це створює громадянське су­спільство, яке ми бачимо навколо себе.”
― Francis Fukuyama, Liberalism and Its Discontents

“Завжди існуватимуть жадібні люди. Зрештою вони завжди там, де є (чи мали би бути) гроші. Але жадібні люди шахраюватимуть чи дозволятимуть собі недбало ставитися, лише якщо відчуватимуть, що навряд чи їхній злочин помітять, чи суворо покарають за нього.”
― Niall Ferguson, The Great Degeneration

“There is, however, a more fundamental and interesting issue behind the apparent receding popularity of the Parliament, and that relates to the 'ownership' of the institution. Put simply, whose Parliament is it anyway? This is a serious question which grows out of the long process of Home Rule. The failure of Westminster parties to deliver devolution - and let us remember that a majority voted yes in the 1979 referendum meant that it was left to civil society to agitate for the Parliament. The twent-year campaign since 1979 was waged by a motley crew of campaigners and civil associations from trade unions to churches and women's groups, all unelected, but all donning the mantel of speaking for Scotland. Some parliamentarians like to think that as elected representatives, they alone represent the nation, but that is not how the nation sees it. Parliament became the people's forum, on loan to the political class, as long as they treated it, and them, with some respect, given the partiality of poitics in the twenty-first century. Power sharing - between government, parliament and people - is a three-way system, and not the preserve of any single agent.”
― David McCrone, Creating a Scottish Parliament