A Quote by Jimmy Santiago Baca

One thing America truly does stand for is a million different ways of living. But while we enjoy the lives we have, we're so privileged. We live in a world that's so far from what the Palestinian children are going through, it's unbelievable. Yet if we dare to get close to that atrocity and name it, it would shock us so badly we couldn't live in our privileged comfort zone.
I have privileges even in comparison to a Palestinian Israeli because Palestinian Israelis who live permanently in Ramallah risk their status, not as citizens but as residents. They might lose their social rights if they move to Ramallah. But I won't, so I live with privileges. That notion is very difficult for me as a child who was raised in a left-wing family, a family of people who suffered discrimination as Jews abroad. The notion that I am so privileged is disgusting. But this is what it means to live in a white society. You are white, so you are privileged.
Even though I'm not privileged in the money world, I'm privileged in other ways: I had greater access to education, I can travel, etc. It's the same with writing: the freedom to move in and out of different places, of different realms of existence, of different life forms.
How we live our lives does not,unfortunately depend on us alone.Circumstances,good or bad,constantly intervene.A person close to us die.A person not so close to us carries on living.All these things affect how we live.
A man builds a house in England with the expectation of living in it and leaving it to his children; while we shed our houses in America as easily as a snail does his shell. We live a while in Boston, and then a while in New York, and then, perhaps, turn up at Cincinnati. Scarcely any body with us is living where they expect to live and die. The man that dies in the house he was born in is a wonder. There is something pleasant in the permanence and repose of the English family estate, which we, in America, know very little of.
I strongly believe that those of us, who are privileged to have wealth, should contribute significantly to try and create a better world for the millions who are far less privileged
I strongly believe that those of us who are privileged to have wealth should contribute significantly to try and create a better world for the millions who are far less privileged.
This is the part of us that makes our brief, improbable little lives worth living: the ability to reach through our own isolation and find strength, and comfort, and warmth for and in each other. This is what human beings do. This is what we live for, the way horses live to run.
We can only live the changes we wish to see: we cannot think our way to humanity. Every one of us, every group, must become the model of that which we desire to create. We must break the obsolete social and economic systems that divide the world between the over-privileged and the under-privileged. Each of us, whether government leader or protester, business executive or worker, professor or student, share a common guilt.
The sad thing is that, even though we know our lives aren't working in certain areas, we are still afraid to change. We are locked into our comfort zone, no matter how self-destructive it may be. Yet, the only way to get out of our comfort zone and to be free of our problems and limitations is to get uncomfortable.
We're privileged as citizens of the United States to live in a society where the press can act in an adversarial role in a number of different ways.
The object is not so much to get you to keep a journal while you are young, as it is to get you to continue it after you become men and women, even through your whole lives. This is especially needed in the generation in which you live, for you live in as important a generation as the children of men ever saw, and it is far more important that you should begin early to keep a journal and follow the practice while you live, than that other generations should do so.
I think there's always pieces of yourself that bleed into your character. That's inevitable. In some ways, we have similarities, but in other ways, we're completely different. It's hard to say because I'm an actor living in a world where we're all pretty privileged, and this guy is fighting for his life. They're very different circumstances. Within those circumstances, there are probably ways that we react to certain situations that are similar.
We all live in a society where someone who lives right across hasn't eaten and you don't know it or you are having problems where you are close to suicide and no one knows; everyone is going about their duty and thinking everything is fine. It's a dual world we live in and there is so much going on and yet it is not so obvious because we all live in our individual worlds.
When we live in our own privileged little bubble, it is convenient to pretend that all is well with the world, that everyone enjoys the same privileges that we do. We conveniently forget that there are others, sometimes our very own next-door neighbors, who suffer in ways that we do not.
Leaders should get out of their comfort zone but stay in their strength zone. When their work lies within their natural gifting and strengths, leaders experience the greatest return in productivity and contentment. Life is too short to live in the comfort zone, where growing and accomplishing and achieving your potential takes a back seat. I suggest you refocus if the comfort zone is your leadership priority.
It is in our nature to enjoy atrocity so long as it continues to shock and remains comfortably removed from our own lives.
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