A Quote by Julian Assange
Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence and thereby eventually lose all ability to defend ourselves and those we love.
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By isolating ourselves from those with whose opinions we disagree, we lose the ability to defend our beliefs.
Every time we witness an act that we feel to be unjust and do not act, we become a party to injustice.
If, as an actor, you allow yourself to be cocooned from the boring pin-pricks of day-to-day existence - like standing in a queue at the butcher's or any of the other dreary little events that we all have in our daily lives - you begin to lose your lifeline to what people are. And if you lose that, you eventually lose the ability to act.
Those who are repeatedly passive in the face of injustice soon find their character corroded.
Compassion allows us to bear witness to suffering, whether it is in ourselves or others, without fear; it allows us to name injustice without hesitation, to act strongly, with all the skill at our disposal.
It's so easy to get whisked away in the hubbub of friends, work and busy-ness, but we need to take the time to be still and become aware of ourselves. The small things. The fact that we're still breathing. Our ability to move. The presence of love around and in us. Our strengths. Our opportunities. Our journeys.
We lose things all the time. We lose ourselves every day. We lose our minds occasionally. But it's just a part of life, loss.
The greatest benefit derived from the study of science is that it lifts you out of and above the littleness of daily trials. We learn to live in the universe as a part of it; we cannot seperate ourselves from it - our every act connects us with it - our every act affects the whole. Standing under the canopy of stars and remembering their presence you could scarcely do a petty deed, or think a wicked thought.
How do we take our anger and transform it into sacred rage? How do we create a language that opens the heart instead of closing it? To bear witness is not a passive act. It's an act of consequence that leads to consciousness. It matters. I am curious. I want to know why. I was raised with a scripture that says, "The glory of God is intelligence." And to me our greatest intelligence is following our instincts, trusting our intuition.
In the search for character and commitment, we must rid ourselves of our inherited, even cherished biases and prejudices. Character, ability and intelligence are not concentrated in one sex over the other, nor in persons with certain accents or in certain races or in persons holding degrees from some universities over others. When we indulge ourselves in such irrational prejudices, we damage ourselves most of all and ultimately assure ourselves of failure in competition with those more open and less biased.
To truly be of service to others, we must first serve the server. The ability to bring an enlightened presence to those in need is the ability to light a candle without burning ourselves out.
One of the worst features about worrying is that it destroys our ability to concentrate. When we worry, our minds jump here and there and everywhere, and we lose all power of decision. However, when we force ourselves to face the worst and accept it mentally, we then eliminate all those vague imaginings and put ourselves in a position in which we are able to concentrate on our problem.
Even in this place one can survive, and therefore one must want to survive, to tell the story, to bear witness; and that to survive we must force ourselves to save at least the skeleton, the scaffolding, the form of civilization. We are slaves, deprived of every right, exposed to every insult, condemned to certain death, but we still possess one power, and we must defend it with all our strength for it is the last — the power to refuse our consent.
The Savior taught His disciples, 'For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it' (Luke 9:24)."I believe the Savior is telling us that unless we lose ourselves in service to others, there is little purpose to our own lives. Those who live only for themselves eventually shrivel up and figuratively lose their lives, while those who lose themselves in service to others grow and flourish—and in effect save their lives.
We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create
A society that does not defend itself is doomed. A system that remains passive in the face of attack deserves to go under. Those unwilling to defend freedom will become unfree. To stand idly by is to commit suicide.
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