Monday, August 4, 2008

Quotes of the Week (04-08AUG2008)

"When I was a boy, wealth was regarded as a thing so secure as well as admirable that almost everyone affected to own more property than he actually possessed...Now a man has to be ready to defend himself against being rich as if it were the worst of crimes."
----Thucydides (History of the Peloponnesian War, VIII, bk 24,1.18)

"Omnia fert aetas, animum quoque. (Time bears away all things, even the memory.)"
----Virgil (Ibid., bk IX, 1.5)

"A law which is not just does not seem to be a law."
----Augustine of Hippo [St. Augustine] (The problem of Free Choice)

6 comments:

DeadMule said...

"An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so." Mohandas Gandhi


"Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust." Martin Luther King Jr.

Mookie said...

Helen,
Thank you very much for the additional quotes. I liked these very much!

Anonymous said...

"In Texas they lynch Negroes. My teammates and I saw a man strung up by his neck and set on fire. We drove through a lynch mob, pressed our faces against the floorboard. I looked at my teammates. I saw the fear in their eyes and, worse, the shame. What was this Negro's crime that he should be hung without trial in a dark forest filled with fog. Was he a thief? Was he a killer? Or just a Negro? Was he a sharecropper? A preacher? Were his children waiting up for him? And who are we to just lie there and do nothing. No matter what he did, the mob was the criminal. But the law did nothing. Just left us wondering, Why? My opponent says nothing that erodes the rule of law can be moral. But there is no rule of law in the Jim Crow south. Not when Negroes are denied housing. Turned away from schools, hospitals. And not when we are lynched. St Augustine said, 'An unjust law in no law at all.' Which means I have a right, even a duty to resist. With violence or civil disobedience. You should pray I choose the latter." - James Farmer, Jr. from the movie The Great Debaters. Excellent flick!

Peace

Mookie said...

Hey Brother P-

Thanks for stopping in. I also loved that movie!

DeadMule said...

It's not about "loving the movie"; it's about being willing to break an unjust law that has no business being a law in the first place. It's about knowing that actual people who matter more than the law, if the law denies them dignity.

Mookie said...

Yes Helen, you're right. I know what the quote was about. I watched the movie 3 or 4 times in a couple days. I liked the message as well as the movie...