"I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know:
	the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who
	have sought and found out to serve."
	

	"Kindness is not doing what we should.  Kindness is what
	we do when we should be doing something else.  Kindness
	is doing what we don't need to do for someone who has no
	right and no intention to demand it.  Then community
	happens automatically."
	

	What we are doing is experiencing and witnessing to
	a global spirituality.  We are all one people of one
	God.  We are children of one God, first.  After that,
	we are children of our respective races, cultures,
	economies and faith traditions.  We revere cultures
	because they provide rootedness and distinctiveness.
	But this does not negate or diminish our commitment
	to care for all people as sisters and brothers. No
	dualism exists between the cultural family and the
	global family in the emerging global spirituality.
	This is bedrock in our Judeo-Christian tradition. 
	

	"Live in the present.  Do all things that need to be done.
	The future will unfold.
	

	"It is not persecution of the church in China that
	I fear.  The church has always been able to weather
	persecution.  My fear is love of money in the church."
	

	A nation: "A group of people united by a mistaken view
	about the past and a hatred of their neighbors."

	"If America is such a great democracy, why is the basic
	meaning of life so hard to come by?  Relations among
	people in America continue to get more 	varied with each
	new wave of immigration and technology.  And while the
	magnitude of complexities becomes overwhelming, our 
	search for change has to come from a more simple, basic
	meaning of life.  Only a system that will allow everyone
	to contribute productively to society and meet everyone's
	basic needs can resolve these complexities for the
	betterment of the majority.  Until then, 'democracy' is
	a hollow word."

	"I still think today as yesterday that the color line is the great
	problem of this century. But today I see more clearly than yesterday
	that back of the problem of race and color lies a greater problem
	which both obscures and implements it: And that is the fact that so
	many civilized persons are willing to live in comfort even if the
	price of this is poverty, ignorance, and disease of the majority of
	their fellow men."

	"I must admit a new insight in my life and find a place for
	it: what is at stake is our impending destruction and
	annihiliation....  They are out to destroy us completely, we
	must accept that and go on from there....  Very well then...
	I accept it....  I work and continue to live with the same
	conviction and I find life meaningful....  I wish I could
	live for a long time so that one day I may know how to explain
	it, and if I am not granted that wish, well, then somebody
	else will perhaps do it, carry on from where my life has been
	cut short.  And that is why I must try to live a good and faithful
	life to my last breath: so that those who come after me do not
	have to start all over again."

	"The greatest myth or misunderstanding (about the true
	nature of the Catholic Church) is imagining the church
	as having all the answers or accusing the church of
	thinking that it has all the answers.  The first view
	is idolatrous; the second, as superficial as the view
	it rejects.  The church lives by faith, not by answers.
	So, of course, must its members:  They must take the
	risk of faith and not seek another security."

	"Many times the new face of racism is the computer printout,
	the graph of profits and losses, the pink slip, the nameless
	statistic.  Today's racism flourishes in the triumph of private
	concern over public responsibility, individual success over
	social commitment and personal fulfillment over authentic
	compassion."
	

	"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed
	citizens can change the world.  Indeed it's the only thing
	that ever has."
	

	"The idea that the U.S. Congress, looking at a $1 trillion
	surplus, wants to cut its paltry foreign aid budget, refuses
	to pay its UN arrears, talks about free trade but won't even
	expand the North American Free Trade Agreement to Chile, and
	treats foreign policy as a sport in which you pass sanctions 
	against your favorite enemy, should embarrass every American."
	

	"The resources at our disposal today, the powers that we
	have released, could not possibly be absorbed by the narrow
	system of individual or national units which the architects
	of the human earth have hitherto used…. The age of nations
	has passed.  Now, unless we wish to perish we must shake off
	our old prejudices and build the earth… The more
	scientifically I regard the world, the less can I see any
	possible biological future for it except the active
	consciousness of its unity." 
	

	"Leave the ashes, take the fire."
	

	"If we cannot have common values, common truths, sufficient
	communication on the essentials of human life--how to live,
	how to respond to the great challenges of human life--then
	true society becomes impossible."
	

	"I am convinced that it is not the fear of death, of our
	lives ending, that haunts our sleep so much as the fear
	that our lives will not have mattered, that as far as
	the world is concerned, we might as well never have
	lived.  What we miss in our lives, no matter how much
	we have, is that sense of meaning."
	

	"The Soviet Union had a constituion full of nice phrases
	about rights,	but they were no use because executive
	bodies like the Standing Committee took the real decisions.
	That is the road on which Hong Kong is now heading."
	

	"...No clear-thinking American would today excuse slavery, or certainly 
	not suggest it return in any sense.  As a people we have moved beyond
	that point--and indeed our grandparents had moved beyond that point.

	"But we still are deeply wounded by the attitude that some do not matter,
	that some are fundamentally different, that in this difference is essential
	inferiority, and that policies and personal behavior may find justification
	in such differences."

	"About a third of my cases are suffering from no clinically defineable
	neurosis, but from the senselessness and emptiness of their lives.
	This can be described as the general neurosis of our time."
	

	"You don't become happy by pursuing happiness.  You become 	happy by
	living a life that means something.  The happiest	people you know are
	probably not the richest or most famous, probably not the ones who
	work hardest at being happy by reading the articles and buying the
	books and latching on 	to the latest fads.  I suspect that the
	happiest people you know are the ones who work at being kind, helpful,
	and reliable, and happiness sneaks into their lives while they are
	busy doing those things.  You don't become happy by pursuing happiness.
	It is always a by-product, never a primary goal."

	
	"We cannot be indifferent or cynical about the obligations of citizenship.
	Our political choices should not reflect simply our own interests, partisan
	preferences or ideological agendas, but should be shaped by the principles
	of our faith and commitment to justice, especially to the weak and vulnerable."	
	

		"Do--or do not.  There is no 'try'."
	

	
	"The general Chinese reaction to that loss (the deaths of the
	Belgrade embassy personnel) needs to be carefully analyzed.  It
	comes in two separate if related parts: genuine anger and
	sorrow over the bombing, and careful, cynical orchestration of
	those emotions by an aging Communist leadership fearful of
	losing power.  Americans should not underestimate either reaction."	
	

	
	"...I believe you must all understand...that it is only a
	matter of time, there is no choice but to reverse the wrongful
	assessment of June 4.  You may choose whether it is done now or
	later, and whether it is done through good judgment or by
	force."
	

	The River-Runner's Maxim, taught to me when I was learning
	white-water canoeing from friend Baz, a maximum pro:
	"Sitting still is essential to the journey."  When heading
	off downriver, pull over to the bank from time to time and
	sit quietly and look at the river and think about where
	you've been and where you're going and why and how.	
	

	
	"Every story needs a villain."	
	

	
	"Take a gun and you abort a crime.  Stop a suspect, find a
	gun, and you have deterred crime, maybe a murder.  The fewer
	the guns, the fewer the violent crimes and, almost certainly,
	the fewer the murders.  Get the guns off the streets and the
	streets are safer. Guns do not protect us; guns threaten us.
	No one holds up a bank with a knife."	
	

	"Big Tobacco is reeling from recent defeats...because the
	population woke up to the stupidity of so many being killed
	by cigarettes; woke up to the deception about cigarettes not
	being addictive or even dangerous; woke to the greed that
	motivated very rich moguls to tamper further with addictive
	substances so we would be too weak to resist, until we died."
	

	
	"'You are risen with Christ.  Show me and I will believe.'
	The only Gospel most people will ever hear is you and me,
	our lives.  We have to proclaim the resurrection by the
	way we live."

	
	"Very few people say forgiveness is easy, but equally few
	question how good people feel when they forgive....  'The
	time will come when, as a fine gift of all your labor, the
	words of forgiveness will find their place.  Such phrases
	as "I forgive you," "I release you from retribution for
	your deeds," are very powerful.  They are words of your
	power.  A tremendously powerful image is that you are
	anointed as a peacemaker.  You have the power to bring
	peace into your world.  That is enormous power.  No longer
	the victim, you have reclaimed your agency (and sometimes
	the life of the offender).  When you know this, when you
	exercise this, you are liberated, and you have made jubilee."	
	

	"At the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the
	shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the
	realization that I loved all those people...that we could
	not be alien to one another even though we were total
	strangers."
	

	The church "tends to lose credibility and membership when it
	presnts itself as a hierarchical and authoritarian structure,"
	but "conserves its respect when it becomes involved with the
	promotion and the defense of human rights, is committed to
	social justice, and gives witness to what it believes."
	

	"We have an obligation not only to love each other but also
	in our love to make ourselves as loveable as possible so that
	it is easy for our sisters and brothers to love us."
	

	
	"In the Catholic Church, the recent harsh pronouncements
	from the Vatican against the ordination of women are, I
	think, basically a sign of weakness."
	

	
       "So-called underground churches do not exist in China."
	

	
           "The preservation of our liberties depends on an enlightened
	   citizenry.  Those who get most of their news from television
	   probably are not getting enough information to intelligently
	   exercise their voting franchise in a democratic system.  As
	   Thomas Jefferson said, the nation that expects to be ignorant
	   and free expects what never can and never will be.  We can
	   bring that up-to-date and amplify it a bit:  The nation whose
	   population depends on the explosively compressed headline
	   service of television news can expect to be exploited by the
	   demagogues and dictators who prey upon the semi-informed."
	

	
       The Seven Deadly Social Sins
	   
	     Politics without Principle
	     Wealth without work
	     Commerce without morality
	     Pleasure without conscience
	     Education without character
	     Science without humanity
	     Worship without sacrifice
	

	
       "The line between good and evil, hope and despair, does not
	divide the world between 'us' and 'them.'  It runs down the
	middle of every one of us.
	

	
           "At the heart of this matter of identity: Is my occupation
	   what I get paid money for, or is it something larger and
	   wider and richer--more a matter of what I am or how I think
	   about myself?  Making a living and having a life are not
	   the same thing.  Living THE good life and living A good
	   life are not the same thing.  A job title doesn't even
	   come close to answering the question: 'What do you do?'"
	
	

	
       "I learned that "tolerance" is a stage of development
       unacceptably short of total commitment to undiluted equal
       rights for all."
	
	

	
    "They say that to be a useful Hopi (Native American) is to be
    one who has a quiet heart and takes part in all the dances.  Yes."
	
	

	
       "In God's Kingdom, there are no majorities and minorities,
       just brothers and sisters invited to the banquet of life."
	
	

	
       "Christianity is not about ideas but about deeds
       inspired by love."
	
	

	
       "Why are...poor people more ready to share their goods than
       rich people?  The answer is easy: The poor have little to
       lose; the rich have more to lose and they are more attached
       to their possessions.  Poverty provides a deeper motivation
       for understanding your neighbors, welcoming others and
       attending to those who are suffering.  I would go so far as
       to say that poverty helps you understand what happiness is,
       what serenity is in life."
	
	

	
       "We as a religion have cut ourselves off from 50 percent of
       the population. I would never do that in running my business.
       As a Catholic, I want to say this to the hierarchy -- make
       women much more essential in what you do. It will be essential
       as we enter the 21st century."
	
	

	
       "Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?"
	
	

	
       "Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing
       because he could only do a little."	   
	
	

	
       "We don't have to agree with one another.  This is a
       country (the United States) of diversity.  But there
       doesn't have to be the bitterness, there doesn't have
       to be the hatred, there doesn't have to be the mistrust."
	
	

	
       "Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve
       the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends
       forth a tiny ripple of hope.  And crossing each other from a
       million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples
       build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of
       oppression."
	
	

	
       "Both the winners and losers all get elected.  It's so much
       more fair than under the old system, in which only the winners
       won."
	
	

	
       "A lot of Americans don't know what citizenship is anymore.
       What is it?  It is the only bond that we all have with one
       another and with our nation."
	
	

	
       "There are pragmatic reasons for all of us to focus on our
       responsibilities rather than our rights.  A society driven
       by the former promotes service, tolerance, compromise, and
       progress, whereas a society driven by the latter is
       preoccupied with acquisition, confrontation, and advocacy."
     

	
       "The world would become better off
       If people tried to become better.
       And people would become better
       if they stopped trying to become better off."
     

	
       "The future will be different if we make the present different."
     

	
       "It is not wrong to want to live better; what is wrong is a
       style of life which is presumed to be better when it is
       directed toward 'having' rather than 'being'...."
     

	
       "A tree which flourishes in one kind of soil may wither if
       the soil is changed.  As for the tree of Christianity, in a
       foreign country its leaves may grow thick and the buds may
       be rich, while in Japan the leaves wither and no bud appears.
       Father, have you never thought of the difference in the soil,
       the difference in the water?"
     

	
       "When we dream alone, it is only a dream.  But when we dream
       together, it is the beginning of reality."
     

	
       "Comfort is to the bourgeois world what heroism was to
       the Renaissance and sanctity to medieval Christianity--
       the ultimate value, the ultimate motive for all action."

     

	
       "What the world expects of Christians is that Christians
       should speak out, loud and clear, and that they should
       voice their condemnation in such a way that never a doubt,
       never the slightest doubt, could rise in the heart of the
       simplest...that they should get away from abstraction and
       confront the bloodstained face history has taken on today."

     

	
       "The bread which you do not use is the bread of the hungry.
       The garment hanging in your wardrobe is the garment of the
       one who is naked.  The shoes that you do not wear are the
       shoes of the one who is barefoot.  The money you keep locked
       away is the money of the poor.  The acts of charity you do
       not perform are so much injustices you commit."
     

	
       "There is no path to peace.  Peace is the path."
     

	
       "Preach the Good News always.  If necessary, use words."
     

	
       "If you don't find God in the next person you meet, it is a
       waste of time to look any further."
     

	
	   "God does not create poverty.  We do, because we do not share."

     

	
	   "Are we going to say there is nothing the government or the
	   community can do because we cannot interfere with private
	   property rights?  How and when are we going to overturn this
	   crazy logic which goes on saying that the quality of our lives
	   is less important than the profit margins of developers?"

     

     
	 "How would the Muslim world react--not to mention the Jewish,
	 Hindu and atheistic worlds--if Europe, North and South America,
	 Australia, New Zealand and South Africa called a 'Christian
	 Summit' and heads of state, or their delegates, attended in
	 an official capacity?  We'd never hear the end of it."

     
	 "In a blossoming Asia, (Cambodia) is the only oasis of war,
	 insecurity, self-destruction, poverty, social injustice,
	 arch-corruption, lawlessness, national division,
	 totalitarianism, drug trafficking and AIDS."

     
	 "The worst pollution in the world is unequivocally in Asia....
	 The statistics about China are stunning, and right behind those
	 Chinese cities stand almost every other major city of Asia:
	 Bangkok, Manila, Jakarta are all right up there among the top
	 polluted cities of the world."

     
	 "If ever you needed concrete proof that there is more money
	 than sense in Hong Kong, you needed to be here this morning.
	 Some people went absolutely bonkers."

     
	 "I've waited decades for this chance to exercise my rights
	 to free speech.  But the Chinese people have been waiting for
	 centuries."

	    
		"I think animals like me a lot more.  Spiders crawl towards
		me, and fish and cats and dogs."
	

Simon Chau Sui-cheong
President of the Vegetarian Society, on the effects of turning vegetarian.

      "It is a disgrace that the Chinese government holds its own
	  citizens hostage to international politics."

	"There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who
	say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says,
	in the end, 'Thy will be done.'  All that are in Hell,
	choose it.  Without that self-choice there could be no Hell.
	No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever
	miss it.  Those who seek find.  To those who knock it is opened."

	"The Good News is not that God will make everything work out
	as we wish.  The Good News is that in spite of the fact that
	things do not go as we wish, the Lord is with us."

Bill Grimm, MM

	"Violence is a lie, for it goes against the truth of our faith,
	the truth of our humanity.  Violence destroys what it claims to
	defend: the dignity, the life, the freedom of human beings.
	Violence is a crime against humanity, for it destroys the very
	fabric of society."

Pope John Paul II

	"The symbol of Nike is more powerful than the cross or the
	star or the crescent....  The United States is the quintessential
	practitioner of the quintessential greed."

Walter Brueggemann
Biblical Scholar

      "The poorer, the more revolutionary."

Mao Tse-tung tradition

      "To get rich is glorious."

Deng Xiao-ping
promoting "socialism with Chinese characteristics."

      "To adopt the block vote system would spare [us] from the 
      time-consuming vote-counting process."

Suen Ming-yeung
HK's Secretary for Constitutional Affairs, trying to explain the new government's proposal to vote by blocks (groups) rather than individuals in choosing legislators for the first legal assembly next year. The Election Committee has all of 800 members, and counting the votes would take several hours, he complained. I guess democracy and fairness isn't worth several hours.

      "Our greatest need is to live in harmony, in friendship, 
      and in good-will, not seeking an advantage over each other 
      but all trying to serve each other."

Calvin Coolidge
U.S. President after World War I

      "A lot of people worry that this generation might be the 
      first not to do as well as the previous generations.  Well, 
      I think we'd be better off worrying that this generation 
      might not do as much good as the previous generations."

Raymond Flynn
U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican

"Politics remains hard for people to discuss, not just because 
they are afraid to but because that is not primarily where their 
interests lie.  Many do not yet have a vocabulary that extends 
beyond the freedom to get rich"

Johanna McGeary
in a TIME article about changes in China.

"This is totally crazy.  Power going to the tycoons is a throwback 
to the last century."

Emily Lau
outspoken former democratic legislator, on the new HK government's plan to reduce the electorate from over two million voters to less than twenty thousand, all business and organization leaders .

"...the past twenty years had been a golden period for religious
 worshippers in China as the bureau had provided maximum protection 
 for them."

Ye Xiaowen
director of China's State Religious Affairs Bureau, in remarks quoted in the South China Morning Post

"Chinese leaders have said that Hong Kong would be more democratic 
under Chinese rule.  Now we see what democracy with Chinese 
characteristics looks like."

Martin Lee
HK's most famous democrat, commenting on the Chinese government's scrapping of the HK one-person, one-vote electoral system

"If the trend of self-censorship [in Hong Kong] continues at its current
rate, Beijing will not have to lift a finger to crack down on us after 
the takeover.  Media owners in Hong Kong are businessmen first, second, 
and last.  They care about only one thing: money.  Most of them have heavy 
investments in mainland China and maintain very good relations with the 
leadership in Beijing.  They will not rock the boat."

Liu Kin-ming
Vice chairperson of the Hong Kong Journalists Association

 "This will, I think, be pretty well the only example in recorded
 history of decolonization being accompanied by less democracy 
 rather than more."

Chris Patten
Last British governor of Hong Kong, on the return of HK to China

"The world of tomorrow will be, must be, a society based on non-violence.  
That is the first law; out of it all other blessings will flow.  It may 
seem a distant goal, an impractical Utopia.  But it is not in the least 
unobtainable, since it can be worked for here and now.  An individual 
can adopt the way of life of the future--the non-violent way--without 
having to wait for others to do so.  And if an individual can do it, 
cannot whole groups of individuals? Whole nations?  People often 
hesitate to make a beginning because they feel that the objective 
cannot be achieved in its entirety.  This attitude of mind is precisely 
our greatest obstacle to progress--an obstacle that each person, if 
they only will it, can clear away."

Mahatma Gandhi

 "It must be banned.  It only kindles the dissatisfaction of the 
  masses with the leadership.  It is also affecting the morale
  of the officials."

Chinese Propaganda Official,
after banning a novel with a plot strikingly similar to the corruption scandal and downfall of a senior Communist Party official. So much for "Seek truth from facts," as Deng Xiao-ping proposed. And recall the quote from Jing Xianfa below.

 "The mere fact that communism didn't work doesn't mean that 
 capitalism does.  In many parts of the globe it's a wrecking, terrible 
 force, displacing people, ruining lifestyles, traditions, ecologies and 
 stable systems with the same ruthlessness as communism."

John le Carré

           "Political censorship does not occur in China."

Jing Xianfa
Director of the foreign affairs department of the People's Daily

        "As the systems for propagating information and speeding it
        around the globe are becoming ever more sophisticated, so 
        do the opportunities to manipulate information."

John le Carré

            "Prayer will never do our work for us; what it will do is 
            to strengthen us for work which must be done."

William Barclay

"To be spiritual is to be unconventionally religious."

"There can be no tyrants where there are no slaves."

Jose Rizal
Philippines patriot who was executed 100 years ago in Manila on 9 January 1897.

"There are plenty of would-be slaves in Hong Kong. No one speaks up against the provisional legislature."

Harvey Stockton
Correspondent for The Times of India

"It will be a shock to many Chinese leaders to be confronted with the degree of freedom that many Western journalists take for granted."

Understatement of the year, by Lord Geoffrey Howe, former British foreign secretary, referring to press freedoms in Hong Kong after the handover, at the opening of the 1997 Asian Newspaper Publishers' Expo in Hong Kong.

"Chanting slogans such as urging the Chinese leaders to step down or advocating an end to the rule of the Chinese Communist Party in public or in a mass rally of thousands of people should be counted as acts of subversion or secession".

Wong Siu-Yee
Member of the Hong Kong provisional legislature Vice-chairman of the Liberal Democratic Party (which is neither)

                  "To be fully human
                  is to work for the common good."

Amnesty International

         "One reason why we think that life is good in America 
         is that most of the people who are describing life, the 
         articulate people, are on the gravy end.  The people 
         who can't speak for themselves, the inarticulate who grow
         in numbers every day, have no proper spokespeople."

John le Carré