As part of an upcoming podcast, I just revisited…and continue learning from…the quotes leading into my latest book, Diversity without Dogma:

“The burden of being black and the burden of being white is so heavy that
it is rare in our society to experience oneself as a human being. It may
be, I don’t know, that to experience oneself as a human being is one with
experiencing one’s fellows as human beings. It means that the individual
must have a sense of kinship to life that transcends and goes beyond the
immediate kinship of family or the organic kinship that binds him (or her)
ethnically or ‘racially’ or nationally. He has a sense of being an essential
part of the structural relationship that exists between him and all other
men (and women), and between him, all other men (and women), and the
total external environment. As a human being, then, he belongs to life and
the whole kingdom of life that includes all that lives and perhaps, also, all
that has ever lived. In other words, he sees himself as part of a continuing,
breathing, living existence. To be a human being, then, is to be essentially
alive in a living world.”

Howard Thurman (1965, p. 94)

“When you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you don’t blame the lettuce. You look into the reasons it is not doing well. It may need fertilizer, or more water, or less sun. You never blame the lettuce. Yet if we have problems with our friends or our family, we blame the other person. But if we know how to take care of them, they will grow well, like lettuce. Blaming
has no positive effect at all, nor does trying to persuade using reason and
arguments. That is my experience. No blame, no reasoning, no argument,
just understanding. If you understand, and you show that you understand,
you can love, and the situation will change.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (Hahn, 1991, p. 78)

“Anytime you have an opportunity to make a difference in this world and
you don’t, then you are wasting your time on earth.”

Roberto Clemente

“Where do we go from here? Chaos or community?”

Martin Luther King, Jr.

“United we stand, divided we fall.”

Aesop