the power of the truth

"The word 'hero,' long in disrepute, has been redeemed by [Aleksandr] Solzhenitsyn. He has had the courage, the power of mind and the strength of spirit to speak the truth to the entire world. He is a man of perfect intellectual honor and, in his moral strength, he is peculiarly Russian. To the best Russian writers of this hellish century it has been perfectly clear that only the power of the truth is equal to the power of the state."

~~ Saul Bellow to The New York Times, January 7, 1974

no longer prison numbers

"You become fatalistic when you strive against a monolithic evil. You know that whatever you achieve is pyrrhic, that the system will flourish despite your efforts. And yet, what binds you, what keeps you going, are these relationships. How can you walk away? How can you do nothing? If you stand with the marginalized and oppressed, those whom James Cone calls the "crucified of the earth," and are defeated, have you failed? Or do you succeed by being willing to make that journey; to show them that they are not not forgotten, not alone? And while the writing of the play was miniscule when set against the vast injustice around us, it was not miniscule to us. The play made human those who had been rendered, often for decades, in human. My students were no longer prison numbers."

~~ from Our Class: Trauma and Transformation in an American Prison by Chris Hedges

almost a requirement

"Joseph A. Schumpter, in Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, is aware of a prevailing hostility to capitalism in capitalist countries. To condemn it and to declare one's aversion to it has become 'almost a requirement of the etiquette of discussion,' he says. Those who know totalitarian societies are wondering when, if ever, Western liberalism will recognize its danger. This is what Solzhenitsyn sees as the spiritual crisis of the West. He say, 'You have a feeling that the democracies can survive, but you aren't certain. The democracies are islands lost in the immense river of history. The water never stops rising.'"

~~ from Saul Bellow's To Jerusalem and Back