A reader named Mike Baker kindly sent me a huge batch of terrific quotes that he has been gathering.   Here’s a sampling, the first of several, from Mike’s collection:

There is one tradition in America I am proud to inherit. It is our first freedom and the truest expression of our Americanism: the ability to dissent without fear. It is our right to utter the words, “I disagree.” We must feel at liberty to speak those words to our neighbors, our clergy, our educators, our news media, our lawmakers and, above all, to the one among us we elect President.  – The Nation (15 July 1991)

“Americans are the best entertained and the least informed people in the world.”
–Neil Postman, author, and from Amusing Ourselves to Death, Penguin Books, 1985

“It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper.”
– Rod Serling

“By far the most dangerous foe we have to fight is apathy – indifference from whatever cause, not from a lack of knowledge, but from carelessness, from absorption in other pursuits, from a contempt bred of self satisfaction” ~ William Osler (Canadian Physician, 1849-1919)

“Apathy is the glove into which evil slips its hand.” ~ Bodie Thoene

“How can we worship a homeless man on Sunday and ignore one on Monday” – Anonymous

The important thing is this: To be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become. ~ Charles DuBois

“We must become the change we want to see in the world” ~ Mohatma Gandhi

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway (1899 – 1961)

Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like. – Will Rogers

Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth. ~Albert Einstein

The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.  ~ Robert M. Hutchins

“Your failure to be informed, does not make me a wacko.”
–John Loeffler, host Steel on Steel radio program

It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from his government.  —Thomas Paine

The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men. ~ Plato

“Most Americans aren’t the sort of citizens the Founding Fathers expected; they are contented serfs. Far from being active critics of government, they assume that its might makes it right.” Joseph Sobran (1946- ) Columnist

It may well be that our means are fairly limited and our possibilities restricted when it comes to applying pressure on our government. But is this a reason to do nothing? Despair is not an answer. Neither is resignation. Resignation only leads to indifference, which is not merely a sin but a punishment.  ~ Elie Wiesel