Monochrome on Sienna

“The number of times I have fallen down is the number of times I have gotten up.”

— Jenni Rivera

“The Palestinian cause is not a cause for Palestinians only, but a cause for every revolutionary, wherever he is, as a cause of the exploited and oppressed masses in our era.”

— Ghassan Kanafani (غسان كنفاني)

“In the 101 top-grossing family films…from 1990 to 2004, of the over 4,000 characters in these films, 75% overall were male, 83% of characters in crowds were male, 83% of narrators were male, and 72% of speaking were male. When the American Psychological Association commented on this research, they said, ‘This gross under-representation of women or girls in films with family-friendly content reflects a missed opportunity to present a broad spectrum of girls and women in roles that are non-sexualised.’”

— Natasha Walter

“We must dare to invent the future.”

— Thomas Sankara

“As an atheist, I see nothing ‘wrong’ in believing in a God. I don’t think there is a God, but belief in him does no harm. If it helps you in any way, then that’s fine with me. It’s when belief starts infringing on other people’s rights when it worries me. I would never deny your right to believe in a God. I would just rather you didn’t kill people who believe in a different God, say. Or stone someone to death because your rulebook says their sexuality is immoral. It’s strange that anyone who believes that an all-powerful all-knowing, omniscient power responsible for everything that happens, would also want to judge and punish people for what they are.”

— Ricky Gervais

“People who mispronounce words because they learned them from reading independently are deserving of admiration, not scorn.”

— Johanna Fateman

“Goodbye, my books! Farewell to the house of wisdom, the temple of philosophy, the scientific institute, the literary academy! How much midnight oil did I burn with you, reading and writing, in the silence of the night while the people slept. Farewell, my books! I do not know what became of you after we left: were you looted? Burned? Were you transferred, with due respect, to a public or private library? Did you find your way to the grocer, your pages wrapping onions?”

— Khalil al-Sakakini

“Grit is living life like a marathon, not a sprint.”

— Angela Lee Duckworth, Ph.D.

“As a chemist, a teacher, and a parent, I think (and blog) a lot about how to immunize people against chemophobia. It’s not because I want to keep chemical companies in business, but because I want to keep my students and friends from being duped into using chemicals that are unsafe, whatever their source.

“So here is my best advice to keep you from succumbing to the chemophobia pandemic: One, everything is a chemical. Two, don’t take medical advice from a magazine writer, however impassioned and well-intentioned, however popular her story is on the New York Times’ ‘most read’ list, who trusts a massage therapist over medical experts. And three, there are risks to all chemicals, even the ones with friendly names like Montmorency cherry juice and four-marvels powder.

“Next time, before you click ‘share’ on an article, be annoyingly skeptical. We can stamp out chemophobia in our lifetimes.”

— Michelle M. Francl, Ph.D.

“In a democracy, people should act wisely and avoid being bamboozled into making foolish decisions where matters of science and technology are concerned. Today the biggest challenge to science and society is to help sustain Earth and its people in the face of population growth, finite resources, malnutrition, spreading disease, deadly violence, war, climate change, and the denial of basic human rights, especially the right to benefit from scientific and technological progress.”

— Bassam Shakhashiri, Ph.D.

“I beg young people to travel. If you don’t have a passport, get one. Take a summer, get a backpack and go to Delhi, go to Saigon, go to Bangkok, go to Kenya. Have your mind blown, eat interesting food, dig some interesting people, have an adventure, be careful. Come back and you’re going to see your country differently, you’re going to see your president differently, no matter who it is. Music, culture, food, water. Your showers will become shorter. You’re going to get a sense of what globalization looks like. It’s not what Tom Friedman writes about, I’m sorry. You’re going to see that global climate change is very real. And that for some people, their day consists of walking twelve miles for four buckets of water. And so there are lessons that you can’t get out of a book that are waiting for you at the other end of that flight. A lot of people — Americans and Europeans — come back and go, “Ohhhh.” And the lightbulb goes on.”

— Henry Rollins

“I can’t stop while there are lives to be saved.”

— Edith Cavell

“Writers don’t write from experience, though many are resistant to admit that they don’t. I want to be clear about this. If you wrote from experience, you’d get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy.”

— Nikki Giovanni

“My lawyer gives the same speech to everyone who wants to do business with me now. ‘Nicki is not one of those artists who allow her representatives to make decisions for her.’ I’m on conference calls all day with lawyers, accountants, and executives—people of power—and they treat me with respect. Because I command respect. I’m not cocky, but I deserve to know what’s going on. It’s my brand and my life. That’s my advice to women in general: Even if you’re doing a nine-to-five job, treat yourself like a boss. Not arrogant, but be sure of what you want—and don’t allow people to run anything for you without your knowledge. You want everyone to know, Okay, I can’t play games with her. I have to do right by this woman. That’s what it’s all about.”

— Nicki Minaj (Onika Tanya Maraj)

“Comparing yourself to others is an act of violence against your authentic self. The God in you has no comparison. The same is true of others.”

— Iyanla Vanzant