Before the dawn?  I’m not really sure what that means!  I do know that I’m on a news blackout today.  No radios set to Morning Edition on WBUR.  No CNN.  I have no interest in all Trump all the time.  Yes, I read the Boston Globe and my other online news sources.  All of them reported other news.  And I am very happy to see that preemptive pardons were issued for several people including Dr. Fauci.  The man turned 84 last month.  He has done too much good to have to spend whatever his remaining years might be fighting unjustified, purely political, attacks through the Federal legal system.  But I digress….

The next four years can either be dark or about opportunity.  As I’ve said before, we can’t just resist, we need to persist.  It’s not enough to oppose, we have to also propose.  Opposition means nothing if we can’t provide a proposition.  In light of that, here are some quotes that should inspire.

“Be the change you want to see in the world”.  This has been attributed to Mohandas Gandhi, but there is no evidence that he ever said or wrote it.  Regardless of who originated the saying, it matters.

“When I die and happily meet my Creator, He will ask me to show Him my wounds. If I tell Him that I have no wounds, my Creator will ask: Was nothing worth fighting for?” – The Art of Power: My Story as America’s First Woman Speaker of the House by Nancy Pelosi.

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
– Edmund Burke

“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.” – Mark Twain

“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” – Benjamin Franklin

“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” – George Santayana

“be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity” – Horace Mann, 1859

“The only man who makes no mistakes is the man who never does anything”.
– Theodore Roosevelt

“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” – Winston Churchill

“Don’t be afraid of opposition. Remember, a kite rises against, not with the wind.”
– Hamilton Wright Mabie

“Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.” – Vincent van Gogh

“Do or do not.  There is no try.” – Yoda

“All progress has resulted from people who took unpopular positions.” – Adlai E. Stevenson

“My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.” – Adlai E. Stevenson

“A ‘No’ uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a ‘Yes’ merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble.” – Mahatma Gandhi

“To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.” – Anatole France

“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”  – Oscar Wilde (OK, sometimes this can be REALLY HARD!)

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

“You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try.” – Beverly Sills

“I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.” – Thomas Jefferson

“A little learning is a dangerous thing, but a lot of ignorance is just as bad.” – Bob Edwards

“Never let your ego trump the need to right a situation that’s wrong.” – John Baldoni

“To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.” – Abraham Lincoln

“When we lose the right to be different, we lose the right to be free.”  – Charles Evans Hughes

“You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.”  – Winston Churchill

“Difficulties mastered are opportunities won.”  – Winston Churchill

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
– Winston Churchill

“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.” – Winston Churchill

“Rivers know this: There is no hurry. We shall get there someday.” – A.A. Milne

“What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone?” – Winston Churchill

“The most violent element in society is ignorance.” – Emma Goldman

“Live up to your convictions. You walk in grace or you walk in fear. You can’t have it both ways”. – Carlos Santana

“Success is not final; failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts”. – Winston Churchill

(apparently Sir Winston said a lot!)

I love to think about chance — about how one little overheard word, one pebble in a shoe, can change the universe. – Anne Tyler

“There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in”. – Leonard Cohen

“We must all hang together, or most assuredly we will all hang separately.” – Ben Franklin

And finally, one of my personal favorites:

“There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why… I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?” – Robert F. Kennedy

Finally?  Be the Pebble