Lewis on community

Rep. John Lewis (1940 - present): 

"That’s what the struggle been all about—to bring these competing forces together, bring human beings together, and create a sense of community. To create this sense of family—that out of the good, the good is already there, so you have to…the good is there, the love is there, how do you make it real? How, how do you paint the picture? It’s like an artist using a canvas. How do you get people to move from maybe A, to B, and you get C. Or from 1, to 2, and get 3. That you’re on a path. And you have to be consistent, and you have to be persistent…and patient. And it’s all about being faithful, being honest, being open.”  

-from interview w/Krista Tippett of On Being (April 2013)

Douglass on struggle

Frederick Douglass (1818-1895):

“If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men [sic] who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle."

–from The Significance of Emancipation in the West Indies (1857)