Allyson

“There have always been those who argued that the end justifies the means, that the means aren’t really important,” [King] said. “But we will never have peace in the world until men everywhere recognize the ends are not cut off from the means, because the means represent the ideal in the making, and the end in the process, and ultimately you can’t reach good ends through evil means, because the means represent the seed and the end represents the tree.”
― Jill Lepore, This America: The Case for the Nation

“The possibilities of where you can leverage your privilege to make real, measurable change toward a better world are endless. Every day you are given opportunities to make the world better, by making yourself a little uncomfortable and asking, 'who doesn't have this same freedom or opportunity that I'm enjoying now?' These daily interactions are how systems of oppression are maintained, but with awareness, they can be how we tear those systems down. So please, check your privilege. Check it often.”
― Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race

“The great glory of American democracy is the right to protest for right,” as Martin Luther King Jr. once said. The nation is often wrong. But so long as protest is possible, it can always be righted.”
― Jill Lepore, This America: The Case for the Nation

“Nora had always had a problem accepting herself. From as far back as she could remember, she'd had the sense that she wasn't enough. Her parents who both had their own insecurities, had encouraged that idea.
She imagined, now, what it would be like to accept herself completely. Every mistake she had ever made. Every mark on her body. Every dream she had ever made. Every mark on her body. Every dream she hadn't reached or pain she had felt. Every lust or longing she had suppressed.
She imagined accepting it all. The way she accepted nature. The way she accepted a glacier or a puffin or the breach of a whale.
She imagined seeing herself as just another brilliant freak of nature. Just another sentient animal, trying her best.
And in doing so, she imagined what it was like to be free.”
― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library