"Is human dignity and human life so cheap that the rights protecting it can be traded away to appease the appetite for intimidation and prejudice of a vicious and self-centered group - for whatever reason, power, politics, nationalism, or unity?"

"How very like humans to pervert a message of love and peace to make it into an ideology of war and oppression to serve their own ends."

"Irony: When those who call others a 'threat to Christianity' reject the crucial tenets of their own faith themselves."

"Being captain of such a vessel was not a stressful job, despite the sheer size of the thing. Everything was automated, and this meant that this behemoth could be efficiently handled by a far less seasoned captain. Besides, hiring mature skippers with actual experience would cost real money. And hey, the computers ran everything anyway " and that's how Bran Johannsen enters this story " as a fine young inexperienced graduate of the Merchant Space Academy in Mars City, who only got his Executive Officer's ticket four short years ago."

"Wait-a-minute!Reality kicked in after marking its spot `position vacant' for the short and pleasant while. He groaned mournfully as he found himself staring at the inside of his own eyelids. The first thing that occurred to him was the terrible bone-wracking pain running up and down his spine. Pain? No, curiously enough. It was the memory of it that seemed to hurt so much. Maybe that's what scared him. Or maybe it was the creaking of the ship around him."

"Who is an elected government in a constitutional democracy to decide it will not tolerate dissent."

"Sorry to disappoint you, parents - but when your kids come out as gay, bi or transgender, it is not about you."

"Any religion which demands death for other people is itself worthy of nothing less than it expects for others. In fact, it is probably long overdue."

"The simple truth of the matter is that people who complain about a peaceful parade which lasts at best one hour in a particular place - ONCE in a whole year - do so out of hatred and intolerance. it isn't just the parade, it is seeing gay and trans people in public - and gay and trans people BEING gay and trans in public. And that is the root of the problem - they HATE gay and trans people."

"The reason for the peculiar name could be found in the whimsical sense of humor of the early colonists who arrived on Deanna several decades in the past and found very little at all there to laugh at. Obsidian Crows might seem funny at first, unless you just happened to ride over one with your Jeepo five miles out of town and didn't have a spare tire. Although there was a reasonable expectation of hitting one of these diminutive brutes on the roads, this did not happen nearly as often as you might think."

"The best way to piss off your enemies is to out-succeed, out laugh and out live them."

"What would Jesus do? One thins is obvious, if there is one thing Jesus would NOT do - is to behave like his followers."

"Democracy is government by the people, for the people. Without the responsibility of the people, and without the involvement of the people - all you have left is GOVERNMENT."

"It seems to me that wherever religion and politics mix in one body, fascist values - and not 'family values' - rear their ugly head."

"There are many different forms of family and there is in fact NO 'the' family.The basic building block of any close relationship - and thus any family - is LOVE."

"The Hammer was a hard man, a smart man too, and he took pride in always having a plan 'b'. For those troubling occasions when plan 'b' didn't work, he would strive to also have a plan 'c' in place. In short, he was the kind of man who always had something up his sleeve besides his funny bone. The pilot, his trusted second man gave him a worried look. "What do we do now?"

"On any given day, Ossifar Distana carried around 5000 passengers, the actual figure varying slightly depending on where she was on the vast elliptical cruise that took her around the Terran Empire. When she entered the system she carried 4984 passengers, 500 crew, one dead body and one very puzzled Captain."

"Some kids are both or neitherAnd don't want to have to choose, either."

"Because freedom and liberty and equality are as vital as breath, we only notice their absence when we are left gasping when the colors of diversity and individual liberty are drained from the world around us."

"It seems that the price of having freedom is having to constantly fight to keep it."

"How in any way does EQUALITY with other people equate to 'religious persecution'? Does the survival of a religion depend on the vilification and desecration of the humanity of others?"

"While there is no shame in being gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or intersex - or even straight (but not narrow) - there is most certainly shame and dishonor in being a homophobe, a transphobe and a bigot."

"Cautiously, he moved further out, checking the roofs, doors, windows. Nothing. He walked out further, keeping against the wooden wall of a building, just in case. His heart was pounding in his ears. Strange, isn't it? You could be in hundreds of fights, but everyone always seemed like the first time. A million different things could happen, go completely wrong. Then it might well be his last. Where is he? Which building?"

"The house was safe again, although a little bit more untidy, but at least Vluffy didn't have to worry about big nasty two headed roaches chasing him down the hall anymore."

"How anyone can vote to support any form of fascism, knowing history, is beyond me - which leads me to draw the conclusion that either the people who voted to support it don't know what they are doing - or that they know exactly what they are doing."

"I fail to see how somebody can hate me for 'what I do' and what I am without actually hating me as a person. That makes about as much sense as throwing the baby out with the bathwater - or gay man out the church door with his homosexuality."

"What i know from history is this: Those who do not appreciate their freedom and aren't prepared to protect it, will lose it."

"They set about making people so unhappy and isolated and when they crawl into a hole and pull it in after them, they have the nerve to call homosexuality a 'suicidal lifestyle'. And yet they do this - and deny that any gay or trans person could ever be a 'true' Christian. As if THEY are."

"He slumped down in the command seat and shut off the irritating alarm. He sighed again. It seemed to be a wonderful day for Mykl d'Angelo, captain and owner of the 'tramp' freighter Pegasus. As wonderful days went on his personal scale, this one was rated one of the best."

"The patriarchy longs for the days 'when men were men' and women were oppressed, subservient - and they can see no wrong in it. It justifies its former power and lust to hold on to it - and if possible, to regain it by quoting fundamentalist and radical religion and tradition and calling it 'love'. Some love. How can oppression and power over another person's life ever be 'love'?"

"Knowledge and education are the key to this human tragedy which is a bonfire of hate fueled by ignorance."

"This was true, she knew. Being involved with him gave her the privileged position of knowing him intimately. There were nights when he would wake up sweating, the nightmares returning out of the blue after a peaceful period sometimes weeks long. Growing up in the middle of a fierce civil war could indelibly mark a child. To Mykl, birthdays were always just another year under the belt, where the only reason to celebrate was that you weren't dead yet. She took his hand, squeezed it tight and led him inside."

"Apparently some people (who don't know history) seem to think that marriage 'always has been' exclusively between males and females - and that this modern inequality somehow justifies the enforced continuation of this inequality."

"As you may follow, they are an extremely hostile species (i.e. there is no word for 'welcome' in the Ruminarii language.) In four short centuries they had managed to lay waste to almost a thousand star systems, enslaving their populations and stripping them of all they wanted."

"Other kids are kids almost just like you - it's true.Other kids are kids too, but there's no other you, but YOU!"

"Willful ignorance is something to be ashamed of, not proud."

"South Africa is the only country where an overwhelming majority in complete political control is apparently so threatened by a tiny minority that they need racist affirmative action policies to protect the majority by legislatively excluding the minority totally from the job market."

"You can pass any law you like to make 'criminals' of those you don't like and then justify it with whatever stupid reasoning that appeals to you. Is that rule of law - or tyranny?"

"Dominating others is not equality."

"Tracey hurriedly shut the door behind her to prevent the flames that had been licking hungrily at her caboose all the way down the corridor, from following her inside. Then, almost falling into one of the gravity couches, she hurriedly strapped herself into it before punching the emergency release. She hoped the escape system still worked. It did. The explosive dead-bolts fired, shaking the pod loose, dislodging it from the rapidly disintegrating wreck, just about shaking the crap out of her on its bone-jarring way into the great wide open."

"16 days of activism? I don't know about you folks, but I'm an activist every single day."

"Going to the extreme of inviting and welcoming people into your church in order to hear you condemn them or to know from your policy that you condemn them is not much better than bullying."

"Attention, aboard the shuttle! You are under arrest! Surrender immediately! Come out slowly, in single file, with your hands behind your heads! Leave all weapons behind. Comply and your lives will be spared!"

"Everybody should be equal in a democracy - that is the nature of a democracy."

"They make friends, they laugh, they shareThey stay in touch, they care."

"Beaming into the thick of a tree without becoming a lifelong tree hugger was a tricky business. A precision job. Scrooby's job at the Time Saving Agency was a tough one. Billions of lives depended on him not screwing up. Literally billions and billions. Once, he'd screwed up in only a very small way and people wore those little yellow smiley faces on t-shirts for decades afterwards " and that was just a small screw up. He sighed. Here he sat, in the branches of an apple tree in an apple tree orchard " and without a single apple in sight. Below him, Isaac was waiting to get bonked on the noggin with an apple so that he could fulfill history by toddling off to invent gravity and shape scientific and mathematical principles for generations to come. Only one problem " no apples."

"I'm sure when you run it through the interweb just now, or if you are from a military ship, through your own database " you will see that you have stumbled across a relic of one of those great mysteries of deep space, and probably one of those missing ships people like to write spooky stories about. Well, whatever they wrote, buddy, they got it wrong. You can take it from me."

"The truth of the world is that in every group you will find some good and some bad people - which is why i am keenly aware that no group is ALL bad, just as no group is ALL good."

"Isn't it interesting how nationalistic attitudes foster the notion that being gay is 'un-(fill in your nationality/ religion/ culture here)'?"

"What is your talent? What are your interests? What resources do you have at your disposal? What can you do? What would you like to do? What can you do? You could apply your outrage to activism. Get involved. Do something."