Inspiration
The ideas that guide Integritas Civica didn't start with us. These words, from stories about building civilizations across impossible differences, capture what we're trying to do.
Understanding and Truth
"Understanding is a three-edged sword: your side, their side, and the truth."
Sheridan (after Kosh), Babylon 5
"Patience is also a weapon when used properly...you cannot win this war through force. You must...understand your way out of this."
Babylon 5
"Do you understand?...Good beginning. You'll be even better when you begin to understand what you do not understand."
Sheridan (recounting the Dalai Lama), Babylon 5
"Our thoughts form the universe. They are always important."
G'Kar, Babylon 5
Democracy, Freedom, and Governance
"No dictator, no invader, can hold an imprisoned population by force of arms forever. There is no greater power in the universe than the need for freedom. Against that power, governments and tyrants and armies cannot stand."
G'Kar, Babylon 5
"If more of our so-called leaders would walk the same streets as the people who voted them in, live in the same buildings, eat the same food instead of hiding behind glass and steel and bodyguards, maybe we'd get better leadership and a little more concern for the future."
Sheridan, Babylon 5
"...that this nation 'shall nobly save, or meanly lose our last, best hope of Earth.'"
Sheridan (quoting Lincoln), Babylon 5
Bridging Differences
"The Universe speaks in many languages, but only one voice. The language is not Narn or Human or Centauri or Gaim or Minbari. It speaks in the language of hope. It speaks in the language of trust. It speaks in the language of strength and the language of compassion. It is the language of the heart and the language of the soul. But always it is the same voice. It is the voice of our ancestors speaking through us and the voice of our inheritors waiting to be born. It is the small, still voice that says: We are one. No matter the blood, no matter the skin, no matter the world, no matter the star, we are one. No matter the pain, no matter the darkness, no matter the loss, no matter the fear, we are one. Here, gathered together in common cause, we agree to recognize this singular truth and this singular rule: that we must be kind to one another. Because each voice enriches us and ennobles us and each voice lost diminishes us."
G'Kar, Declaration of Principles, Babylon 5
"The molecules of your body are the same molecules that make up this station, and the nebula outside, that burn inside the stars themselves. We are starstuff. We are the universe made manifest, trying to figure itself out."
Delenn, Babylon 5
"We are all the sum of our tears. Too little, and the ground is not fertile, and nothing can grow there. Too much, the best of us is washed away."
G'Kar, Babylon 5
"We are fighting to save one another. We must realize we are not alone. We rise and fall together."
G'Kar, Babylon 5
Moral Courage
"You just have to say 'no, I won't' one more time than they can say 'yes, you will.'"
Sheridan, Babylon 5
"But you can't have larger ideals if the smaller ones get compromised. It's like building a house without a foundation, Delenn. It can't stand!"
Sheridan, Babylon 5
"I object to you. I object to intellect without discipline. I object to power without constructive purpose."
Spock, Star Trek
Power and Its Costs
"I have seen what power does, and I have seen what power costs. The one is never equal to the other."
G'Kar, Babylon 5
"There is a storm coming, a black and terrible storm. We would not have our knowledge lost or used to ill purpose."
Elric, Babylon 5
"The sleep of reason brings forth monsters."
Francisco Goya, Los Caprichos (1799)
Hope and Resilience
"The war we fight is not against powers and principalities. It is against chaos and despair. Greater than the death of flesh is the death of hope, the death of dreams. Against this peril we can never surrender."
G'Kar, Babylon 5
"It changed the future, and it changed us. It taught us that we have to create the future or others will do it for us. It showed us that we have to care for one another, because if we don't, who will? And that true strength sometimes comes from the most unlikely places."
Ivanova, Babylon 5
"When the darkness comes, know this: You are the right people, in the right place, at the right time."
Sebastian, Babylon 5
"Faith manages."
Delenn, Babylon 5
"I am filled with light you cannot vanquish. The love I feel is brighter than your darkness."
Batel, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
"Divine laws are simpler than human laws, which is why it takes a lifetime to be able to understand them. Only love can understand them. Only love can interpret these words as they were meant to be interpreted."
Avery Brooks, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy
Building vs. Destroying
"Fighting a war is easy. Destroying is easy. Building a new world out of what's left of the old, that is what's hard. But that is your strength."
Delenn, Babylon 5
Philosophy and Human Nature
"It's easy to find something worth dying for. Do you have anything worth living for?"
Lorien, Babylon 5
"The quiet ones are the ones that change the universe. The loud ones only take the credit."
Londo, Babylon 5