Inspiration
The ideas that guide Integritas Civica didn't start with us. These words, from stories about building civilizations across impossible differences, capture some of 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
- Chief Cloud William: “When you would not say the holy words of the Ee’d Pbnista, I doubted you.”
- Kirk: “ I did not recognize those words, you said them so badly, without meaning.”
- Chief’s second-in-command: “No, no! Only the eyes of a chief may see the Ee’d Pbnista.”
- Kirk: “This was not written for chiefs. Hear me, hear this! Look at these three words written in larger text than the rest and with a special pride never written before or since: Tall words, proudly saying ‘We the people.’ That which you call the Ee’d Pbnista was not written for the chiefs, or the kings, or the warriors, or the rich, or the powerful, but for all the people! Down the centuries, you have slurred the meaning of the words. ‘We the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity do ordain and establish this Constitution...’ These words, and the words that follow were not written only for the Yang‘s, but for the Kohms as well. They must apply to everyone or they mean nothing! Do you understand?” ...
- Kirk: “We merely showed them the meaning of what they were fighting for. Liberty and freedom have to be more than just words...I suggest we leave them to discover their history and their liberty.”
Star Trek, The Omega Glory
"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
"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
Moral Courage
"I object to you. I object to intellect without discipline. I object to power without constructive purpose."
Spock, Star Trek
"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
"You just have to say 'no, I won't' one more time than they can say 'yes, you will.'"
Sheridan, Babylon 5
Bridging Differences
"We are fighting to save one another. We must realize we are not alone. We rise and fall together."
G'Kar, Babylon 5
"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
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