I am inspired and admire many people.  They are thinkers, dreamers, creatives, activists and more. 

They all have done amazing things to benefit humanity.  Some on a level that makes them recognized on a grand scale

while others maybe only by a few people or only me, but all have impressed me in various ways. 

I share some of their wisdom, in rotation, with you here.

 

If you speak to most anyone I know, they will tell you that one of my favorite people of all time was General Smedley Darling Butler.

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Raised by prominent Quaker parents, Smedley Butler defied his pacifist lineage by joining the Marine Corp just before his seventeenth birthday. He served in Honduras, Nicaragua, Mexico and Haiti (earning his Medals of Honor in Mexico and Haiti). Butler was known for his leadership and commitment to the welfare of the men under his command. He rose quickly through the ranks to become, at age forty-eight, one of the youngest major generals.

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Prior to World War II, Butler spoke out against what he saw as admiration for fascism and for Italy´s leader, Benito Mussolini. He was punished for telling an unfavorable story about Mussolini but avoided court-martial by accepting a reprimand. Because of his rank, he was able to write his own reprimand, and he never apologized to Mussolini.

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Butler retired from the military in 1931. By then, he was beginning to question U.S. involvement in foreign conflicts. He had come to believe that war – in particular WWI – was really a profitable business for the few and at the expense of thousands of lives. He thought of himself as a cog in the imperialist war machine.

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In a booklet titled War is a Racket, Butler wrote, “In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. . . . How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? . . . The general public shoulders the bill. And what is this bill? . . . Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. . . . For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out.”

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Find out more about General Butler and what he accomplished by clicking here. 

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Additionally, you might want to visit this website featuring the artwork of Robert Shetterly.  As is stated on the site:  "Robert Shetterly was born in 1946 in Cincinnati, Ohio. He graduated in 1969 from Harvard College with a degree in English Literature. At Harvard he took some courses in drawing which changed the direction of his creative life — from the written word to the image. Also, during this time, he was active in Civil Rights and in the Anti-Vietnam War movement.

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The portraits have given Shetterly an opportunity to speak with children and adults all over this country about the necessity of dissent in a democracy, the obligations of citizenship, sustainability, US history, and how democracy cannot function if politicians don’t tell the truth, if the media don’t report it, and if the people don’t demand it.

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Shetterly has engaged in a wide variety of activist and humanitarian work with many of the people whose portraits he has painted. In the spring of 2007, he traveled to Rwanda with Lily Yeh and Terry Tempest Williams to work in a village of survivors of the 1994 genocide there and then to Palestine – twice with Lily Yeh – for art projects in refugee camps. Much of his current work focuses  on the intersections of climate change, systemic racism, and militarism."

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Find out more about Robert Shetterly by clicking here.

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"I alone cannot change the world,

but I can cast a stone across the water to create many ripples." — Mother Teresa

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"It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop." — Confucius

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"When everything seems to be going against you,

remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it." — Henry Ford