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We were about to board the planes for the flight back to the United States. Jim Jones didn't want us to leave, at least not alive. A tractor trailer loaded with men armed with shotguns and rifles pulled up and opened fire on us at that airstrip. Congressman Ryan was gunned down, having been shot 40 times. The first and only congressman in the history of this country to be assassinated during the line of duty. I was shot five times and left to bleed on that airstrip for 22 hours. Back at Jonestown, over 900 people lost their lives in a mass murder and suicide that night. This is what I awoke to on that long day. I was 28 years old, and I was waiting to die. I laid awake all night fearing some of the gunmen would come back and finish us off. Time passed, and local Guyanese people offered me rum to try and get me through the night. I had a lot of time to think. I promised God that if I lived, I would make every day count. I promised that I would make something out of my life if I was allowed to keep my life. Well, here I am. I have chosen a career as a public servant. One, I hope many of you will contemplate as you move forward in your lives.
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Jackie Speier, Commencement Speaker, San Francisco State University, 2006

 

Jim Jones

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Then I went in and shot the televisor, that insidious beast, that Medusa, which freezes a billion people to stone every night, staring fixedly, that Siren which called and sang and promised so much and gave, after all, so little, but myself always going back, going back hoping and waiting until—bang!

 

Ray Bradbury

 

How did I climb out of a life so boring into that moment? Please stop ignoring the heart inside, oh you readers at home! While you gasp at my bloody crimes, please take the time to make your heart my home: where I'm forgiven by time, where I'm cushioned by hope, where I'm numbed by long drives, where I'm talked off or doped. Does the heart wants to atone? Oh, I believe that it’s so, because if I could climb back through time, I'd restore their lives and then give back my own: tens of times now its size on a far distant road in a far distant time where every night I'm still crying, entirely alone.

 

Okkervil River

 

If I ask myself who in history I might like to have been, I find that all the men I most admire were by most standards deeply unhappy. They knew despair. But their lives were worthwhile — I only wish mine equaled theirs in this respect and I have no doubt that they were glad to die.
As one deserves a good night's sleep, one also deserves to die, Why should I hope to wake again? To do what I have not done in the time I've had? All of us have so much more time than we use well. How many hours in a life are spent in a way of which one might be proud, looking back?

 

Walter (philosopher) Kaufmann

 

We are escalating our sharp rhetoric toward Iran, we're deploying additional carrier group and Patriot missiles to the region. And, although Iran has approached the United States to establish serious dialog two times since 9/11, they have been rebuffed both times...
Condoleezza Rice: ...When we have a carrier strike group into the gulf, or provide PAC-3, which is a defensive system, it's simply to demonstrate that the United States remains determined to defend its interests in the gulf, and the interests of its allies. And that, congressman, is a position that has been held by American presidents going back for nearly 60 years. I would just note that these are discrete responses to Iranian activities that are really deeply concerning, not just for us, but for the rest of the world as well. Now as to Tehran, and whether we can talk to them. I offered in May to reverse 27 years of American policy, and to meet my counterpart any place, any time, to talk about any set of issues that Iran wishes to talk about, if they would just do one thing. And that is, adhere to the demand that the international community is making, that they stop enrichment and reprocessing, so that we that while we're talking, they're not improving their capability to get a nuclear weapon. So I think, congressman, the question isn't why won't we talk to Tehran, the question is why won't they talk to us.

 

Ron Paul