Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.

After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule is not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest. But a government in which the majority rule in all cases can not be based on justice… Can there not be a government in which the majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience? … Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right. It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience. Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents on injustice.

-Thoreau

“It is our knowledge — the things we are sure of — that makes the world go wrong and keeps us from seeing and learning,” – Lincoln Steffens

The Rashomon Effect: who we are as people, what we’ve seen and done in life, and where we’ve worked is a filter though which information passes. It colors our perceptions, our truths. We create our own unique interpretation, our equally plausible account based on our individual perspective. All that we believe is true; and yet, none of it is true.