When shadow submitted her name to be added to the list of those supporting the pledge she directed me to her blog so that I might read the following. She agreed to let me reprint them here:

"You cannot control forcibly whether other people respect you, but you can control whether or not -you- behave in a fashion worthy of respect, including behaving with dignity and honor towards people who you don't believe deserve it. At the end of the day, your behavior and your own actions are the measure of your control, and people will make of them what they will."
Quoted from John Perchalski

 

"I feel that the dormant goodwill in people needs to be stirred. People need to hear that it makes sense to behave decently or to help others, to place common interests above their own, to respect the elementary rules of human coexistence. They want to be told about this publicly . . . . Goodwill longs to be recognized and cultivated. For it to develop and have an impact it must hear that the world does not ridicule it . . . . I never try to give people practical advice about how to deal with the evil around them, nor could I even if I wanted to -- and yet people want to hear that decency and courage make sense, that something must be risked in the struggle against dirty tricks. They want to know that they are not alone, forgotten, written off."
Quoted from Vaclav Havel, former President of Czechoslovakia, from his book Summer Meditations.

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