Archive of Featured Quotes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Retired on August 28, 2014 --

In this world of ours in other lands, there are some people, who, in times past, have lived and fought for freedom, and seem to have grown too weary to carry on the fight. They have sold their heritage of freedom for the illusion of a living. They have yielded their democracy.

-- President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1936

Retired on May 5, 2014 --

Human freedom is not a gift of man. It is an achievement by man and, as it was gained by vigilance and struggle, so it may be lost in indifference and supineness.

-- Harry F. Byrd


Retired on May 13, 2011 --

And thou, America,
Thy offspring towering e'er so high,
yet higher Thee above all towering,
With Victory on thy left,
and at thy right hand Law;
How Union holding all, fusing,
absorbing, tolerating all,
Thee, ever thee, I sing.

-- Walt Whitman




Retired on November 14, 2010 --

“There is...an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents.... The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provisions should be made to prevent its ascendancy.” -- Thomas Jefferson


Retired on July 4, 2009 --

In a land varied in climate, abounding in wealth, all nature smiling upon it, with willing hands, we yet see hundreds of thousands of our fellow human beings anxious to fashion and produce wealth, the necessaries and the luxuries of life, yet unable to find an opportunity of being so employed.


-- Samuel Gompers


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Retired on August 31, 2008 --

But where says some is the King of America? I'll tell you Friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal Brute of Britain. Yet that we may not appear to be defective even in earthly honors, let a day be solemnly set apart for proclaiming the charter; let it be brought forth placed on the divine law, the word of God; let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve of monarchy, that in America THE LAW IS KING.

-- Thomas Paine, Common Sense

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Retired on October 29, 2008

As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such a twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air -- however slight -- lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.


-- Justice William O. Douglas


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Retired on February 8, 2009 --

"It is their mores, then, that make the Americans of the United States...capable of maintaining the rule of democracy....Too much importance is attached to laws and too little to mores....I am convinced that the luckiest of geographical circumstances and the best of laws cannot maintain a constitution in spite of mores, whereas the latter can turn even the most unfavorable circumstances...to advantage....If, in the course of this book, I have not succeeded in making the reader feel the importance I attach to the practical experience of the Americans, to their habits, laws, and, in a word, their mores, I have failed in the main object of my work."


-- Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

 

 

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Retired February 8, 2021

 

Harry Truman quote at Bonham, Texas