“Our pride and progress could be unqualified if the story might end here. But history reveals that America has been a schizophrenic personality where these two documents are concerned. On the one hand she has proudly professed the basic principles inherent in both documents. On the other hand she has sadly practiced the antithesis of these principles.”
1960s, Emancipation Proclamation Centennial Address (1962)
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Martin Luther King, Jr.658
American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Ci… 1929–1968Related quotes
Martin Van Buren (1782–1862) American politician, 8th President of the United States (in office from 1837 to 1841)
Inaugural address (1837)
John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) American politician, 6th president of the United States (in office from 1825 to 1829)
Independence Day address (1821)
Context: America, in the assembly of nations, since her admission among them, has invariably, though often fruitlessly, held forth to them the hand of honest friendship, of equal freedom, of generous reciprocity. She has uniformly spoken among them, though often to heedless and often to disdainful ears, the language of equal liberty, of equal justice, and of equal rights. She has, in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the independence of other nations while asserting and maintaining her own. She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart. She has seen that probably for centuries to come, all the contests of that Aceldama the European world, will be contests of inveterate power, and emerging right. Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. The frontlet on her brows would no longer beam with the ineffable splendor of freedom and independence; but in its stead would soon be substituted an imperial diadem, flashing in false and tarnished lustre the murky radiance of dominion and power. She might become the dictatress of the world; she would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.... Her glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind. She has a spear and a shield: but the motto upon her shield is, Freedom, Independence, Peace. This has been her Declaration: this has been, as far as her necessary intercourse with the rest of mankind would permit, her practice.
Herbert Butterfield (1900–1979) British historian
Liberty in the Modern World (1952), p. 21
Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)
1920s, Unveiling of Equestrian Statue of Bishop Francis Asbury, (Oct. 15, 1924)
Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist
Source: Concepts of documentation (1978), p. 279 as cited in: Alvin M. Schrader (1983) Toward a Theory of Library and Information Science. Vol. 1. p. 322.
Jack T. Chick (1924–2016) Christian comics writer
Chick tracts, " Doom Town http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0272/0272_01.asp" (1991)
Sherry Argov (1977) American writer
Source: Why Men Marry Bitches: A Woman's Guide to Winning Her Man's Heart
Lucy Lawless (1968) New Zealand actress
Frank von Zerneck, on her work in the CBS movie Vampire Bats — reported in Associated Press (October 28, 2005) "Lawless takes on 'Vampire Bats'", Chicago Tribune, p. 48.
About