"A Pledge of Allegiance" - speech for "I Am an Amercan Day" Central Park, New York, New York. (20 May 1945) Hand credited H. G. Wells with inspiring some of the ideas expressed in this speech.
Extra-judicial writings
Context: We may not stop until we have done our part to fashion a world in which there shall be some share of fellowship; which shall be better than a den of thieves. Let us not disguise the difficulties; and, above all, let us not content ourselves with nobel aspirations, counsels of perfection, and self-righteous advice to others. We shall need the wisdom of the serpent; we shall have to be content with short steps; we shall be obliged to give and take; we shall face the strongest passions of mankind — our own not the least; and in the end we shall have fabricated an imperfect instrument. But we shall not wholly have failed; we shall have gone forward, if we bring to our task a pure and chastened spirit, patience, understanding, sympathy, forbearance, generosity, fortitude, and, above all, an inflexible determination. The history of man has just begun; in the aeons which lie before him lie limitless hope or limitless despair. The choice is his; the present choice is ours. It is worth the trial.
Learned Hand (1872–1961) American legal scholar, Court of Appeals judge
"A Pledge of Allegiance" - speech for "I Am an American Day" Central Park, New York, New York. (20 May 1945) Hand credited H. G. Wells with inspiring some of the ideas expressed in this speech.
Extra-judicial writings
Oscar Levant (1906–1972) American comedian, composer, pianist and actor
In "Music in Aspic," Harper's Magazine (October 1939) and A Smattering of Ignorance (1940); as quoted in "Lightning Wit Plays On American Musical Scene; Oscar Levant Answers Unspoken Request for 'Information, Please' With Uncensored Comments on Exalted Persons" by Ray C. B. Brown, in The Washington Post (January 14, 1940), p. E4
“Man has a choice and it's a choice that makes him a man.”
John Steinbeck book East of Eden
Source: East of Eden
“That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.”
H.P. Lovecraft book The Nameless City
Variant: That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.
Source: The Nameless City
“History teaches us that the capacity for things to get worse is limitless.”
Chalmers Johnson (1931–2010) American political scientist
“Know, man hath all which Nature hath, but more,
And in that more lie all his hopes of good.”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools
To An Independent Preacher
Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist
Ai Weiwei Twitter feed: @AiWW (8:50 a.m. September 5, 2009)
2000-09, Twitter feeds, 2009
Source: September 1, 1939 (1939), Lines 78–88; for a 1955 anthology text the poet changed this line to "We must love one another and die" to avoid what he regarded as a falsehood in the original.
“Almost every important choice in our lives is really just an expression of hope.”
John Twelve Hawks American writer
Fourth Realm Trilogy (2005-2009), The Golden City (2009)
