
“We are not educated well enough to perform the necessary act of intelligently selecting our leaders.”
Free the Airwaves! (2002)
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Walter Cronkite 50
American broadcast journalist 1916–2009Related quotes


Source: The Diamond Age: or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

1860s, Oration at Ravenna, Ohio (1865)
Context: But it will be asked, Is it safe to admit to the elective franchise the great mass of ignorant and degraded blacks, so lately slaves? Here indeed is the great practical question, to the solution of which should be brought all the wisdom and enlightenment of our people. I am fully persuaded that some degree of intelligence and culture should be required as a qualification for the right of suffrage. I have no doubt that it would be better if no man were allowed to vote who cannot read his ballot or the Constitution of the United States, and write his name or copy in a legible hand a sentence from the Declaration of Independence. Make any such wise restriction of suffrage, but let it apply to all alike. Let us not commit ourselves to the absurd and senseless dogma that the color of the skin shall be the basis of suffrage, the talisman of liberty. I admit that it is perilous to confer the franchise upon the ignorant and degraded; but if an educational test cannot be established, let suffrage be extended to all men of proper age, regardless of color. It may well be questioned whether the negro does not understand the nature of our institutions better than the equally ignorant foreigner. He was intelligent enough to understand from the beginning of the war that the destiny of his race was involved in it. He was intelligent enough to be true to that Union which his educated and traitorous master was endeavoring to destroy. He came to us in the hour of our sorest need, and by his aid, under God, the Republic was saved. Shall we now be guilty of the unutterable meanness, not only of thrusting him beyond the pale of its blessings, but of committing his destiny to the tender mercies of those pardoned rebels who have been so reluctantly compelled to take their feet from his neck and their hands from his throat? But someone says it is dangerous at this time to make new experiments. I answer, it is always safe to do justice. However, to grant suffrage to the black man in this country is not innovation, but restoration. It is a return to the ancient principles and practices of the fathers. Let me refer you to a few facts in our history which have been but little studied by' the people and politicians of this generation.

“Act well at the moment, and you have performed a good action to all eternity.”
Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 4
Source: Leadership in Administration: A Sociological Interpretation, 1957, p. 127

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1959/nov/03/debate-on-the-address in the House of Commons (3 November 1959)
1950s

17 U.S. (4 Wheaton) 316, 409-411
McCulloch v. Maryland (1819)
Context: [T]he power of creating a corporation is one appertaining to sovereignty, and is not expressly conferred on Congress. This is true. But all legislative powers appertain to sovereignty. The original power of giving the law on any subject whatever is a sovereign power, and if the Government of the Union is restrained from creating a corporation as a means for performing its functions, on the single reason that the creation of a corporation is an act of sovereignty, if the sufficiency of this reason be acknowledged, there would be some difficulty in sustaining the authority of Congress to pass other laws for the accomplishment of the same objects. The Government which has a right to do an act and has imposed on it the duty of performing that act must, according to the dictates of reason, be allowed to select the means, and those who contend that it may not select any appropriate means that one particular mode of effecting the object is excepted take upon themselves the burden of establishing that exception. [... ] The power of creating a corporation, though appertaining to sovereignty, is not, like the power of making war or levying taxes or of regulating commerce, a great substantive and independent power which cannot be implied as incidental to other powers or used as a means of executing them. It is never the end for which other powers are exercised, but a means by which other objects are accomplished. No contributions are made to charity for the sake of an incorporation, but a corporation is created to administer the charity; no seminary of learning is instituted in order to be incorporated, but the corporate character is conferred to subserve the purposes of education. No city was ever built with the sole object of being incorporated, but is incorporated as affording the best means of being well governed. The power of creating a corporation is never used for its own sake, but for the purpose of effecting something else. No sufficient reason is therefore perceived why it may not pass as incidental to those powers which are expressly given if it be a direct mode of executing them.