1860s, First State of the Union Address (1869)
Context: As the United States is the freest of all nations, so, too, its people sympathize with all people struggling for liberty and self-government; but while so sympathizing it is due to our honor that we should abstain from enforcing our views upon unwilling nations and from taking an interested part, without invitation, in the quarrels between different nations or between governments and their subjects. Our course should always be in conformity with strict justice and law, international and local.
“To invite this Imperial race; this, the greatest commercial nation in the world; this, the nation that has taught the world in the principles of self-government and liberty; to invite this nation itself to sign the decree that declares itself unfit to govern itself without the guardianship of such people, is an insult which I hope will be flung back with ignominy. This is a great issue. It is this: Is this nation to be a free nation and to become a freer one, or is it for all time to be shackled and tethered by tariffs and trusts and monopolies and privileges? That is the issue, and no Liberal will shirk it.”
Speech to the National Liberal Club (3 December 1909), quoted in Better Times: Speeches by the Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, M.P., Chancellor of the Exchequer (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1910), p. 179.
Chancellor of the Exchequer
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David Lloyd George 172
Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom 1863–1945Related quotes
Report on Peace (8 November 1917) http://marx.org/archive/lenin/works//1917/oct/25-26/26b.htm, Lenin's Collected Works, Vol. 26.
1910s
The Daily Telegraph (9 June 1975), from Enoch Powell on 1992 (Anaya, 1989), p. 144
1970s
La liberté politique, la tranquillité d'une nation, la science même, sont des présents pour lesquels le destin prélève des impôts de sang!
About Catherine de' Medici (1842), Part III: The Two Dreams
2000s, 2004, Speech to United Nations General Assembly (September 2004)
Speech at the annual dinner of The Royal Society of St. George (6 May 1924), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 2-3.
1924
The Moser report on Literacy and Numeracy http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/Database/moserec.html
1880s, Inaugural address (1881)
Context: The colonists were struggling not only against the armies of a great nation, but against the settled opinions of mankind; for the world did not then believe that the supreme authority of government could be safely intrusted to the guardianship of the people themselves.
We can not overestimate the fervent love of liberty, the intelligent courage, and the sum of common sense with which our fathers made the great experiment of self-government. When they found, after a short trial, that the confederacy of States, was too weak to meet the necessities of a vigorous and expanding republic, they boldly set it aside, and in its stead established a National Union, founded directly upon the will of the people, endowed with full power of self-preservation and ample authority for the accomplishment of its great object.
Source: (1776), Book IV, Chapter VII, Part Third, p. 667.