for new problems will always arise. We cannot expect that all nations will adopt like systems — for conformity is the jailor of freedom, and the enemy of growth. Nor can we expect to reach our goal by contrivance, by fiat or even by the wishes of all.
But however close we sometimes seem to that dark and final abyss, let no man of peace and freedom despair. For he does not stand alone. If we all can persevere, if we can in every land and office look beyond our own shores and ambitions, then surely the age will dawn in which the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved.
1961, UN speech
“I look at you and I see the final triumph of stupidity in the world!”
Beneatha to Walter, Act III
A Raisin in the Sun (1959)
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Lorraine Hansberry 14
playwright and writer 1930–1965Related quotes
“The world goes on, stupid and brutal, but I do not. Can't you see? I do not.”
Variant: It goes on, this world, stupid and brutal.
But I do not. do not.
Source: Revolution
“Finally I am becoming stupider no more.”
A suggestion for his own epitaph, as quoted in Variety in Religion and Science: Daily Reflections (2005) by Varadaraja Raman, p. 256
This portion of Parker's sermon is thought to have inspired Martin Luther King, Jr.'s famous assertion of similar sentiments: "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice".
Ten Sermons of Religion (1853), III : Of Justice and the Conscience https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ten_Sermons_of_Religion/Of_Justice_and_the_Conscience
1860s, On The Choice Of Books (1866)
Context: I began gradually to perceive this immense fact, which I really advise every one of you who read history to look out for and read for—if he has not found it—it was that the kings of England all the way from the Norman Conquest down to the times of Charles I. had appointed, so far as they knew, those who deserved to be appointed, peers. They were all Royal men, with minds full of justice and valour and humanity, and all kinds of qualities that are good for men to have who ought to rule over others. Then their genealogy was remarkable—and there is a great deal more in genealogies than is generally believed at present. I never heard tell of any clever man that came out of entirely stupid people. If you look around the families of your acquaintance, you will see such cases in all directions. I know that it has been the case in mine. I can trace the father, and the son, and the grandson, and the family stamp is quite distinctly legible upon each of them, so that it goes for a great deal—the hereditary principle in Government as in other things; and it must be recognised so soon as there is any fixity in things.
On Walter Wanderley, circa 1965, as quoted by Claudio Slon in an April 1999 interview http://bjbear71.com/Slon/Interviews.html#Interviews on KUVO-FM