“Today the eyes of all people are truly upon us — and our governments, in every branch, at every level, national, state and local, must be as a city upon a hill — constructed and inhabited by men aware of their great trust and their great responsibilities.”
1961, The City upon a Hill speech
Context: During the last sixty days, I have been at the task of constructing an administration. It has been a long and deliberate process. Some have counseled greater speed. Others have counseled more expedient tests. But I have been guided by the standard John Winthrop set before his shipmates on the flagship Arbella three hundred and thirty-one years ago, as they, too, faced the task of building a new government on a perilous frontier. "We must always consider," he said, "that we shall be as a city upon a hill — the eyes of all people are upon us." Today the eyes of all people are truly upon us — and our governments, in every branch, at every level, national, state and local, must be as a city upon a hill — constructed and inhabited by men aware of their great trust and their great responsibilities. For we are setting out upon a voyage in 1961 no less hazardous than that undertaken by the Arbella in 1630. We are committing ourselves to tasks of statecraft no less awesome than that of governing the Massachusetts Bay Colony, beset as it was then by terror without and disorder within. History will not judge our endeavors — and a government cannot be selected — merely on the basis of color or creed or even party affiliation. Neither will competence and loyalty and stature, while essential to the utmost, suffice in times such as these.
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John F. Kennedy 469
35th president of the United States of America 1917–1963Related quotes
A Model of Christian Charity, a sermon delivered onboard the Arbella (1630)
1880s, Inaugural address (1881)
“We inhabit the cities of the dead and their ideas inhabit us every day.”
La generación FaceNoBook, Revista Alma Mater, La Habana (July 2012), p. 5
“Homosexuals now pervade and control American government at every level and branch.”
Fred Phelps, in a letter to Russian President Boris Yeltsin, July 5, 1997.
About the Westboro Baptist Church http://www.adl.org/special_reports/wbc/print.asp. Anti-Defamation League.
1990s, Letter to Boris Yeltsin (1997)
Context: Homosexuals now pervade and control American government at every level and branch. Thus, only those churches that support and promote the militant homosexual agenda enjoy religious freedom. Any church in America that dares to preach what the Bible says about soul-damning, nation-destroying moral filth of the vile homosexual beasts among us, loses all Constitutional guarantees of religious freedom and speech rights.
" Inaugural Address http://governor.maryland.gov/2015/01/21/inaugural-address-governor-larry-hogan/" (21 January 2015)
“We all see these great calamities with different eyes, and so their impact upon us is different.”
The Path To Power (1995)
[In later footnotes, Boucher notes that by "white men" the native Americans mean the English; they call the French and Spanish by their proper names. He also gives examples of atrocities committed by colonists against native Americans, and expresses sarcastic surprise that "all such circumstances have failed to attract the attention of the writers of American history"].
"A View of the Causes and Consequences of the American Revolution" (London, Robinson, 1797)
Source: Project management for executives (1982), p. 2