Quips and Quotations (Say You, Say Me Edition)

 

Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism:

            The right to criticize;

            The right to hold unpopular beliefs;

            The right to protest;

            The right of independent thought.

The exercise of these rights should not cost one single American citizen his reputation or his right to a livelihood nor should he be in danger of losing his reputation or livelihood merely because he happens to know someone who holds unpopular beliefs.  Who of us doesn’t?  Otherwise none of us could call our souls our own.  Otherwise thought control would have set in.

--Senator Margaret Chase Smith (R-ME), "Declaration of Conscience" speech, 6/01/1950

Ancient Rights

 

Norman Rockwell. It's not his birthday or anything. He just happens to be on my mind. I think as time goes by, Rockwell's work is seen as increasingly sentimental, increasingly old-fashioned. Here's one such example:

Freedom of Speech, 1943

Given the current political climate, I'm afraid this particular sentiment may be getting more old-fashioned by the minute.

 This 1976 paean to freedom of the press must be old-fashioned, too. After all, I watched it on TCM!

1936-2025

  

 

 

 

Quips and Quotations (Election Day Edition)

 We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

--Declaration of Independence.

 We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness

--Declaration of Sentiments, Seneca Falls Convention

Whoever degrades another degrades me,
and whatever is done or said returns at last to me…
I speak the pass-word primeval--I give the sign of democracy;
By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms…

--Walt Whitman

I believe the only way to protect my own rights is to protect the rights of others.

--Dwight D. Eisenhower

 It takes no compromise to give people their rights...it takes no money to respect the individual. It takes no political deal to give people freedom. It takes no survey to remove repression.

--Harvey Milk

 O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME

--Langston Hughes

A republic, if you can keep it.

--Benjamin Franklin, when asked just what kind of government had come out of that Constitutional Convention. 


Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions.

--Thomas Paine

Pit race against race, religion against religion, prejudice against prejudice. Divide and conquer! We must not let that happen here.

--Eleanor Roosevelt

...government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

--Abraham Lincoln