Pearl Bailey {1976}: “In America, we have people who are too rich, people who are too poor, people who are hungry, people who are sick, people who are homeless, people who are imprisoned, people who are bored, people who are strung out, people who are lonely, people who are exploited, people who lose and can’t find their way, people who give up on life. America, we better live as sisters and brother. Let us take care of our land. We cannot stand up for every other land. Stand up for ourselves.”
Jimmy Carter [1976]: “All I want is the same thing you want. To have a nation with a government that is as good and honest and decent and competent and compassionate and as filled with love as are the American people.”
India Edwards[1977]: “Every generation of Americans has wanted more material wealth, more luxury for the next generation. In my opinion the time has come when we must hope our children and their children ad infinitum will want more from life than material success. They must have enough of that to ensure a roof, clothing, food and some recreation, but, if we are to survive for another two hundred years, we must change our way of life.”
Dwight Eisenhower [1953}: “Whatever America hopes to bring to pass in the world must fiLyndonme to pass in the heart of America.”
Ralph W. Emerson [1867]: “The office of America is to liberate, to abolish kingcraft, priestcraft, caste, monopoly, to pull down the gallows, to burn up the the bloody statutebook, to take in the immigrant to open the doors of the sea and the fields of the earth.”
Waldo Frank [1919]: “We go forth all to seek America. And in the seeking we create her. In the quality of our search shall be the nature of the America that we created.”
Hubert Humphrey [1964]: “We are the standard bearers in the only really authentic revolution, the democratic revolution against tyrannies. Our strength is not to be measured by our military capacity alone, by our industry, or by our technology. We will be remembered, not for the power of our weapons, but for the power of our compassion, our dedication to human welfare.”
Lyndon Johnson[1947]: “I pray we are still a young and courageous nation, that we have not grown so old and so fat and so prosperous that all we can think about is to sit back with our arms around our money bags. If we choose to do that I have no doubt that the smoldering fires will burst into flame and consume us – dollars and all.”
Martin Luther King, Jr. {1967]: “Many of the ugly pages of American history have been obscured and forgotten…America owes a debt of justice which it has only begun to pay. If it loses the will to finish or slackens in its determination, history will recall its crimes and the country that would be great will lack the most indispensable element of greatness – justice.”
Gerald S. Lee [1913]: “America is a tune, It must be sung together.”
David Lilienthal [1949]: “We are a people with a faith in each other, and when we lose that faith we are weak, however heavily armed. We are a people with a faith in reason, and in the unending pursuit of new knowledge; and when we lose that faith we are insecure, though we have never been so heavily armed. We are a people with a faith in God, and a deep sense of stewardship to our Creator, the Father of us all; and when that is no longer strong within us, we are weak and we are lost, however heavily armed with weapons – with atomic weapons we may be.”
Abraham Lincoln [1837] ; “At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”
Meyer London [1916]: “To me Americanism means…an imperative duty to be nobler than the rest of the world.”
Reinhold Niebuhr [1962]: “We find it almost as difficult as the communists to believe that anyone could think ill of us, since we are as persuaded as they that our society is so essentially virtuous that only malice could prompt criticism of any of our actions.”
Adlai Stevenson [1954]: “Throughout its history, America has given hope, comfort, and inspiration to freedom’s cause in all lands. The reservoir of good will and respect for America was not built up by American arms or intrigue; it was built upon our deep dedication to the cause of human liberty and human welfare.”
Stewart Udall [19710: “It is painfully clear that the United States needs its Indians and their culture. A society increasingly homogenized and mechanized – a society headed toward ant-hill conformity and depersonalized living – desperately needs the lessons of a culture that has a deep reverence for nature, and values the simple, the authentic, and the humane.”
George Washington[1789]: “The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered, perhaps, as deeply, as finally staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.”
Walt Whitman [1856]: ‘O America because you build for mankind I build for you.”
With Justice For All 