Words From the Past as We Look to the Future

“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.”
-The Declaration of Independence (1776)

“A little revolution now and then is a good thing.”
-Thomas Jefferson (1787)

“Values have shrunk to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay has fallen; government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for their produce; and the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone.  More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return.  Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.

And yet our distress comes from no failure of substance.  We are stricken by no plague of locusts.  Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered, because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for.”
-Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1933)

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident.  That all men are created equal…

…I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.  I have a dream today!”
-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1963)

“Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’.”

-Bob Dylan (1963)

“This great, rich, restless country can offer opportunity and education and hope to all, all black and white, all North and South, sharecropper and city dweller.  These are the enemies: poverty, ignorance, disease.  They’re our enemies, not our fellow man, not our neighbor.  And these enemies too – poverty, disease, and ignorance: we shall overcome.”
-Lyndon Baines Johnson (1965)

“Yes we can.”
-Barack Hussein Obama (2008)

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