Historical voices

We have no business to blink evils, and where it is necessary that the knife should be used, let it be used unsparingly, but let it be used intelligently.

Our energies, as a rule, can be employed to much better advantage in uplifting some than in pulling down others.

Speaking broadly, we can not in the long run benefit one man by the downfall of another.

It ought to be unnecessary to say that any man who tries to solve the great problems that confront us by an appeal to anger and passion, to ignorance and folly, to malice and envy, is not, and never can be, aught but an enemy of the very…

I really do not know which quality is most productive of evil to mankind in the long run, hardness of heart or softness of head.

It is eminently desirable that we should none of us be hard-hearted, but it is no less desirable that we should not be soft-headed.

We must retain our self-respect, each and all of us, and we must beware alike of mushy sentimentality and of envy and hatred.

No one of us can do everything, but each of us can do something, and if we work together the aggregate of these somethings will be very considerable.

The power of the forces of evil has been greatly increased, and it is necessary for our self-preservation that we should similarly strengthen the forces for good.

Voluntary action by individuals in the form of associations of any kind for mutual betterment or mutual advantage often offers a way to avoid alike the dangers of State control and the dangers of excessive individualism.

The best work for our uplifting must be done by ourselves, and yet with brotherly kindness for our neighbor.

The feeling of brotherhood is necessarily as remote from a patronizing spirit, on the one hand, as from a spirit of envy and malice, on the other.

The man who lies down, who will not try to walk, has become a mere cumberer of the earth’s surface.

But while every man needs at times to be lifted up when he stumbles, no man can afford to let himself be carried, and it is worth no man’s while to try thus to carry some one else.

Every man of us needs such help at some time or other, and each of us should be glad to stretch out his hand to a brother who stumbles.

This spirit of brotherhood recognizes of necessity both the need of self-help and also the need of helping others in the only way which ever ultimately does great good, that is, of helping them to help themselves.

First and foremost, your organization recognizes the vital need of brotherhood, the most vital of all our needs here in this great Republic.

Nowhere is it, or will it ever be, possible to supplant individual effort, individual initiative; but in addition to this there must be work in combination.

If, on the other hand, under Providence, our own energy and good sense bring prosperity to us, all will share in that prosperity.

If hard times come to the nation, whether as the result of natural causes or because they are invited by our own folly, all of us will suffer.

In the long run each section of the community will rise or fall as the community rises or falls.

Some may go up or go down further than others, but, disregarding special exceptions, the rule is that we must all share in common something of whatever adversity or whatever prosperity is in store for the nation as a whole.

When we undertake the impossible, we too often fail to do anything at all.

We can do a great deal when we undertake, soberly, to do the possible.