Historical voices

Let us see to it that, while we take advantage of every gentler and more humanizing tendency of the age, we yet preserve the iron quality which made our forefathers and predecessors fit to do the deeds they did.

It would be a sad and evil thing for this country if ever the day came when we considered the great deeds of our forefathers as an excuse for our resting slothfully satisfied with what has been already done.

But lip-loyalty by itself avails very little, whether it is expressed concerning a nation or an ideal.

But when we pay homage to the hardy, grim, resolute men who, with incredible toil and risk, laid deep the foundations of the civilization that we inherit, let us steadily remember that the only homage that counts is the homage of deeds—not…

Their traits of daring and hardihood and iron endurance are not merely indispensable traits for pioneers; they are also traits which must go to the make-up of every mighty and successful people.

The men who founded these communities showed practically by their life-work that it is indeed the spirit of adventure which is the maker of commonwealths.

In all the history of mankind there is nothing that quite parallels the way in which our people have filled a vacant continent with self-governing commonwealths, knit into one nation.

Save only the preservation of the Union itself, no other task has been so important as the conquest and settlement of the West.

The very completeness with which the vitally important task has been done almost blinds us to the extraordinary nature of the achievement.

At last we grew to accept as axiomatic the two facts of national union and local and personal freedom.

We have preserved the complete unity of an expanding race without impairing in the slightest degree the liberty of the individual.

The system of a closely knit and indestructible union of free commonwealths has enabled us to do what neither Greek nor Roman in their greatest days could do.

In applying the new principles to our conditions we have found the Federal Constitution a nearly perfect instrument.

Our ancestors, who were at once the strongest and the most liberty-loving among all the peoples who had been thrust out into new continents, were the first to revolt against this system; and the lesson taught by their success has been…

The Romans kept national unity, but only by means of a crushing centralized despotism.

With the Greeks race unity was sacrificed to local independence, and as a result the Greek world became the easy prey of foreign conquerors.

The great civilized and colonizing races of antiquity, the Greeks and the Romans, had been utterly unable to devise a scheme under which when their race spread it might be possible to preserve both national unity and local and individual…

Under any governmental system which was known to Europe, the problem offered by the westward thrust, across a continent, of so masterful and liberty-loving a race as ours would have been insoluble.

Our greatest statesmen have always been those who believed in the nation—who had faith in the power of our people to spread until they should become the mightiest among the peoples of the world.

It is a law of our intellectual development that the greatest and most important truths, when once we have become thoroughly familiar with them, often because of that very familiarity grow dim in our minds.

While striving to prevent industrial injustice at home, we must not bring upon ourselves industrial weakness abroad.

Modern industrial competition is very keen between nation and nation, and now that our country is striding forward with the pace of a giant to take the leading position in the international industrial world, we should beware how we fetter…

The poorest motto upon which an American can act is the motto of “Some men down,” and the safest to follow is that of “All men up.” A good deal can and ought to be done by law.

On the other hand, it is equally true that the prosperity of any of us can best be attained by measures that will promote the prosperity of all.