Political Quotes

“Madam President, a great American anniversary is upon us: 400 years ago this Saturday, a battered old ship called the Mayflower arrived in the waters off Cape Cod. The passengers aboard the Mayflower are, in many ways, our first founders. Daniel Webster called them ``Our Pilgrim Fathers'' on the 200th anniversary of this occasion. Regrettably, we haven't heard much about this anniversary of the Mayflower. I suppose the Pilgrims have fallen out of favor in fashionable circles these days. I therefore would like to take a few minutes to reflect on the Pilgrim story and its living legacy for our Nation. By 1620, the Pilgrims were already practiced at living in a strange land. They had fled England for Holland 12 years earlier, seeking freedom to practice their faith. But life was hard in Holland, and the Stuart monarchy, intolerant of dissent from the Church of England, gradually extended its oppressive reach across the Channel. So the Pilgrims fled the Old World for the New. In seeking safe harbor for their religion, the Pilgrims differed from those settlers who preceded them in the previous century, up to and including the Jamestown settlement just 13 years earlier.…”