Charles Sumner

Not a thing done, not a word said, which does not help or hinder the grand, the beautiful, the holy consummation.

Not a wave of air set in motion by the human voice, which is not prolonged likewise into unknown space.

Not a ripple stirred by the passing breeze or by the freighted ship cleaving the sea, which is not prolonged to a thousand shores, leaving behind an endless progeny, so long as ocean endures.

I use trivial illustrations, when I remind you that the coral-reef on which navies are wrecked is the work of the multitudinous insect,--that the unyielding stone is worn away by drops; but this is the law of Nature, under which no…

Everybody can do something, for to everybody is given something to do; and it is by this accumulation of activities, by this succession of atoms, that the result is accomplished.

To help in this work it is not necessary to be emperor or king.

The peaceful conquest will proceed, and every day must contribute its fruits.

It is by constant, incessant, unceasing activity in conformity with law that Nature works; and so in these world-subduing operations Man can be successful only in harmony with Nature.

Not at once; not by any sudden conquest; not in the lifetime of any individual man; not in any way which does not recognize Nature as co-worker.

One obstacle is overcome only to find another, which is overcome, and then another also, in the ascending scale of human improvement.

There is no height of culture or of virtue--if virtue itself be not the highest culture--which may not be reached.

Standing on the shoulders of the Past, Man stands also on the shoulders of every science discovered, every art advanced, every truth declared.

Thus every achievement in thought or science, every discovery by which Man is elevated, becomes the common property of the whole Human Family.

Through these incomparable agencies is knowledge made coextensive with space and time on earth.

Not a triumph in literature, art, or jurisprudence, from the story of Homer and the odes of Horace to the statue of Apollo and the bust of Augustus, from the eloquence of Demosthenes and Cicero to that Roman Law which has become the law of…

We can better spare Greece and Rome than the printing-press and steam-engine.

Here is what Greece and Rome never knew, and more than Greece and Rome have contributed to man.

I name two only: first, the printing-press; and, secondly, the means of intercommunication, whether by navigation or railways, represented by the steam-engine.

Great powers are at hand, ministers of human progress.

Not the earth, but the sun, is the centre of our system; and the noon-day effulgence in which we live and move symbolizes that other effulgence which is found in knowledge.

Light in the world is more than armies or navies.

Man must know himself, and that law of Unity appointed for the Human Family.

Wherever Man exists, there are the capacities of manhood, with that greatest of all, the capacity for improvement; and the civilization we have reached supplies the means.

There is nothing of aspiration for Universal Man which is not within the reach of well-directed effort,--no matter in what unknown recess of continent, no matter on what distant island of the sea.

Time and space, ancient tyrants keeping people apart, are now overcome.