Thirteen Random Quotes from American History That I’ve Learned This Week (courtesy of Don’t Know Much About History by Kenneth C. Davis, which I chose to read as a little beginning refresher as I prepare for my TExES content exam in Grades 8-12 History)
1. “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will shrink from the service of his country….Tyranny, like Hell, is not easily conquered.” - Thomas Paine, The Crisis (p. 83)
2. “If you come to Ebbets Field today, you won’t have any trouble recognizing me. My number’s forty-two.” - Jackie Robinson (p. 402)
3. “So first of all let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” - Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first inaugural address (p. 350)
4. “Carefully considered, they appear truly to form another world, and therefore we have, not without reason, called it the New World. Not one of all the ancients had any knowledge of it, and the things which have been lately ascertained by us transcend all their ideas.”- Amerigo Vespucci (p. 15)
5. “The world is quiet today, Mr. President.” - Colin Powell to Ronald Reagan on his last day in office. (p. 531)
6. “Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really guaged your cruelty or your recklessness….Have you no decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” - Joseph N. Welch to Senator Joseph McCarthy, 1954 (p. 410)
7. “Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?” - Henry David Thoreau from “Civil Disobedience” (p. 193)
8. “Thus the particular phraseology of the constitution of the United States confirms and strengthens the principle, supposed to be essential to all written constitutions, that a law repugnant to the constitution is void…” - Marbury v. Madison (p. 144)
9. “When I think of the millions who have suffered in all the wicked wars of the past, I am shaken with the anguish of a great impatience. I want to fling myself against all brute powers that destroy the life, and break the spirit of man.” - Helen Keller to Eugene V. Debs, 1919 (p. 318)
10. “It is logical that the United States should do whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health in the world, without which there can be no political stability and no assured peace. Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos.” - Secretary of State George C. Marshall, 1947 (p. 401)
11. “The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissention [sic], which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself frightful despotism.” - George Washington’s farewell address (p. 139)
12. “I did it. I just went. My mind just went. And I wasn’t the only one that did it. A lot of other people did it. I just killed….I didn’t know I had it in me.” - Vernado Simpson describing My Lai, 1968 (p. 487)
13. “If you had a country which was very valuable, which had always belonged to your people….and men of another race came to take it away by force, what would your people do? Would they fight?” - Chief Gall, leader of the Hunkpapa Sioux at Little Bighorn (p. 256)
Tags: Thursday Thirteen
