The flag is the embodiment, not of sentiment, but of history.
I can imagine no greater disservice to the county than to establish a system of censorship that would deny to the people of a free republic like our own their indisputable right to criticize their own public officials. While exercising the great powers of office I hold, I would regret in a crisis like the one through which we are now passing to lose the benefit of patriotic and intelligent criticism.
We live in an age disturbed, confused, bewildered, afraid of its own forces, in search not merely of its road but even of its direction. There are many voices of counsel, but few voices of vision; there is much excitement and feverish activity, but little concert of thoughtful purpose. We are distressed by our own ungoverned, undirected energies and do many things, but nothing long. It is our duty to find ourselves.
The history of liberty is the history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it.
Only a peace between equals can last. Only a peace the very principle of which is equality and a common participation in a common benefit.
In the last analysis, my fellow country men, as we in America would be the first to claim, a people are responsible for the acts of their government.
Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is the history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it.
The law that will work is merely the summing up in legislative form of the moral judgement that the community has already reached.
You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.
I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow.