At times history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man’s unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama.
There, long-suffering men and women peacefully protested the denial of their rights as Americans. Many were brutally assaulted. One good man, a man of God, was killed.
There is no cause for pride in what has happened in Selma. There is no cause for self-satisfaction in the long denial of equal rights of millions of Americans. But there is cause for hope and for faith in our democracy in what is happening here tonight.
For the cries of pain and the hymns and protests of oppressed people have summoned into convocation all the majesty of this great Government — the Government of the greatest Nation on earth.Lyndon B. Johnson (1908-1973) American politician, educator, US President (1963-69)
“The American Promise,” speech to a Joint Session of Congress [04:25] (1965-03-15)
(Source)
A nationally broadcast address, introducing the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The mention of Selma is in reference to the events of "Bloody Sunday" on 7 March 1965.
Quotations about:
political violence
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Dear America: You are waking up as Germany once did, to the awareness that 1/3 of your people would kill another 1/3, while 1/3 watches.
Werner Herzog (b. 1942) German film director, screenwriter, author, actor
(Spurious)
Though frequently showing up in social media attributed to Herzog, this was first published by the @wernertwertzog Twitter parody account (23 Aug 2017). The account is operated by William Pannapacker, American literature professor at Hope College, Holland, Michigan.
More information about this quotation:
The only way to forestall the work of criticism is through censorship, which has the same relation to criticism that lynching has to justice.
Northrop Frye (1912-1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist
Anatomy of Criticism, “Polemical Introduction” (1957)
(Source)
Fascism is capitalism plus murder.
Upton Sinclair (1878-1968) American writer, journalist, activist, politician
The EPIC Plan for California (1934)
(Source)
Often cited to his novel Presidential Agent (1944), he used the phrase often, starting at least with his run for governor of California.
KING ARTHUR: Shut up!
DENNIS: Oh, now we see the violence inherent in the system. Come and see the violence inherent in the system! Help! Help! I’m being repressed!
KING ARTHUR: Bloody peasant!
DENNIS: Oh, what a giveaway! Did you hear that? Did you hear that, eh? That’s what I’m on about! Did you see him repressing me? You saw him, didn’t you?
Monty Python (contemp.) British comedy troupe
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
Peace does not appear so distant as it did. I hope it will come soon, and come to stay; and so come as to be worth the keeping in all future time. It will then have been proved that, among free men, there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and that they who take such appeal are sure to lose their case, and pay the cost.
