I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as
the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity. But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition. excerpt from MLK, Jr.'s I Have a Dream |
I
HEARTILY ACCEPT
the motto, — "That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically.
Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe, — "That
government is best which governs not at all"; and when men are prepared
for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government
is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all
governments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been
brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve
to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government.
The standing army is only an arm of the standing government. The government
itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute
their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted
before the people can act through it. Witness the present Mexican war,the work of comparatively a few individuals using the standing government
as their tool; for, in the outset, the people would not have consented
to this measure.
excerpt from Thoreau's Civil Disobedience |