You cannot spill a drop of American blood without spilling the blood of the whole world.... We are not a nation, so much as a world.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the interconnectedness of humanity and the global consequences of national actions.
Herman Melville's quote highlights the profound interconnectedness of humanity, suggesting that the actions taken by one nation, particularly in conflict, reverberate across the entire globe. It underscores the idea that nations are not isolated entities, but rather part of a larger community where the suffering or sacrifice of a single nation affects all of humanity, thus appealing to a collective responsibility towards each other.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech about global responsibility.
A good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a good thing; the more's the pity. So, if any one man, in his own proper person, afford stuff for a good joke to anybody, let him not be backward, but let him cheerfully allow himself to spend and be spent in that way. And the man that has anything bountifully laughable about him, be sure there is more in that man than you perhaps think for.
The Marquesan girls dance all over; not only do their feet dance, but their arms, hands, fingers, ay, their very eyes seem to dance in their heads.
Dream tonight of peacock tails, Diamond fields and spouter whales. Ills are many, blessing few, But dreams tonight will shelter you.
Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.
If some books are deemed most baneful and their sale forbid, how then with deadlier facts, not dreams of doting men? Those whom books will hurt will not be proof against events. Events, not books should be forbid.
Dollars damn me; and the malicious Devil is forever grinning in upon me, holding the door ajar. ... What I feel most moved to write, that is banned - it will not pay. Yet, altogether, write the other way I cannot. So the product is a final hash, and all my books are botches.
Without moral and intellectual independence, there is no anchor for national independence.
Wherever applause breaks out in the liturgy because of some human achievement, it is a sure sign that the essence of liturgy has totally disappeared and been replaced by a kind of religious entertainment. Such attraction fades quickly - it cannot compete in the market of leisure pursuits, incorporating as it increasingly does various forms of religious titillation.
Foreign Assistance is not an end in itself. The purpose of aid must be to create the conditions where it's no longer need.
All humans are entrepreneurs not because they should start companies but because the will to create is encoded in human DNA.
As long as we have a master in heaven, we will be slaves on earth.
Falsehood is never in words; it is in things.
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