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, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the ongoing struggle for African American freedom and justice since the Emancipation Proclamation.
In this powerful statement, Martin Luther King, Jr. acknowledges the historical significance of the Emancipation Proclamation as a pivotal moment in the fight against slavery. However, he starkly points out that even a century later, African Americans are still faced with systemic injustices and lack of true freedom, emphasizing the need for continued activism and courage in the pursuit of equality and civil rights.
In practice
Use this quote to highlight the importance of social justice during a civil rights rally.
This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love.
Music is the best consolation for a despaired man
We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love.
We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now.
Israel... is one of the great outpost of democracy in the world
One of the greatest casualties of the war in Vietnam is the Great Society... shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam.
Alpinism means you go by yourself with your own responsibility, knowing that you could die. But Everest now is more like ski tourism: preparing the piste, helping people go up, setting oxygen bottles near the summit.
You are a coward when you even seem to have backed down from a thing you openly set out to do
There are some fires you can't get out of- you've got to go through the fire - you've got to go through the flood - you've got to go through the test - you've got to go through the struggle that you might decrease and he might increase.
Our mistreatment was just not right, and I was tired of it.
The great thing about being a print journalist is that you are permitted to duck. Cameramen get killed while the writers are flat on the floor. A war correspondent for the BBC dedicated his memoir to 50 fallen colleagues, and I guarantee you they were all taking pictures. I am only alive because I am such a chicken.
Joe Frazier got hit more than me - and he doesn't have Parkinson's.
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