So long as we govern our nation by the letter and spirit of the Bill of Rights, we can be sure that our nation will grow in strength and wisdom and freedom.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of adhering to the principles of the Bill of Rights to ensure the nation's growth and freedom.
Dwight D. Eisenhower highlights the significance of the Bill of Rights as a guiding framework for governance. By upholding both the literal text and the underlying principles of these rights, a nation can foster strength, wisdom, and freedom, which are essential for its development and democracy. The quote serves as a reminder that justice and liberty are only secured through the observance and respect of foundational rights.
In practice
In a lecture on constitutional law, the quote can be used to stress the importance of civil liberties.
If a man's associates find him guilty of being phony, if they find that he lacks forthright integrity, he will fail. His teachings and actions must square with each other. The first great need, therefore, is integrity and high purpose.
The libraries of America are and must ever remain the home of free and inquiring minds. To them, our citizens-of all ages and races, of all creeds and persuasions-must be able to turn with clear confidence that there they can freely seek the whole truth, unvarnished by fashion and uncompromised by expediency.
You don't lead by hitting people over the head - that's assault, not leadership.
When pressure mounts and strain increases everyone begins to show the weaknesses in his makeup. It is up to the Commander to conceal his: above all to conceal doubt, fear, and distrust.
Some years ago I became president of Columbia University and learned within 24 hours to be ready to speak at the drop of a hat, and I learned something more, the trustees were expected to be ready to speak at the passing of the hat.
I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.
You mention the Navy, for example, and the fact that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets.
Social Security, which transformed life for the elderly in this country, was 'socialist.' The concept of the 'minimum wage' was seen as a radical intrusion into the marketplace and was described as 'socialist.'
Power-worship blurs political judgment because it leads, almost unavoidably, to the belief that present trends will continue. Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible.
There are few genuine conservatives within the U.S. political system, and it is a sign of the intellectual corruption of the age that the honorable term 'conservatism' can be appropriated to disguise the advocacy of a powerful, lawless, aggressive and violent state, a welfare state for the rich dedicated to a lunatic form of Keynesian economic intervention that enhances state and private power while mortgaging the country's future.
Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable — the art of the next best
The accords were fig leaves of democratic procedure to hide the nakedness of Stalinist dictatorship.
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