Each person must live their life as a model for others.
Rosa ParksRead
I believe we are here on the planet Earth to live, grow up and do what we can to make this world a better place for all people to enjoy freedom.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of contributing positively to society for the benefit of all individuals.
Rosa Parks highlights the purpose of human existence as not just to live, but also to grow and take action towards improving the world. She advocates for collective responsibility in creating an environment where freedom and dignity are accessible to everyone, underscoring the idea that our actions can contribute to the greater good.
In practice
During a speech about community service, one could use this quote to inspire volunteers.
Each person must live their life as a model for others.
Let us look at Jim Crow for the criminal he is and what he has done to one life multiplied millions of times over these United States and the world. He walks us on a tightrope from birth.
All I was trying to do was get home from work.
It was not pre-arranged. It just happened that the driver made a demand and I just didn't feel like obeying his demand. I was quite tired after spending a full day working.
When people made up their minds that they wanted to be free and took action, then there was a change.
I was born 50 years after slavery, in 1913. I was allowed to read. My mother, who was a teacher, taught me when I was a very young child. The first school I attended was a small building that went from first to sixth grade. There was one teacher for all of the students. There could be anywhere from 50 to 60 students of all different ages.
Here - at this final hour, Harlem has come to bid farewell to one of its brightest hopes - extinguished now, and gone from us forever.... Many will ask what Harlem finds to honor in this stormy, controversial and bold young captain - and we will smile. ...We will answer and say unto them, ‘Did you ever talk to Brother Malcolm? Did you ever really listen to him? ...For if you did you would know him. And if you knew him you would know why we must honor him.'
Well, you split your soul, you see, and hide part of it in an object outside the body. Then, even if one’s body is attacked or destroyed, one cannot die, for part of the soul remains earthbound and undamaged. But of course, existence in such a form . . .
We can be thankful to a friend for a few acres or a little money; and yet for the freedom and command of the whole earth, and for the great benefits of our being, our life, health, and reason, we look upon ourselves as under no obligation.
It's only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth - and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up, we will then begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it was the only one we had.
The state tends to expand in proportion to its means of existence and to live beyond its means, and these are, in the last analysis, nothing but the substance of the people. Woe to the people that cannot limit the sphere of action of the state! Freedom, private enterprise, wealth, happiness, independence, personal dignity, all vanish.
Funny, reely," he said. "You spend your whole life goin' to school and learnin' stuff, and they never tell you about stuff like the Bermuda Triangle and UFOs and all these Old Masters running around the inside of the Earth. Why do we have to learn boring stuff when there's all this brilliant stuff we could be learnin', that's what I want to know.
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