A poem should not mean but be.
Archibald MacleishRead
How shall freedom be defended? By arms when it is attacked by arms, by truth when it is attacked by lies, by faith when it is attacked by authoritarian dogma. Always, in the final act, by determination and faith.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Freedom must be defended through strength, truth, faith, and unwavering determination.
This quote by Archibald Macleish emphasizes the multifaceted nature of defending freedom. It suggests that in the face of physical, ideological, or authoritarian attacks, one must respond with the appropriate means—be it force, honesty, or faith. Ultimately, it underscores that the essence of defending freedom lies in unwavering determination and belief in one's cause.
Themes
FreedomDeterminationFaithTruthCourage
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of defending civil liberties.
More from Archibald Macleish
All quotes →To see the earth as we now see it, small and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the unending night ~ brothers who see now they are truly brothers.
Archibald MacleishRead
Journalism is concerned with events, poetry with feelings. Journalism is concerned with the look of the world, poetry with the feel of the world.
Archibald MacleishRead
Races didn't bother the Americans. They were something a lot better than any race. They were a People. They were the first self-constituted, self-declared, self-created People in the history of the world.
Archibald MacleishRead
The business of the law is to make sense of the confusion of what we call human life - to reduce it to order but at the same time to give it possibility, scope, even dignity.
Archibald MacleishRead
Never in all their history have men been able truly to conceive of the world as one: a single sphere, a globe, having the qualities of a globe, a round earth in which all the directions eventually meet, in which there is no center because every point, or none, is center - an equal earth which all men occupy as equals. The airman's earth, if free men make it, will be truly round: a globe in practice, not in theory.
Archibald MacleishRead
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One person can make a difference, even if it takes forty years.
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