The most important accomplishment, I believe, was my voting against the First World War.
Jeannette RankinRead
Small use it will be to save democracy for the race if we cannot save the race for democracy.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of preserving humanity in the pursuit of democratic ideals.
Jeannette Rankin's quote underscores the intrinsic connection between the survival of democracy and the well-being of the human race. It suggests that fighting for democratic principles is futile if those values do not also protect and uplift humanity itself, highlighting the need for a holistic approach to governance that considers both societal structures and the dignity of individuals.
In practice
In a speech about civil rights, this quote can highlight the connection between justice and democratic values.
The most important accomplishment, I believe, was my voting against the First World War.
There can be no compromise with war; it cannot be reformed or controlled; cannot be disciplined into decency or codified into common sense.
As a woman I can't go to war, and I refuse to send anyone else.
I worked for suffrage for years, and got it. I've worked for peace for 55 years and haven't come close.
I want to stand by my country, but I cannot vote for war.
It will be hard to convince people that their welfare is safe in the hands of a federal government when they feel themselves the victims of unjust sectional discrimination.
Generalized intelligence and mental alertness are the most powerful enemies of dictatorship and at the same time the basic conditions of effective democracy.
In this world, there is a kind of painful progress. Longing for what we've left behind, and dreaming ahead.
No human race is superior; no religious faith is inferior. All collective judgments are wrong. Only racists make them.
He'll cheat without scruple, who can without fear.
For, the sense of being which in calm hours rises, we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, from space, from light, from time, from man, but one with them, and proceeds obviously from the same source whence their life and being also proceed. We first share the life by which things exist, and afterwards see them as appearances in nature, and forget that we have shared their cause. Here is the fountain of action and of thought.
You shouldn't change your behavior because a government agency somewhere is doing the wrong thing. If we sacrifice our values because we're afraid, we don't care very much about those values.
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