If freedom makes social progress possible, so social progress strengthens and enlarges freedom. The two are inseparable partners in the great adventure of humanity.
Robert KennedyRead
Virginia States' rights, as our forefathers conceived it, was a protection of the right of the individual citizen. Those who preach most frequently about states' rights today are not those seeking the protection of the individual citizen, but his exploitation. The time is long past — if indeed it ever existed — when we should permit the noble concept of states' rights to be betrayed.
Interpretation
The concept of states' rights is intended to protect individual citizens, not exploit them.
In this quote, Robert Kennedy expresses concern over the misuse of the ideas surrounding states' rights, which were originally aimed at safeguarding individual liberties. He suggests that today's proponents of states' rights often exploit this notion for their own gain, rather than genuinely protecting the rights of citizens, and emphasizes the need to uphold the integrity of this concept against such exploitation.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech about the importance of civil rights and protecting individual freedoms.
If freedom makes social progress possible, so social progress strengthens and enlarges freedom. The two are inseparable partners in the great adventure of humanity.
Elections remind us not only of the rights but the responsibilities of citizenship in a democracy.
Within the United States, we have put great emphasis upon political freedoms. Because it has been our experience that these freedoms can lead to others.
It is one thing to open job opportunities. It is another to train people to fill them, or to persuade American enterprise to seek Negro as well as white applicants.
Our attitude towards immigration reflects our faith in the American ideal. We have always believed it possible for men and women who start at the bottom to rise as far as the talent and energy allow. Neither race nor place of birth should affect their chances.
The Gross National Product measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile, and it can tell us everything about America - except whether we are proud to be Americans.
The era when the United States was the dominant global power is steadily coming to an end, and it must find a way of acknowledging this and framing its ambitions and interests accordingly. Instead of claiming the right to continuing primacy in east Asia, for example, it should seek to share that primacy with China.
A politics that is not sensitive to the concerns and circumstances of people's lives, a politics that does not speak to and include people, is an intellectually arrogant politics that deserves to fail.
For Mr. Putin, vacillation invites aggression. His world is a brutish, cynical place, where power is worshiped, weakness is despised, and all rivalries are zero-sum.
American politics used to be an amateur sport. But somewhere along the way, we handed over to professionals all the things people used to do for free.
Democracy is the most demanding of all forms of government in terms of the energy, imagination, and public spirit required of the individual.
The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.
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