Authenticated Text and Audio |
"In every age and every generation, men have
envisioned a promised land...Plato and his Republic thought of it of a day -- as
a day when philosophers would become kings and kings philosophers, and justice
would reign throughout society...Karl Marx dreamed of it as a day when the
proletariat would conquer the reign of the bourgeoisie and so society would live
by the motto 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his
needs.'"
"Somehow the arc of the moral
universe is long but it bends toward justice. We shall overcome because Carlyle
is right: “No lie can live forever.” We shall overcome because William Cullen
Bryant is right: “Truth crushed to earth will rise again.” We shall overcome
because James Russell Lowell is right: “Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong
forever on the throne. Yet, that scaffold sways the future and behind the dim
unknown standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.”
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