I Have a Dream

Martin Luther King's famous speech "I have a dream" is recognised as perhaps one of the best speeches ever given. 

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity. But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free.

One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land.

So we have come here today to dramatize an appalling condition. In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.

This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned.

Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation.

So we have come to cash this check - a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God's children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of the Negro. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights.

The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges. But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. we must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. 

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.

We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" we can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal." I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor's lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring." And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania! Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado! Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California! But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia! Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee! Let freedom ring from every hill and every molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

Sometimes you have to stop thinking so much

 and go whre your heart takes you....

May you hear god's voice in your heart, 

know his touch in your life,

 and feel his love each day

Enjoy Some Unknown Quotations

Set Your Goals High Enough To Inspire You And Low Enough To Encourage You.

 

 

No man is worth your tears, but once you find one that is, he won't make you cry

 

 

When work, commitment, and pleasure all become one and you reach that deep well where passion lives, nothing is impossible

 

 

Anyone who says they are not interested in politics is like a drowning man who insists he is not interested in water.

 

 

 

Inspiration: There is no man upon the earth, no foolish man or wise, No man of high or humble birth but somewhere in the skies Can find a star to lead him on if he will lift his eyes

 

 

Be patient enough to live one day at a time, letting yesterday go and leaving tomorrow until it arrives

 

 

 

The best advice is this: Don't take advice and don't give advice.

 

 

 

Girls are like apples...the best ones are at the top of the trees. The boys don't want to reach for the good ones because they are afraid of falling and getting hurt. Instead, they just get the rotten apples that are on the ground that aren't as good, but easy. So the apples at the top think there is something wrong with them, when, in reality, they are amazing. They just have to wait for the right boy to come along, the one who's brave enough to climb all the way to the top of the tree...

 

 

It's better to be an optimist who is sometimes wrong than a pessimist who is always right

 

 

There is no elevator to success. You have to take the stairs.

 

 

 

God made woman beautiful and foolish; beautiful, that man might love her; and foolish, that she might love him

 

 

 

A foolish man tells a woman to stop talking, but a wise man tells her that her mouth is extremely beautiful when her lips are closed

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jealous people poison their own banquet and then eat it

 

 

 

Love is when you take away the feeling, the passion, the romance and you find out you still care for that person

 

 

 

When a diplomat says yes he means perhaps; when he says perhaps he means no; when he says no, he is not a diplomat

 

 

 

A wise man can see more from the bottom of a well than a fool can from a mountain top.

 

 

Use disappointments as material for patience

 

 

 

The only successful substitute for brains is silence

 

 

Artificial Intelligence is no match for natural stupidity

 

 

A friend is someone who dances with you in the sunlight, And walks with you in the shadows

 

 

 

True friendship comes when silence between two people is comfortable

 

 

A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and sings it back to you when you have forgotten how it goes

 

 

 

A friend will know you better in the first minute they see you, than your acquaintance will in a thousand years.

 

 

A friend is one who believes in you when you have ceased to believe in yourself

 

There's a difference between interest and commitment. When you're interested in doing something, you do it only when circumstance permit. When you're committed to something, you accept no excuses, only results

 

John Keats (1795-1821)

The greatest English poets and a major figure in the Romantic Movement

Keats's father breathed his last breath when he was eight and his mother when he was 14. These gloomy circumstances drew him close to his two brothers, Tom and George, and his only sister Fanny. Keats educated at a school in Enfield. At that time he began to translate the Virgil's Aeneid. His first attempt at writing poetry was in 1814, and includes an `Imitation' of the Elizabethan poet Edmund Spenser.

Keats' first volume of poems was published in 1817. It attracted some good reviews, but these were followed by the first of several harsh attacks by the influential Blackwood's Magazine.

During his lifetime, Keats fight the obstacles of his lower-middle class social status, limited education and poor health, as he sought to develop his skills as a poet and advance his poetical theories. Even after his early death at the age of twenty-five, and well into the nineteenth century, Keats's poetry continued to be disparaged as overly sensitive, sensuous, and simplistic. By the twentieth century, however, his position within the Romantic Movement had been revalued by critics. Keats’s poetry describes the beauty of the natural world and art as the vehicle for his poetic imagination

 "Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own works"

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Keats Says...

"Don't be discouraged by a failure. It can be a positive experience. Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success, inasmuch as every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true, and every fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterwards carefully avoid."

 

 

"I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affections and the truth of imagination. What the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth - whether it existed before or not."

.

 

"I love you the more that I believe you have liked me for my own sake and for nothing else."

.

 

"Poetry should please by a fine excess and not by singularity. It should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost as a remembrance."

 

 

 

"Tis the witching hour of night,

Orbed is the moon and bright,

And the stars they glisten, glisten,

Seeming with bright eyes to listen

For what listen they ?"

On leaving some Friends at an Early Hour

GIVE me a golden pen, and let me lean

On heap’d up flowers, in regions clear, and far;

Bring me a tablet whiter than a star,

Or hand of hymning angel, when ’tis seen

The silver strings of heavenly harp atween:

And let there glide by many a pearly car,

Pink robes, and wavy hair, and diamond jar,

And half discovered wings, and glances keen.

The while let music wander round my ears,

And as it reaches each delicious ending,

Let me write down a line of glorious tone,

And full of many wonders of the spheres:

For what a height my spirit is contending!

’Tis not content so soon to be alone.

Abraham Lincoln Says...........................

1. 
   

A friend is one who has the same enemies as you have.

A house divided against itself cannot stand.

 

All I am, or can be, I owe to my angel mother.

 

 

A woman is the only thing I am afraid of that I know will not hurt me.

 

 

 

All my life I have tried to pluck a thistle and plant a flower wherever the flower would grow in thought and mind.

 

 

All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.

 

 

Allow the president to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose - and you allow him to make war at pleasure.

 

 

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other.

 

 

Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?

 

 

America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.

 

 

And in the end it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.

 

 

Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable - a most sacred right - a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.

 

 

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.

 

 

As our case is new, we must think and act anew.

 

 

Avoid popularity if you would have peace.

 

 

Ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors to bullets.

 

 

Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.

 

 

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.

 

 

Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new at all.

 

 

Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.

 

 

Common looking people are the best in the world: that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them.

 

 

Die when I may, I want it said by those who knew me best that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.

 

 

Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. As a peacemaker the lawyer has superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough.

 

 

Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.

 

 

Don't worry when you are not recognized, but strive to be worthy of recognition.

 

 

Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or not, I can say for one that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem.

 

 

Every one desires to live long, but no one would be old.

 

 

Everybody likes a compliment.

 

 

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

 

 

Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.

 

 

God must love the common man, he made so many of them.

 

 

Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.

 

 

He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help.

 

 

He who molds the public sentiment... makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to make.

 

 

Hold on with a bulldog grip, and chew and choke as much as possible.

 

 

How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.

 

 

I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.

 

 

I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.

 

 

I can make more generals, but horses cost money.

 

 

I care not much for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.

 

 

I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end... I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside of me.

 

 

I destroy my enemies when I make them my friends.

 

 

I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.

 

 

I do the very best I know how - the very best I can; and I mean to keep on doing so until the end.

 

 

I don't know who my grandfather was; I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.

 

 

I don't like that man. I must get to know him better.

 

 

I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.

 

 

I hope to stand firm enough to not go backward, and yet not go forward fast enough to wreck the country's cause.

 

 

I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him.

 

 

I never had a policy; I have just tried to do my very best each and every day.

 

 

I remember my mother's prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.

 

 

I walk slowly, but I never walk backward.

 

 

I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.

 

 

I was losing interest in politics, when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again. What I have done since then is pretty well known.

 

 

I will prepare and some day my chance will come.

 

 

I'm a slow walker, but I never walk back.

 

 

If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend six hours sharpening my ax.

 

 

If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business.

 

 

If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?

 

 

If once you forfeit the confidence of your fellow-citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem.

 

 

If there is anything that a man can do well, I say let him do it. Give him a chance.

 

 

If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.

 

 

If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it.

 

 

If you call a tail a leg, how many legs has a dog? Five? No, calling a tail a leg don't make it a leg.

 

 

If you look for the bad in people expecting to find it, you surely will.

 

 

Important principles may, and must, be inflexible.

 

 

In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong.

 

 

In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.

 

 

It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.

 

 

It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt.

 

 

Knavery and flattery are blood relations.

 

 

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.

 

 

Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.

 

 

Lets have faith that right makes might; and in that faith let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.

 

 

Marriage is neither heaven nor hell, it is simply purgatory.

 

 

Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.

 

 

My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth.

 

 

My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.

 

 

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.

 

 

Never stir up litigation. A worse man can scarcely be found than one who does this.

 

 

No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.

 

 

No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent.

 

 

No matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens.

 

 

Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as a heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors.

 

 

People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be.

 

 

Public opinion in this country is everything.

 

 

Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.

 

 

Republicans are for both the man and the dollar, but in case of conflict the man before the dollar.

 

Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right.

 

 

Some day I shall be President.

 

 

Some single mind must be master, else there will be no agreement in anything.

 

 

Stand with anybody that stands right, stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong.

 

 

Surely God would not have created such a being as man, with an ability to grasp the infinite, to exist only for a day! No, no, man was made for immortality.

 

 

Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.

 

 

That some achieve great success, is proof to all that others can achieve it as well.

 

 

The assertion that "all men are created equal" was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain and it was placed in the Declaration not for that, but for future use.

 

 

The ballot is stronger than the bullet.

 

 

The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.

 

 

The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend.

 

 

The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.

 

 

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.

 

 

The highest art is always the most religious, and the greatest artist is always a devout person.

 

 

The Lord prefers common-looking people. That is why he makes so many of them.

 

 

The people themselves, and not their servants, can safely reverse their own deliberate decisions.

 

 

The people will save their government, if the government itself will allow them.

 

 

The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.

 

 

The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.

 

 

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty.

 

 

The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who'll get me a book I ain't read.

 

 

The time comes upon every public man when it is best for him to keep his lips closed.

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The way for a young man to rise is to improve himself in every way he can, never suspecting that anybody wishes to hinder him.

 

 

There is another old poet whose name I do not now remember who said, "Truth is the daughter of Time."

 

 

There is nothing true anywhere, The true is nowhere to be seen; If you say you see the true, This seeing is not the true one.

 

 

These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert, to fleece the people.

 

 

These men ask for just the same thing, fairness, and fairness only. This, so far as in my power, they, and all others, shall have.

 

 

Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.

 

 

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it.

 

 

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.

 

 

To give victory to the right, not bloody bullets, but peaceful ballots only, are necessary.

 

 

To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.

 

 

To stand in silence when they should be protesting makes cowards out of men.

 

 

Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.

 

 

We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.

 

 

We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.

 

 

What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself.

 

 

Whatever you are, be a good one.

 

 

When I am getting ready to reason with a man, I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself and what I am going to say and two-thirds about him and what he is going to say.

 

 

When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion.

 

 

When I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees.

 

 

When you have got an elephant by the hind legs and he is trying to run away, it's best to let him run.

 

 

Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.

 

 

With Malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds.

 

 

With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.

 

 

With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.

 

 

You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.

 

 

You cannot build character and courage by taking away a man's initiative and independence.

 

 

You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.

 

 

You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.

  

You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.

Abraham Lincoln