An Asian peasant who labors through all of his waking hours, with tools created in Biblical times-a South American aborigine who is devoured by piranha in a jungle stream-an African who is bitten by the tsetse fly-an Arab whose teeth are green with decay in his mouth-these do live with their 'natural environment,' but are scarcely able to appreciate its beauty. Try to tell a Chinese mother, whose child is dying of cholera: 'Should one do everything one can? Of course not.' Try to tell a Russian housewife, who trudges miles on foot in sub-zero weather in order to spend hours standing in line at a state store dispensing food rations, that America is defiled by shopping centers, expressways and family cars. (Ayn Rand)

An Asian peasant who labors through all of his waking hours, with tools created in Biblical times-a South American aborigine who is devoured by piranha in a jungle stream-an African who is bitten by the tsetse fly-an Arab whose teeth are green with decay in his mouth-these do live with their 'natural environment,' but are scarcely able to appreciate its beauty. Try to tell a Chinese mother, whose child is dying of cholera: 'Should one do everything one can? Of course not.' Try to tell a Russian housewife, who trudges miles on foot in sub-zero weather in order to spend hours standing in line at a state store dispensing food rations, that America is defiled by shopping centers, expressways and family cars.

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I do not believe that our friends at the South have any just idea of the state of feeling, hurrying at this moment to a pitch of intense exasperation, between those who respect their political obligations, and those who apparently have no impelling power but that which a fanatical position on the subject of domestic Slavery imparts. Without discussing the question of right - of abstract power to secede - I have never believed that actual disruption of the Union can occur without blood; and if, through the madness of Northern Abolitionists, that dire calamity must come, the fighting will not be along Mason's and Dixon's line merely. It [will] be within our own borders, in our own streets, between the two classes of citizens to whom I have referred.

Franklin Pierce

Expenditure calls for taxes, and taxes are the plaything of the tariff reformer. Militarism, extravagance, protection are weeds which grow in the same field, and if you want to clear the field for honest cultivation you must root them all out. For my own part, I do not believe that we should have been confronted by the spectre of protection if it had not been for the South African war. ... Depend upon it that in fighting for our open ports and for the cheap food and material upon which the welfare of the people and the prosperity of our commerce depend we are fighting against those powers, privileges, injustices, and monopolies which are unalterably opposed to the triumph of democratic principles.

Henry Campbell-Bannerman

The purpose of the State is, as we have already shown in our last lecture, no other than that of the Human Race itself:-to order all its relations according to the Laws of Reason. It is only after the Age of Reason as Science shall have been traversed, and we shall have arrived at the Age of Reason as Art, that the State can reflect upon this purpose with clear consciousness. Till then it constantly promotes this purpose, but without its own knowledge, or free pre meditated design; prompted thereto by the natural law of the development of our Race, even while it has a totally different purpose in view;-with which purpose of its own, Nature has indissolubly bound up the purpose of the whole Race.

Johann Gottlieb Fichte

In these most recent 20 years -- the alleged winter of our disrespect of the Islamic world -- America did not just respect Muslims, it bled for them. It engaged in five military campaigns, every one of which involved -- and resulted in -- the liberation of a Muslim people: Bosnia, Kosovo, Kuwait, Afghanistan and Iraq. The two Balkan interventions -- as well as the failed 1992-93 Somalia intervention to feed starving African Muslims (43 Americans were killed) -- were humanitarian exercises of the highest order, there being no significant U.S. strategic interest at stake. In these 20 years, this nation has done more for suffering and oppressed Muslims than any nation, Muslim or non-Muslim, anywhere on Earth. Why are we apologizing?

Charles Krauthammer

I listened to the pastors and elders in my churches. I listened to my mother who stayed home to raise my brother and me. I listened to my father, who worked hard every day in a blue collar job; a man who sacrificed his dreams to put food on the table and put his children through college and leave a pension to support my mom when he passed away. I listened to my grandfather, who was from Georgetown, South Carolina. Like my mom and dad, my grandfather never went to college, but he was a proud man, a smart man, and he filled my brother and me with big dreams about the lives we could lead. He taught me that my destiny had not been written before I was born – that my destiny was in my hands.

Michelle Obama