Can a deeply divided nation find common ground to move forward as united states?
In his Huffington Post article, Alan Briskin suggests the possibility that we have “reached a nadir, a low point in our national discourse, from which we could rise.”
And with that in mind, I share these quotes from great US political leaders who offer wisdom and guidance on how we might rise and go forward together.
“There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.”
John Adams
“The greatest good we can do our country is to heal its party divisions & make them one people. I do not speak of their leaders who are incurable, but of the honest and well-intentioned body of the people.”
Thomas Jefferson
“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed it ourselves.”
Abraham Lincoln
“If as a nation we are split into warring camps, if we teach our citizens not to look upon one another as brothers but as enemies divided… surely we shall fail and our great democratic experiment on this continent will go down in crushing overthrow.”
Theodore Roosevelt
“Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely.”
Franklin Roosevelt
“What is objectionable, what is dangerous about extremists is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant. The evil is not what they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents.”
Robert Kennedy
“Let us not despair but act. Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past – let us accept our own responsibility for the future.”
John F. Kennedy
“What both men deplored more than the other’s political philosophy was stalemate, and a country that was so polarized by ideology and party politics that it could not move forward. There were tough words and important disagreements over everything from taxation to Medicare and military spending. But there was yet a stronger commitment to getting things done.”
Thomas O’Neil III on the relationship between Ronald Reagan and his father Tip O’Neil
“What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred… but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another.”
Robert Kennedy
Great quotes! Will we heed their advice? Not easy to do, but not impossible.
Thanks, James. To that topic, here’s more advice from Robert Kennedy: “First, is the danger of futility: the belief there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world’s ills — against misery, against ignorance, or injustice and violence. Yet many of the world’s great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single [individual].”
Another quote for the list: “With malice toward none, with charity for all… let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds.” – Abraham Lincoln
Indeed, and you might appreciate this one from Thomas Jefferson: What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! Who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment and death itself in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment, be deaf to all those motives whose powers supported him through his trial, and inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose.
“The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” Winston Churchill
And even more telling today with the proliferation of “fake news” and people only talking with those who already agree with them. I believe Churchill also said, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”
He did indeed. Churchill had a wry view of the world and was under no illusion about the weaknesses of his fellow men.