When we talk of freedom and opportunity for all nations, the mocking paradoxes in our own society become so clear they can no longer be ignored.
We cannot, with good conscience, expect the British to set up an orderly schedule for the liberation of India before we have decided for ourselves to make all who live in America free.
Today it is becoming increasingly apparent to thoughtful Americans that we cannot fight the forces and ideas of imperialism abroad and maintain any form of imperialism at home. The war has done this to our thinking.
The test of good manners is to be able to put up pleasantly with bad ones.
The defense of our democracy against the forces that threaten it from without has made some of its failures to function at home glaringly apparent.
The constitution does not provide for first and second class citizens.
No man has the right to use the great powers of the Presidency to lead the people, indirectly, into war.
It is from weakness that people reach for dictators and concentrated government power. Only the strong can be free. And only the productive can be strong.
In no direction that we turn do we find ease or comfort. If we are honest and if we have the will to win we find only danger, hard work and iron resolution.
In addition, as citizens, we must fight in their incipient stages all movements by government or party or pressure groups that seek to limit the legitimate liberties of any of our fellow citizens.
If we want to talk about freedom, we must mean freedom for others as well as ourselves, and we must mean freedom for everyone inside our frontiers as well as outside.
It is, therefore, essential that we guard our own thinking and not be among those who cry out against prejudices applicable to themselves, while busy spawning intolerances for others.