Freeman Human Rights Quotes

Among us English-speaking peoples especially do the praises of poverty need once more to be boldly sung. We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise any one who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. If he does not join the general scramble and pant with the money-making street, we deem him spiritless and lacking in ambition. We have lost the power even of imagining what the ancient idealization of poverty could have meant: the liberation from material attachments, the unbribed soul, the manlier indifference, the paying our way by what we are or do and not by what we have, the right to fling away our life at any moment irresponsibly—the more athletic trim, in short, the moral fighting shape. When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion. It is true that so far as wealth gives time for ideal ends and exercise to ideal energies, wealth is better than poverty and ought to be chosen. But wealth does this in only a portion of the actual cases. Elsewhere the desire to gain wealth and the fear to lose it are our chief breeders of cowardice and propagators of corruption. There are thousands of conjunctures in which a wealth-bound man must be a slave, whilst a man for whom poverty has no terrors becomes a freeman. Think of the strength which personal indifference to poverty would give us if we were devoted to unpopular causes. We need no longer hold our tongues or fear to vote the revolutionary or reformatory ticket. Our stocks might fall, our hopes of promotion vanish, our salaries stop, our club doors close in our faces; yet, while we lived, we would imperturbably bear witness to the spirit, and our example would help to set free our generation. The cause would need its funds, but we its servants would be potent in proportion as we personally were contented with our poverty. I recommend this matter to your serious pondering, for it is certain that the prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers.

Art is too important a term to be used just for painters. And sculptors. And playwrights. And actors. And architects of a certain type. No, I think we need to broaden it to graphic designers and salespeople and bosses. To lay preachers, to gifted politicians and occasionally, to the guy who sweeps the floor. Art is a human act, something that’s done with the right sort of intent. Art is when we do work that matters, in a creative way, in a way that touches them and changes them for the better.[1] Seth Godin, Graceful

Besides the neutral expression that she wore when she was alone, Mrs. Freeman had two others, forward and reverse, that she used for all her human dealings. Her forward expression was steady and driving like the advance of a heavy truck. Her eyes never swerved to left or right but turned as the story turned as if they followed a yellow line down the center of it. She seldom used the other expression because it was not often necessary for her to retract a statement, but when she did, her face came to a complete stop, there was an almost imperceptible movement of her black eyes, during which they seemed to be receding, and then the observer would see that Mrs. Freeman, though she might stand there as real as several grain sacks thrown on top of each other, was no longer there in spirit.

But for all of Whitman’s celebration of the many peoples in the United States, the demand of poorer white men for inclusion in the government was based on the idea of keeping other marginalized people out. States’ rights democracy kept white men in charge, for they were the voters who determined the shape of the state governments. Those white men advanced their own interests at the expense of their Brown and Black neighbors, declaring it the nation’s “Manifest Destiny” to push Indigenous Americans off their lands and take over parts of Mexico to establish plantations and plantation slavery there. Above all, they protected and extended the practice of human enslavement that people like Elizabeth Freeman had successfully challenged seventy years before.

TURNING AWAY FROM ANGER My dear brothers and sisters, always be willing to listen and slow to speak. Do not become angry easily, because anger will not help you live the right kind of life God wants. James 1:19-20 NCV Perhaps God gave each of us one mouth and two ears in order that we might listen twice as much as we speak. Unfortunately, many of us do otherwise, especially when we become angry. Anger is a natural human emotion that is sometimes necessary and appropriate. Even Jesus Himself became angered when He confronted the moneychangers in the temple. But, more often than not, our frustrations are of the more mundane variety. When you are tempted to lose your temper over the minor inconveniences of life, don’t. Turn away from anger, and turn instead to God. When the winds are cold, and the days are long, / And thy soul from care would hide, / Fly back, fly back, to thy Father then, / And beneath His wings abide. Fanny Crosby Anger is the fluid that love bleeds when you cut it. C. S. Lewis A TIMELY TIP When you lose your temper . . . you lose.

In the struggle for this great end, nations rise from barbarism to civilization, and through it people press forward from one stage of enlightenment to the next. At many stages in the advance of humanity, this conflict between the men who possess more than they have earned and the men who have earned more than they possess is the central condition of progress. In our day it appears as the struggle of freeman to gain and hold the right of self-government as against the special interests, who twist the methods of free government into machinery for defeating the popular will. At every stage, and under all circumstances, the essence of the struggle is to equalize opportunity, destroy privilege, and give to the life and citizenship of every individual the highest possible value both to himself and to the commonwealth. That is nothing new. All I ask in civil life is what you fought for in the Civil War.

Consuls: "The powers [of consular officers] are inifinitely varied. They are in the position of exercising throughout the extent of their district the functions of judge, arbitrator, and conciliator for their compatriots; often, they are officers charged with vital statistics; they carry out the tasks of notaries, and sometimes those of shipping administrator; they survey and note health conditions. It is they who, through their regular reports, can give a true and complete idea of the state of commerce, of navigation and of the characteristic industry of the country in which they reside." — Talleyrand Contacts: "The chief task of a diplomat abroad is always ... work on human flesh, that is to say, the correct treatment of strangers with the object of realizing tangible, factual success. Keep in touch with colleagues and do not cower inside four walls like the werewolf. But at the same time, don't let your colleagues tell you any lies or exploit you. Pas trop de zèle is a golden rule when rightly understood." — Heinrich von Bülow Contacts: "Be very cautious in any country, or at any court, of such as, on your first arrival, appear the most eager to make your acquaintance and communicate their ideas to you. I have ever found their professions insincere, and their intelligence false ... They are either persons who are not considered or respected in their own country, or are put about you to entrap and circumvent you as newly arrived." — Lord Malmesbury, 1813

Lawyers, contrasted with diplomats: "The lawyer, like the diplomat, deals in debate and compromise. A knowledge of law is essential to the diplomat, an ability to negotiate is essential to the lawyer, and a knowledge of human nature is essential to both. But when the lawyer turns to international problems these similarities lead him to the false conclusion that diplomacy is a form of law. His whole training has accustomed him to presuppose a court where right is distinguished from wrong, legal from illegal, and where there are police and jails to enforce decisions. Moral as well as legal concepts govern his thinking ... He seeks to regulate affairs by hard and fast formulas within a completely ordered system. None of these concepts applies to international affairs. Even international law, which covers only a tiny part of the field of diplomacy, has few sanctions." — Charles W. Thayer, 1959 Leadership: "Only he is capable of exercising leadership over others who is capable of some real degree of matery over himself." — George F. Kennan, 1954