Sharon Mcmahon Quotes

Being at the forefront of progress has always come with a certain amount of fear—you’re asking people to abandon comfort for the sake of growth. It’s like asking people to follow you into the wilderness for the promise of a better tomorrow. Some people would rather stay where they are, because home is comfortable. Home is safe. Change is scary.

They are those who know that one becomes great because of who they lift up, not who they put down.

Facts don’t require our personal approval for them to be facts.

Both of these things are true at the same time. America has been just, and it has perpetuated injustice. We have been peaceful, and we have perpetrated acts of violence. We have been—and are—good. And we have done terrible things to people who didn’t deserve them. It has been the land of the free while simultaneously sanctioning oppression.

what the melancholy among us sometimes know, though may not be able to articulate, is that coming to the end of our resources may be our only hope for coming to the beginning of something more substantial than self.

America has been just, and it has perpetuated injustice. We have been peaceful, and we have perpetrated acts of violence. We have been—and are—good. And we have done terrible things to people who didn’t deserve them. It has been the land of the free while simultaneously sanctioning oppression. Such is often the experience of any government run by fallible human beings. Sometimes we surprise ourselves in our capacity for greatness, and sometimes the weight of regret wraps around us like a chain.

Sharon McMahon (known online as America’s Government Teacher) says, “Anyone who changes their mind based on new and better information is criticized and denounced. So it disincentivizes people from using critical thought when in reality the ethical thing is to change your mind based on new and better information.

Secondly, the American South was one of the LAST places in the world to end enslavement. One of the last. Not the first.

If anyone tries to tell you the Civil War was a war for “state’s rights,” calmly look them in the eye, and ask, politely and inquisitively, what exactly the states wanted the “right” to do? You can follow up with, “Make their own rules about what?” The answer is, of course, that they wanted to make their own rules about whether they had the right to enslave people. All the “way of life” and “self-determination” and “economic conditions” roads lead right back to slavery.

JR refused to tie up his fortune in vaults beneath the earth, restricted in perpetual endowments. He declined to drip it out slowly, like many of his predecessors. He came by his money by chance, by virtue of proximity, and the least he could do, he believed, was use it to improve the condition of another.

Progress is usually born out of struggle. But struggle doesn’t always mean progress, does it? What do we need to add to struggle to create progress? The answer is hope. Hope, which attorney and author Bryan Stevenson told me is not a feeling but an orientation of the spirit. Hope is a choice that we make each morning, and we do not have the luxury of hopelessness if we want to see progress.

Then, and now, one of the most effective ways to stop cultural change is to create a moral panic around it. Moral panics have been around since this country’s inception, with the Salem witch trials being among the first widely publicized (and deadly) panics. Since then, moral panics have been used as a tool to subvert and dismantle movements that the dominant caste views as a threat. And this included civil rights.

White shopkeepers began to refuse to sell stamps to Black families, or they threw away letters addressed to Sears, aware that the catalog gave Black shoppers options they otherwise didn’t have. In response, Sears created postage-paid cards and directed people to give the ordering cards directly to their letter carriers, completely cutting out the rural postmasters. Shopkeepers in the South began to spread the rumor that Sears was Black, in an effort to keep white supremacists like them from patronizing Sears.[

Perhaps sensing his time was near, Hamilton asked for the minister of the church to which his family belonged to bring him Communion. But Reverend Bishop Moore refused. He didn’t approve of dueling, and he didn’t believe Hamilton to be a good enough Christian to deserve the Episcopal rites.

First, there was no one in the world engaged in chattel slavery like the United States, where people were kidnapped and held permanently, with no hope of escaping the condition. That was not the cultural norm in other parts of the world. Nor was the idea that all subsequent generations of children “followed the mother,” being born into permanent enslavement.

So no, America is not “the worst it’s ever been” today, despite what some news anchors might be trying to convince you of, because if they can make you afraid, they can gain your attention and your money. Has anyone been beaten half to death on the floor of the Senate over the topic of whether it’s cool to enslave people this week? No? Okay.

She took Christianity to mean for someone to be Christ-like if they were a Christian. And I joke with my students that there are people who go to the church, to the mosque, to the temple, and there are those that follow their religion. And those are not necessarily the same people.

It's not the cynics who emerge the heroes, but the people who spent their lives in service to others. It's those that fight for justice for someone whose reflection they don't see in the mirror.

I have no fear, Dear Heart, for Life and Death are one, and God is all in all. My only real concern to remain in this body is to spare you grief and pain and loneliness. But I should not leave you comfortless. I would come to you as my mother comes to me in my best moments when my heart is open to her. The breezes come in off the meadow where the song sparrows are piping. Sure God is love.”[16]

Norm influenced presidential policy post-9/11. Bush said that “one of the important things about Norm’s experience is that it reminds us that sometimes we lose our soul as a nation. That the notion of all equal under God sometimes disappears.

Dan required seventeen units of blood, and each time the doctors would bring the bottle to his bedside, as was the custom, and show him the label. They wanted soldiers to see who had sacrificed for them, to experience the solidarity that came from giving each other blood.

might

perpetuated injustice. We have been peaceful, and we have perpetrated acts of violence. We have been—and are—good. And we have done terrible things to people who didn’t deserve them. It has been the land of the free while simultaneously sanctioning oppression.

The ideals outlined in the Constitution represent our national purpose, the raft we must cling to in the storm, the breath in our lungs, the beat in our chest: Just. Peaceful. Good. Free.

anyone tries to tell you the Civil War was a war for “state’s rights,” calmly look them in the eye, and ask, politely and inquisitively, what exactly the states wanted the “right” to do?

What will history remember with kindness? The leader with the most cunning tweets? The one with the most self-aggrandizing speeches and the biggest audiences? No, it’s not the cynics who emerge the heroes, but the people who spent their lives in service to others. It’s those that fight for justice for someone whose reflection they don’t see in the mirror.

it was a common belief among men that pursuing too much education made a woman unfit for childbearing, as it diverted too great a blood supply to the brain and away from reproductive organs.

The real lesson to be learned is that beneath the surface of remarks similar to those made by the second person lurks a psychosis capable of building or destroying a nation.”[18]

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

I’d want you to know that there will come a moment in your life, a moment when you will be asked to choose: will I retreat, or will I move forward with courage?

Secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. This promise is now a hallmark of any democracy—the protections of civil liberties under the law, and a limiting of the power of the government so people are shielded from an overreaching and authoritarian regime—something Gouverneur Morris said Hamilton feared until the very end. The text of the Preamble imagined America at its finest: Just. Peaceful. Good. And free.