476
If we would promise we must put ourselves in a position to perform our promise.
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Attribution
477
The general proposition that freedom of expression upon public questions is secured by the First Amendment has long been settled by our decisions.
478
Excitements, ideas, and efforts, in a word, are what carry us over the dam.
479
It is notorious that a single successful effort of moral volition, such as saying 'no' to some habitual temptation, or performing some courageous act, will launch a man on a higher level of energy for days and weeks, will give him a new range of power.
480
The normal opener of deeper and deeper levels of energy is the will.
481
The transformation, moreover, is a chronic one: the new level of energy becomes permanent.
482
Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life.
483
Ideal aspirations are not enough, when uncombined with pluck and will.
484
Convince me that liberty is not the inalienable birthright of every human being, of whatever complexion or clime, and I will give that instrument to the consuming fire.
William Lloyd Garrisonverified·No Compromise with Slavery: An Address Delivered in the Broadway Tabernacle, New York·February 14, 1854
485
Slavery cannot bear one ray of light, or the slightest criticism.
William Lloyd Garrisonverified·No Compromise with Slavery: An Address Delivered in the Broadway Tabernacle, New York·February 14, 1854
486
But a man at work, making something which he feels will exist because he is working at it and wills it, is exercising the energies of his mind and soul as well as of his body.
487
Nature does not give us our livelihood gratis; we must win it by toil of some sort or degree.
488
One's beliefs have long been thought to be sanctuaries which government could not invade.
489
Free speech has occupied an exalted position because of the high service it has given our society.
490
The right to speak freely and to promote diversity of ideas and programs is therefore one of the chief distinctions that sets us apart from totalitarian regimes.
491
The vitality of civil and political institutions in our society depends on free discussion.
492
Our duty is to cleanse, to reconsider, to restore, to correct the evil without impairing the good, to purify and humanize every process of our common life without weakening or sentimentalizing it.
493
The first duty of law is to keep sound the society it serves.
494
When the interests of mankind are at stake, they will obey with joy the man whom they believe to be wiser than themselves.
495
As indispensable to the preservation of our system of self-government, the independence of the representatives of the States and the people is guaranteed by the Constitution, and they owe no responsibility to any human power but their constituents.
496
By holding the representative responsible only to the people, and exempting him from all other influences, we elevate the character of the constituent and quicken his sense of responsibility to his country.
497
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.
Wrongly attributed
This is Will Durant, not Aristotle, and Durant is not translating -- he is summarising the Nicomachean Ethics in his own words and marking the difference by dropping the quotation marks he uses on either side of it. The nearest thing in Aristotle is that virtues are formed in a man by his doing the actions, which Durant does put in quotation marks in the same sentence. The memorable half is the half Durant wrote. It usually circulates with a therefore inserted and the excellence turned into a moral instruction, neither of which is in the book.
498
God helps them that help themselves, as Poor Richard says.
Attribution contested
Quoted constantly as scripture. It is nowhere in the Bible, which says something close to the opposite in several places. Franklin printed it in Poor Richard's Almanack and gathered it here in 1758, but he did not coin it either: he presents it as an existing proverb, and versions of it appear in Algernon Sidney's Discourses in 1698 and, earlier still, in Aesop.
499
Our attempts should be not to extinguish nature, but to repress it; not to stand unmoved at distress, but endeavour to turn every disaster to our own advantage. Our greatest glory is, not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.
Wrongly attributed
The single most-shared sentence ever credited to Confucius, and it is an Irish novelist's. Goldsmith wrote it for the Public Ledger in 1760 and collected it in 1762, in a series of letters supposedly by a Chinese visitor. Letter VII opens with a headnote in Goldsmith's own hand: the Editor thinks proper to acquaint the reader that the greatest part of the following letter seems to him to be little more than a rhapsody of sentences borrowed from Confucius, the Chinese philosopher. Two paragraphs later the narrator says he holds the volume of Confucius in his hand. That framing is precisely how the line became Confucius's, and later Mandela's. Note also the comma after glory, which the popular version drops, and that Goldsmith wrote the same sentence again in Letter XXII with a different opening.
500
I won't have a problem with you if you aim high and miss, but I will have a real problem if you aim low and hit.
Unverified attribution
Wording taken from a viewer's transcription of the video; no published transcript exists that we could find. Attributed to the speech, in which Rigsby is quoting his father.