Declaration Quotes
More Declaration Quotes
The third big idea is that we confess our sins to someone close to us--a friend or our spouse. I don't mean a public declaration of our shortcomings; I mean confession in the security of a trusted and living friend.
ted haggard— Haggard, Ted (September 2002). Simple Prayers for a Powerful Life. Regal Books. pp. p. 110. ISBN 0830730559.
About the declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776 — that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance of the people of that day and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But, that reasoning cannot be applied to the great charter.
calvin coolidge— Foundations of the Republic; Speeches and Addresses (1926), p. 451.
This is a challenge to the entire trade union movement in Ireland - a declaration of war on the wages and working conditions of all workers.
joe higgins— On the outsourcing of jobs by Irish Ferries in November 2005. Irish Independent
How few of us have made our individual declaration of independence, and until we do that, we are not free.
— Diary entry, 1893-01-02
Only what coronation is in an earthly way, baptism is in a heavenly way; God's authoritative declaration in material form of a spiritual reality.
frederick william robertson— P. 21. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
No clap of thunder in a fair frosty day could astonish the world more than [England's] declaration of war against Holland in 1672.
william temple— Memoirs, Volume II, p. 255.
However incumbent it may be on most of us to do our duty, there is, in spite of a thousand narrow dogmatisms, nothing in the world that anyone is under the least obligation to like not even (one braces one's self to risk the declaration) a particular kind of writing.
Henry James— Flaubert (1893)
Because finally, “the equal right of every citizen to the free exercise of his religion according to the dictates of conscience” is held by the same tenure with all his other rights. If we recur to its origin, it is equally the gift of nature; if we weigh its importance, it cannot be less dear to us; if we consider “the declaration of those rights which pertain to the good people of Virginia as the basis and foundation of government,” it is enumerated with equal solemnity, or rather studied emphasis.
james madison— § 15. Often misquoted as “Religion is the basis and foundation of government.”
When asked to make the formal declaration that I did not intend to overthrow the Constitution of the United States, I was fool enough to reply that I had no such purpose, but that were I to do it by mistake I should be inexpressibly contrite.
peter medawar— P. B. Medawar (1986) Memoir of a thinking radish: an autobiography Oxford University Press, p. 117.
Assertion of truths known and felt, promulgation of truth from the high platform of truth itself, declaration of faith by the mouth of moral conviction this is the New Testament method, and the true one.
— Josiah Gilbert Holland, p. 290. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
And now we come to the most lurid Underworld of all cities that of post-war Berlin. Ever since the declaration of peace, Berlin found its outlet in the wildest dissipation imaginable. The German is gross in his immorality, he likes his Halb-Welt or underworld pleasures to be devoid of any Kultur or refinement, he enjoys obscenity in a form which even the Parisian would not tolerate.
— Netley Lucas, Ladies of the Underworld, 1927. Quoted in Gordon, Mel (2000). Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin, p.1. ISBN 092291558X.
This new declaration which emphasizes the necessity of global disarmament is based on the purposes and principles of the United Nations, in particular the prohibition of the threat and use of force, and on the obligation to negotiate disputes in conformity with the UN Charter. It is a strong and positive example for the entire world.
— CELAC / Zone of Peace: “A key step to countering the globalization of militarism” – UN Expert [71]
I do not think the United States would come to an end if we lost our power to declare an Act of Congress void. I do think the Union would be imperiled if we could not make that declaration as to the laws of the several States.
— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., address to the Harvard Law School Association of New York, New York City (February 15, 1913); Speeches by Oliver Wendell Holmes (1934), p. 102.
A wise man should never resolve upon any thing, at least never let the world know his resolution; for if he cannot arrive at that, he is ashamed. How many things did the resolve in his declaration concerning Scotland, never to do, and yet did them all?
— Selden, John (1689). Table Talk: Being the Discourses. T. White. p. 175.
A period of about twelve years measured the beat of the pendulum. After the declaration of Independence, twelve years had been needed to create an efficient Constitution; another twelve years of energy brought a reaction against the government then created; a third period of twelve years was ending in a sweep toward still greater energy; and already a child could calculate the result of a few more such returns.
henry adams— A History of the United States of America During the First Administration of James Madison (1890), Vol. II, Ch. VI: Meeting of the Twelfth Congress; 1921 edition, p. 123
The declaration of Independence I always considered as a Theatrical Show. Jefferson ran away with all the stage effect of that; i.e. all the Glory of it.
john adams— Letter to Benjamin Rush (21 June 1811); published in Old Family Letters: Copied from the Originals for Alexander Biddle (1892), p. 287; also quoted in TIME magazine (25 October 1943)
Its constitution the glittering and sounding generalities of natural right which make up the declaration of Independence.
rufus choate— Letter to the Maine Whig Committee (1856). Six years earlier, Choate gave a lecture in Providence which was reviewed by Franklin J. Dickman in the Journal of December 14, 1849. Unless Choate used the words "glittering generalities", and Dickman made reference to them, it would seem as if Dickman must have the credit of originating the catchword. Dickman wrote: "We fear that the glittering generalities of the speaker have left an impression more delightful than permanent". Reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Only the great generalizations survive. The sharp words of the declaration of Independence, lampooned then and since as 'glittering generalities,' have turned out blazing ubiquities that will burn forever and ever.
ralph waldo emerson— A lecture on 'Books' delivered in 1864; the quoted phrase 'glittering generalities' had been used by Rufus Choate to describe the declaration of the rights of man in the Preamble to the Constitution (The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1903-4) Vol. 10, p. 88, note 1).
Here, in the first paragraph of the declaration , is the assertion of the natural right of all to the ballot; for how can "the consent of the governed" be given, if the right to vote be denied?
susan b. anthony— On the United States Declaration of Independence in her "Is It a Crime for a Citizen of the United States to Vote?" speech before her trial for voting (1873)
The last time I checked, the Constitution said, 'of the people, by the people and for the people.' That's what the declaration of Independence says.
bill clinton— From a campaign speech given in California. Quoted in Investor's Business Daily October 25, 1996
The conception of political equality from the declaration of Independence, to Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, to the Fifteenth, Seventeenth, and Nineteenth Amendments could mean only one thing one person, one vote.
william o. douglas— Writing for the court, Gray v. Sanders, 372 U.S. 368, 381 (1963).
When our founding fathers put their signatures on the declaration of Independence, those 56 brave people, most of whom by the way were clergymen, they said that we had certain inalienable rights given to us by our creator, and among these life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, life being one of them. I still believe that.
mike huckabee— Republican Presidential Debate, 2007-10-21, quoted in "The Republican Debate on Fox News Channel". The New York Times. 2007-10-21. Retrieved on 2011-03-01. asked his opinion on Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's position to do nothing to change the laws that keep abortion legal
While the declaration was directed against an excess of authority, the Constitution was directed against anarchy.
robert h. jackson— P. 8. (The Struggle for Judicial Supremacy: A Study in Crisis in American Power Politics (1941))
Its Constitution the glittering and sounding generalities of natural right which make up the declaration of Independence.
— Rufus Choate, letter to the Maine Whig Committee (1856).
However, the Treaty of Sevres was never ratified, As Kay Holloway wrote, the failure of the signatories to bring the treaty into force ‘resulted in the abandonment of thousands of defenceless peoples Armenians and Greeks to the fury of their persecutors, by engendering subsequent holocausts in which the few survivors of the 1915 Armenian massacres perished.” The Treaty of Sevres was replaced by the Treaty of Lausanne of 24 July 1923 that included a ‘declaration of Amnesty’ for all offences committed between 1 August 1914 and 20 November 1922.
— William Schabas, Genocide in International Law: The Crimes of Crimes, p.22
We stand today at the threshold of a great event both in the life of the United Nations and in the life of mankind, that is the approval by the General Assembly of the Universal declaration of Human Rights.
— Eleanor Roosevelt, in Paris on December 10, 1948. The United Nations General Assembly was gathered in the recently built Palais Chaillot when the chairwoman of the UN Commission on Human Rights rose to give a speech.
And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
— Thomas Jefferson, in the Declaration of Independence (1776).
The doctrine of the declaration of Independence predicated upon the glory of man and the corresponding duty to society that the rights of citizens ought to be protected with every power and resource of the state, and a government that does any less is false to the teachings of that great document false to the name American.
calvin coolidge— Calvin Coolidge, Equal Rights (1920)
