To be an American is not...a matter of blood; it is a matter of an idea--and history is the image of that idea.

If you could not accept the past and its burden there was no future, for without one there cannot be the other.

A look at the past reminds us of how great is the distance, and how short, over which we have come. The past makes us ask what we have done with us. It makes us ask whether our very achievements are not ironical counterpoint and contrast to our fundamental failures.

The past is always a rebuke to the present.

Process as process is neither morally good nor morally bad. We may judge results but not process. The morally bad agent may perform the deed which is good. The morally good agent may perform the deed which is bad. Maybe a man has to sell his soul to get the power to do good.

...a man does not die for words. He dies for his relation to them.

We are the prisoners of history. Or are we?