Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History by Unknown Page B

lies in the hearts ofmen and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there, it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it. And what is this liberty which must lie in the hearts of men and women? It is not the ruthless, the unbridled will; it is not freedom to do as one likes. That is the denial of liberty, and leads straight to its overthrow. A society in which men recognize no check upon their freedom soon becomes a society where freedom is the possession of only a savage few—as we have learned to our sorrow.
    What, then, is the spirit of liberty? I cannot define it; I can only tell you my own faith. The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the minds of other men and women; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias; the spirit of liberty remembers that not even a sparrow falls to earth unheeded; the spirit of liberty is the spirit of him who, near two thousand years ago, taught mankind that lesson it has never learned, but has never quite forgotten—that there may be a kingdom where the least shall be heard and considered side by side with the greatest. And now in that spirit, that spirit of an America which has never been, and which may never be—nay, which never will be except as the conscience and courage of Americans create it—yet in the spirit of that America which lies hidden in some form in the aspirations of us all; in the spirit of that America for which our young men are at this moment fighting and dying; in that spirit of liberty and of America so prosperous, and safe, and contented, we shall have failed to grasp its meaning, and shall have been truant to its promise, except as we strive to make it a signal, a beacon, a standard, to which the best hopes of mankind will ever turn. In confidence that you share that belief, I now ask you to raise your hands and repeat with me this pledge:
    I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands—one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Underground Fighter Menachem Begin Pledges His Group’s Allegiance to the Newborn State of Israel
    “Quickly! Quickly! Our nation has no time! Bring in hundreds of thousands…. We are now in the midst of a war for survival; and our tomorrow and theirs depend on the quickest concentration of our nation’s exiles.”
    Menachem Begin, a Polish-born Holocaust survivor, served as head of Israel’s main opposition party until 1977, when he became prime minister; he shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978 with President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt as a result of their peace accords. At the White House ceremony with President Carter on March 26, 1979, Begin began to speak in his customary formal style: “The ancient Jewish people gave the New World a vision of eternal peace, of universal disarmament, of abolishing the teaching and learning of war.” He used both the Hebrew and the Arabic words for peace: “No more war, no more bloodshed, no more bereavement. Peace unto you.
Shalom, salaam
, forever.” Finally, he offered a prayer of thanksgiving, which he “learned as a child in the home of father and mother, who do not exist anymore, because they were among the six million people—men, women and children—who sanctified the Lord’s name with their sacred blood, which reddened the rivers of Europe from the Rhine to the Danube, from the Bug to the Volga, because—only because—they were born Jews; and because they didn’t have a country of their own, or a valiant Jewish army to defend them. And because nobody, nobody, came to their rescue, although they cried out ‘Save us! Save us!’
de profundis
, from the depths of the pit and agony.”
    He called that treaty-signing day “the third greatest