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2d

Voices of our American Principles

“Settled by the people of all nations, all nations may claim her for their own. You cannot spill a drop of American blood without spilling the blood of the whole world.”

Herman Melville
Novelist, Author
(1819-1891)

“No nation can afford to let go its high ideals. The founders of the American Republic asserted the principle that all men are created equal, and made this fair land a refuge for the whole world. Its manifest destiny, therefore, is to be the teacher and leader of nations in liberty.”

Van Phou Lee Author
Advocate Against the Chinese Exclusion Act
(1861-unknown)

“I think people have great tolerance in this country because we have every ethnic group, religious group, racial group and cultural group represented in this great experiment we call ‘America.’ It poses tremendous challenges, but I’m very confident we will continue to be a better society and lead the world.”

Hon. Frederick P. Aguirre
Judge, Orange County Superior Court
(born 1946)

“Sir, how pitiable is it to reflect, that although you were so fully convinced of the benevolence of the Father of Mankind, and of his equal and impartial distribution of these rights and privileges which he hath conferred upon them, that you should at the same time counteract his mercies, in detaining by fraud and violence so numerous a part of my brethren, under groaning captivity and cruel oppression…”

Benjamin Banneker
Author, Surveyor, Naturalist and Farmer
(1731-1806)

“The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.”

Jane Addams
Author, Social Worker and Sociologist, Founder of Hull House
(1860-1935)

“I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek …O, let my land be a land where Liberty is crowned with no false patriotic wreath, But opportunity is real, and life is free, Equality is in the air we breathe.”

Langston Hughes
American Poet
(1901-1967)