HELLO??
The higher you get in the scale of being, the grander, the nobler, and the tenderer you will become. Kindness is always an evidence of greatness. Malice is the property of small souls. Whoever allows the feeling of brotherhood to die in his heart becomes a wild beast.
No man ever was, no man ever will be, the superior of the man whom he robs. No man ever was, no man ever will be, the superior of the man he steals from. I had rather be a slave than a slave-master. I had rather be stolen from than be a thief. I had rather be the wronged than the wrong-doer. And allow me to say again to impress it forever upon every man that hears me, you will always be the inferior of the man you wrong. Every race is inferior to the race it tramples upon and robs. There never was a man that could trample upon human rights and be superior to the man upon whom he trampled. And let me say another thing: No government can stand upon the crushed rights of one single human being; ... [it] will carry in its own bosom the seeds of its own death and destruction, and cannot stand. A government founded upon anything except liberty and justice cannot and ought not to stand. All the wrecks on either side of the stream of time, all the wrecks of the great cities and nations that have passed away -- all are a warning that no nation founded upon injustice can stand.
Liberty is not a social question. Civil equality is not social equality. We are equal only in rights. No two persons are of equal weight, or height. There are no two leaves in all the forests of the earth alike -- no two blades of grass -- no two grains of sand -- no two hairs. No two anythings in the physical world are precisely alike. Neither mental nor physical equality can be created by law, but law recognizes the fact that all men have been clothed with equal rights by Nature, the mother of us all.
The man who hates the black man because he is black, has the same spirit as he who hates the poor man because he is poor. It is the spirit of caste. The proud useless despises the honest useful. The parasite idleness scorns the great oak of labor on which it feeds, and that lifts it to the light.
I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample under foot. Men are not superior by reason of the accidents of race or color.
They are superior who have the best heart -- the best brain.
Superiority is born of honesty, of virtue, of charity, and above all, of the love of liberty.
The superior man is the providence of the inferior.
He is eyes for the blind, strength for the weak, and a shield for the defenseless.
He stands erect by bending above the fallen. He rises by lifting others. |
