American Quotations by William J. Federer 2024

Pope Benedict XVI (April 16, 1927-December 31, 2022) Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was born in Marktl am Inn, Germany. His father, a police officer, came from a traditional family of farmers from Lower Bavaria. He spent his adolescent years in Traunstein, a small town on the Austrian border. During the Second World War, Joseph remembers seeing his parish priest being beaten by Nazis before celebrating Holy Mass, and was well aware of the fiercely hostile atmosphere to the Catholic Church that existed in Germany at the time. Towards the end of World War II, Joseph was enrolled in the auxiliary anti-aircraft service. From 1946...

Colorado State Court (1927) in the case of Vollmar v. Stanley, 255 Pac. 610 (Col. 1927), stated: <Some of it is sectarian in the sense that it is relied on by this or that sect to prove its peculiar doctrines, but that does not make its reading the teaching of a sectarian tenet or doctrine. If all religious instruction were prohibited, no history could be taught. Hume was an unbeliever and writes as such; Macaulay is accused of partiality to dissenters; Motely of injustice to Roman Catholics. Nearly all histories of New England and indeed of the United States, are bound...

Minnesota State Court (1927) in the case of Kaplan v. Independent School District of Virginia, 214 N.W. 18 (Minn. 1927), stated: <The legislature has, however, seen the need of moral training and of instruction in the care of body and mind. What is more natural than turning to that book for moral precepts which for ages has been regarded by the majority of the peoples of the most civilized nations as the fountain of moral teachings? [Quoting Vidal v. Girard's Executor's].... It may be truthfully asserted that no more exacting rules of obedience to constituted civil authority and of right...

Queen Elizabeth II (April 21, 1926-September 8, 202) Elizabeth Alexandra Mary ascended to queen of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in February 6, 1952, upon the death of her father King George VI. In 1944, she served as a councillor of state during World War II; she married Philip, Duke of Edinburgh on November 20, 1947, and bore him four children: Prince Charles Philip Arthur George, November 14, 1948; Princess Anne Elizabeth Alice Louise, August 15, 1950; Prince Andrew Albert Christian Edward, February 19, 1960; and Prince Edward Anthony Richard Louis, March 10, 1964. On February 16, 1954, in a...

Robert Francis Kennedy (November 20, 1925-June 6, 1968) was the U.S. Attorney General 1961-64, during the presidency of his brother, John F. Kennedy, and a U.S. Senator from New York, 1965-68. He was assassinated in 1968 while campaigning for the Presidency. In August of 1965, in a speech to the graduating class of the International Police Academy in Washington, Robert F. Kennedy stated: <Education is always vital-not just for the cities, not even only for children, but for every peasant who can learn to read, or drive a tractor, or even use a hoe instead of a forked stick. For what...