American Quotations by William J. Federer 2024

Carter Glass (January 4, 1858-May 28, 1946) was an American politician. He served as a U.S. Senator from Virginia, 1920- 46; Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, 1918-20; and a U.S. Representative, 1902-18. His influence as chairman of the Committee of Banking and Currency, brought about the passage of the Federal Reserve Bank Act in 1918. On March 27, 1937, Senator Carter Glass warned: <There has been no such mandate from the people to rape the Supreme Court or to tamper with the Constitution. The Constitution belongs to the people. It...was ratified by the people as the Supreme...

Pope Pius XI (May 31, 1857-February 10, 1939) whose given name was Achille Ratti, held the position of Pontiff from 1922-39. He exclaimed: <Christian teaching alone, in its majestic integrity, can give full meaning and compelling motive to the demand for human rights and liberties, because it alone gives worth and dignity to human personality.> 1857PP001 In light of prevailing trends, Pope Pius XI spoke: <Woman apparently is doing everything possible to destroy in herself those very qualifications which render her beautiful, namely, modesty, purity, and chastity. It is a blindness which can only be explained by the fascination of that...

Sir Robert Baden-Powell (February 22, 1857-January 8, 1941) was a British General who founded of the Boy Scout movement. Educated at Charterhouse, London, he joined the English hussars in 1876, and served as adjutant in India, Afghanistan, and South Africa.  In 1895 he commanded native troops in Ashanti, and later served in the Matabele campaign. During the South African War, his force of 1,200 men was besieged for 217 days by a large Boer army of 8,000 at Mafeking.  In spite of famine and sickness, he succeeded in defending his position until help arrived on May 12, 1900. He was then...

Booker Taliaferro Washington (April 5, 1856-November 14, 1915) was an African American educator, writer and reformer. Born in a slave hut on a plantation in Franklin County, Virginia, April 5, 1856, Booker Taliaferro Washington taught himself to read and write, stating: <In all my efforts to learn to read, my mother shared fully my ambition and sympathized with me and aided me in every way she could.> 1856BW001 In dire poverty after the Civil War, he moved to West Virginia and worked in salt furnaces and coal mines during the day and attended school at night. At age sixteen, he walked nearly...

Francis Bellamy (May 18, 1855-August 28, 1931) was a minister from Boston who wrote the Pledge of Allegiance. He was ordained in the Baptist Church, 1879, and served as the pastor of the First Baptist Church, Little Falls, New York. He was a member of the staff of The Youth's Companion, which first published his Pledge of Allegiance on September 8, 1892. At the dedication of the 1892 Chicago World's Fair, October 12, 1892, public school children first recited the Pledge of Allegiance during the: <National School Celebration on the 400th anniversary of Columbus' discovery of America.> 1855FB001 The Pledge was...