Daily Widget, printed.owl.com

Monday, December 26, 2011

December 28, 1856- Birthdate of Thomas Woodrow Wilson

" We grow great by dreams. Some of us let dreams die, but others nourish and protect them, nurse them through bad days 'til they bring them to sunshine and light."
28th President, 1913-1921

-Attributed to Wilson but no direct source found. Phrases are found in his speech, "Citizens of Foreign Birth", May 10, 1915, in Philadelphia, welcoming naturalized citizens at Convention Hall."...it is not of myself that I wish to think tonight, but of those who have just become citizens of the United States...This the only country in the world which experiences this constant and repeated birth...by the voluntary association with it of great bodies of strong men and forward looking women out of other lands...you were drawn across the ocean by some beckoning finger of hope, by some belief, by some vision of a new kind of justice, by some expectation of a better kind of life...I, for one, make you welcome. If I have in any degree forgotten what America was intended for, I will thank God if you remind me...You dreamed dreams of what America was to be, and I hope your brought these dreams with you. No man that does not see visions will ever realize any high hope or undertake any high enterprise...You have come into this great Nation voluntarily seeking something that we have to give, and all that have to give is this: We can not exempt you from hard work...We can only make (the loads) light by the spirit in which they are carried. That is the spirit of hope, it is the spirit of liberty, it is the spirit of justice...it has has renewed my spirit as an American to be here...in the presence of my fellow citizens, (I) go back to the sense of your support and of the living vitality in your hearts of the great ideals which has made America the hope of the world.

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