Today's Constitution is a realistic document of freedom only because of several corrective amendments. Those amendments speak to a sense of decency and fairness that I and other Blacks cherish.

Unnecessary possessions are unnecessary burdens. If you have them you have to take care of them! There is great freedom in simplicity of living. It is those who have enough but not too much who are the happiest.

137 years later Memorial Day remains one of America's most cherished patriotic observances. The spirit of this day has not changed - it remains a day to honor those who died defending our freedom and democracy.

Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.

If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.

Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.

Perhaps religious conscience upsets the designs of those who feel that the highest wisdom and authority comes from government. But from the beginning this nation trusted in God not man. Religious liberty is the first freedom in our Constitution.

Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must like men undergo the fatigue of supporting it.

How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought they demand freedom of speech.

We the People recognize that we have responsibilities as well as rights that our destinies are bound together that a freedom which only asks what's in it for me a freedom without a commitment to others a freedom without love or charity or duty or patriotism is unworthy of our founding ideals and those who died in their defense.