| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: verbal distinctions, which here, as in the Protagoras and Cratylus, are
ascribed to the ingenuity of Prodicus; and to interpretations or rather
parodies of Homer or Hesiod, which are eminently characteristic of Plato
and his contemporaries; (4) The germ of an ethical principle contained in
the notion that temperance is 'doing one's own business,' which in the
Republic (such is the shifting character of the Platonic philosophy) is
given as the definition, not of temperance, but of justice; (5) The
impatience which is exhibited by Socrates of any definition of temperance
in which an element of science or knowledge is not included; (6) The
beginning of metaphysics and logic implied in the two questions: whether
there can be a science of science, and whether the knowledge of what you
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from I Have A Dream by Martin Luther King, Jr.: segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time
to open the doors of opportunity to all of God's children. Now is
the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial
injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the
moment and to underestimate the determination of the Negro. This
sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not
pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and
equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning.
Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will
now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Second Inaugural Address by Abraham Lincoln: Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather
than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather
than let it perish. And the war came.
One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed
generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it.
These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew
that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen,
perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the
insurgents would rend the Union, even by war; while the government claimed
no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.
Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration
Second Inaugural Address |
