"All men have a right to freedom and to property."
This quote by Edmund Morgan suggests that all individuals, regardless of social status or circumstance, have two inherent rights: the right to personal freedom and the right to ownership over property. In essence, he is asserting that these rights are universally applicable to every person. The freedom he refers to includes the ability to act, make decisions, and live one's life without undue restraint or interference from others. Property rights, on the other hand, imply the ability to acquire, possess, use, enjoy, and dispose of property as one sees fit, within the boundaries of law and morality. This quote is significant in the context of political philosophy, particularly in discussions about human rights, individual liberties, and the role of government in protecting those rights.
"No man can be free whose property is not his own."
This quote by Edmund Morgan emphasizes that true freedom cannot exist without personal ownership, as one's possessions are a reflection of one's autonomy and self-determination. In other words, the freedom to make decisions about one's property is an essential component of individual liberty. Without this control over one's belongings, a person may not truly be able to exercise their agency and make choices that align with their values and aspirations, thereby compromising their sense of self-determination and personal freedom.
"Laws are made to be broken."
Edmund Morgan's quote, "Laws are made to be broken," suggests a perspective where laws and regulations may not always fully capture the nuances or needs of society at any given time. It implies that there is an inherent need for people to question, adapt, or even defy laws if they contradict justice, morality, or common sense, in pursuit of progress or fairness. However, this interpretation should be balanced with understanding that the quote does not advocate for widespread lawlessness, but rather encourages critical thinking and a willingness to challenge outdated or unjust laws when necessary.
"The people must make their own liberty and justice, or no one else will make them for them."
This quote by Edmund Morgan emphasizes personal responsibility and empowerment in the pursuit of freedom and justice. It suggests that individuals must take an active role in shaping their own destiny, rather than waiting for someone else to do it for them. In other words, true liberty and justice can only be achieved when people work together to create these values within their communities and society as a whole. This quote underscores the importance of civic engagement, self-determination, and collective action in achieving lasting change and ensuring that everyone has the opportunity to live with dignity, equality, and fairness.
"If the people are to be trusted with their own government, then they must bear its burdens."
This quote by Edmund Morgan emphasizes the principle that citizens who have the power to govern themselves should also shoulder the responsibilities that come with that privilege. It implies a strong belief in the idea of self-rule, where the people are entrusted with the authority to make decisions for their own society, but they must be willing and able to fulfill the duties required by that self-governance. In essence, it suggests that the rights and freedoms associated with democratic governance cannot be enjoyed without also accepting its obligations and burdens.
Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence; Madison wrote not only the United States Constitution, or at least most of it, but also the most searching commentary on it that has ever appeared. Each of them served as president of the United States for eight years. What they had to say to each other has to command attention.
- Edmund Morgan
Cotton Mather's publications in his own lifetime amounted to more than 400 titles, and his magnum opus, on which he labored most of his life, remains unpublished: a commentary on every verse of every book of the Bible. Anyone who leaves that kind of record behind issues an irresistible invitation to historians.
- Edmund Morgan
Thomas Paine, so celebrated and so despised as he traveled through the critical events of his time, has long appealed to biographers. Paine was present at the creation both of the United States and of the French Republic. His eloquence, in the pamphlet 'Common Sense,' propelled the American colonists toward independence.
- Edmund Morgan
In 1787, many Americans were convinced that the 'perpetual union' they had created in winning independence was collapsing. Six years earlier, in the Articles of Confederation, the thirteen state governments had surrendered extensive powers to a congress of delegates from each state legislature.
- Edmund Morgan
Between 1776 and 1789, Americans replaced a government over them with a government under them. They have worried ever since about keeping it under. Distrust of its powers has been more common and more visible than distrust of the imperial authority of England ever was before the Revolution.
- Edmund Morgan
It was not necessary and might even have been disadvantageous for a government to claim a direct personal commission and communion of the kind God had given some rulers in the Old Testament. A working government might need the support of the Church but not of God Himself in a voice from on high.
- Edmund Morgan
Why consider debates in the English House of Commons in 1628 along with documents on American developments in the late eighteenth century? The juxtaposition is not capricious, because the Commons during this period generated many of the ideas that were later embodied in the government of the United States.
- Edmund Morgan
The colonial period has been the proving ground in America for the new social history, which concentrates on the ordinary doings of ordinary people rather than on high culture and high politics. Unfortunately ordinary people, almost by definition, leave behind only faint traces of their existence.
- Edmund Morgan
The men who founded and governed Massachusetts and Connecticut took themselves so seriously that they kept track of everything they did for the benefit of posterity and hoarded their papers so carefully that the whole history of the United States, recounted mainly by their descendants, has often appeared to be the history of New England writ large.
- Edmund Morgan
When historians of early America turned from the pursuit of past politics, they devised a category known in the academy as 'social and intellectual history.' In it, they stuffed nearly everything except politics on the assumption, which the anthropologists assured them was correct, that it would all fit together. Somehow it did not.
- Edmund Morgan
The starting point for the new history, both in Europe and America, has been the record of births, marriages, and deaths, which most literate societies preserve in one form or another. In colonial America, surviving records of this kind - as of every other kind - are most abundant for New England.
- Edmund Morgan
The southern colonists were not preoccupied with their own historical significance and mostly did not bother even to make the records of births, marriages, and deaths that they required of themselves by law. Nor did they write accounts of what they were up to for the benefit of posterity.
- Edmund Morgan
Apart from the intrinsic interest of the complex system of beliefs the Puritans carried with them, their lives give a clue to what it meant at the beginning to be American. And the level of scholarship dealing with them has reached a point where it can address the human condition itself.
- Edmund Morgan
In America, we may acknowledge Washington and Lincoln as great men, and probably Franklin and Jefferson and maybe Franklin Delano Roosevelt and possibly even several more, but we would probably disagree about precisely what it was that made them great, what it was that enabled them to give a lasting direction to the course of events.
- Edmund Morgan
When Landon Carter, a Virginia plantation owner, read the Declaration of Independence two days after it was issued, he wondered whether its ringing affirmation of equality meant that slaves must be freed. If so, he confided to his diary, 'You must send them out of the country, or they must steal for their support.'
- Edmund Morgan
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