Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionaries.

Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.

Those who are called revolutionaries and rebels, that is to say those who have escaped this conditioning, driven by the will to live, to reflect, to understand each other and to explore life and its.

Both of us were children of resisters, human rights defenders and change makers.

We should not forget that our tradition is one of protest and revolt, and it is stultifying to celebrate the rebels of the past—Jefferson and Paine, Emerson and Thoreau—while we silence the rebels of the present.

Maybe it's true that we are all descended from the restless, the nervous, the criminals, the arguers and brawlers, but also the brave and independent and generous. If our ancestors had not been that, they would have stayed in their home plots in the other world and starved over the squeezed-out soil.

Ancestors do not mean so much. The rebel who succeeds generally makes it easier for the posterity that follows him; so these descendants are usually contented and smug and soft. Rebels are made from life, not ancestors.

Loyalty… is a realization that America was born of revolt, flourished in dissent, became great through experimentation.

Let us be those creative dissenters who will call our beloved nation to a higher destiny, to a new plateau of compassion, to a more noble expression of humanness.

Let us be those creative dissenters who will call our beloved nation to a higher destiny. To a new plateau of compassion, to a more noble expression of humanness.

Although it is rarely noted in histories of the American Revolution, many of the arch-Revolutionaries came from a tradition of mystical fraternity. Except for such traces as the symbols on the reverse side of the Great Seal and the dollar bill, little evidence remains of this esoteric influence (Rosicrucian, Masonic, and Hermetic). That sense of fraternity and spiritual chisement played an important role in the intensity of the Revolutionaries and their commitment to the realization of a democracy.

What has become of the descendants of the irresponsible adventurers, the scapegrace sons, the bond servants, the redemptionists and the indentured maidens, the undesirables, and even the criminals, which made up-not all, of course, but nevertheless a considerable part of-the earliest emigrants to these virgin countries?
They have become the leaders of the thought of the world, the vanguard in the march of progress, the inspirers of liberty, the creators of national prosperity, the sponsors of universal education and enlightenment.

Neither the victims nor the leftovers, we are an historic breed: Revolutionaries. We appear and vanish as the times demand, just long enough to do the job at hand. After us comes the slow, historic process over again.

Revolutionaries do not take to the path of spilling blood easily.