Quotations from Famous American Speeches 1 Quiz

Answer: John F. Kennedy

John F. Kennedy said this in the course of his Inaugural Address on January 1961 as he became the 35th President. In this speech he declares his opposition to the common enemies of humankind: poverty, disease, war, and tyranny.

Kennedy's inaugural speech was short and lasted only about 14 minutes. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 while riding in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas. Kennedy served in the U.S. Navy and later in the Senate in 1952. In the 1950's he published "Profiles in Courage," a Pulitzer-winning book about American senators who jeopardized their careers for the cause of their principles. Kennedy appeared in the first televised U.S. presidential debate in 1960, with Richard Nixon.

Answer: Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass said these words in a speech he gave from 1876 at the dedication of the Freedmen's Monument in Washington, D.C., in a ceremony attended by President Ulysses S. Grant. Douglass saw Lincoln not as a martyred saint but as a man and politician. In the same speech he went on to say of Lincoln: "In all his education and feeling he was an American of the Americans" and spoke of Lincoln's "infinite wisdom."

He is famous for writing "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave," published in 1845 as an autobiography. He was born a slave in Maryland, and he escaped from slavery in 1838. In his autobiography, he describes how he endured the brutalities of slavery- what he called the "graveyard of the mind." Douglass was known internationally as an abolitionist, traveled to speak in Britain, and he was a supporter of women's suffrage.

Answer: George Washington

George Washington, the first U.S. President, spoke these words during his farewell speech on September 17, 1796 as he neared the end of his second term. He decided not to seek reelection.

In this speech, he inveighed against party dissension, entangling alliances with other nations, and amassing public debt. Washington helped to lead the Thirteen Colonies to victory over Britain during the American Revolutionary War as Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army from 1775-83. He was born into a wealthy colonial Virginia family who owned many slaves and tobacco plantations.

Answer: Theodore Roosevelt

This is from an inspirational lecture Theodore (or Teddy) Roosevelt gave on April 10, 1899, the year after he resigned as assistant secretary of the navy in the McKinley administration. The speech uses the example of a vigorous person as an example for a can-do populace in a triumphant nation. Teddy Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States. He was a leader in the Republican Party and the short-lived Progressive Party of 1912.

He was known for his very robust character and many achievements such as being a Rough Rider, a Harvard graduate, boxer, amateur naturalist, writer, peacemaker, historian, big game hunter in Africa, a cowboy in Dakota, New York City police commissioner, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, a brigadier general of volunteer forces, Governor of New York, and Vice President in the McKinley administration.

In 1912 an unsuccessful assassination attempt happened while Roosevelt was giving a speech, but even this did not deter the staunch president. He continued to speak after the shot had lodged a bullet in his chest, though an eye glass case protected Roosevelt somewhat from the blow. The would-be assassin was a highly religious, Bavarian-born saloon-keeper who later was kept in a state mental hospital until he died in 1943. The bullet which stayed lodged in Roosevelt's chest later produced chronic arthritis which lessened his ability to take long exercises.

Answer: Sojourner Truth

Sojourner Truth gave this speech in 1851 at the Ohio Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio. During the Civil War, she attempted to rally black troops for the Union Army. After 1865, Truth tried unsuccessfully to secure land grants from the government for ex-slaves. Sojourner Truth's real name was Isabella Baumfree and her parents were from the Gold Coast in west Africa.

Born into slavery in New York, she later escaped to freedom in 1826 with her infant daughter. Later she lived in Massachusetts for a while, joining an abolitionist group which espoused pacifism, abolitionism, women's rights and religious tolerance. She died in 1883 in her home in Battle Creek, Michigan.

Answer: Chief Seattle

This speech is believed to have been delivered in 1854; it was translated from the chief's native tongue into Chinook and then into English. Dr. Henry Smith transcribed the speech which he heard but waited until 1887 (more than 30 years later) to publish in the "Seattle Sunday Star."

Chief Seattle led the Duwamish and Suquamish tribes of the Pacific Northwest in mid-1800's. Chief Seattle was also known as Si'ahl in his Duwamish tribe. At a young age, he become renowned as a leader and a fighter, ambushing and conquering enemy raiders and attacking the Chimakum and the S'Klallam tribes. As was common among his peers, Chief Seattle owned slaves captured during his raids. He was tall and broad for a Puget Sound native at nearly six feet. Traders gave him the nickname "The Big One."

He was born on or near Blake Island, an island off the state of Washington in the middle of Puget Sound. The island today is a marine camping park with miles of beach shoreline and is roughly 475 acres in size.

Answer: Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave this speech for his first Inaugural Address on March 4, 1933 during the Great Depression. In the same speech he famously said: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

Following the example of his fifth cousin, President Theodore Roosevelt, whom he greatly admired, Franklin D. Roosevelt entered public service through politics, but as a Democrat. He won election to the New York Senate in 1910. President Wilson appointed him Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and he was the Democratic nominee for Vice President in 1920.

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Roosevelt directed organization of the nation's manpower and resources for global war. He devoted much consideration to the planning of a United Nations, in which, he hoped, international difficulties could be managed and resolved.

As World War II drew to a close, Roosevelt's health failed. On April 12, 1945, while at Warm Springs, Georgia (where he went often to get therapy for the polio he contracted while a young man) he died of a cerebral hemorrhage.

Answer: Lyndon B. Johnson

This is from a speech by President Lyndon Baines Johnson, and is popularly known as the "We Shall Overcome Speech". It was an address to a joint session of Congress on voting legislation in light of racial unrest in the South. The speech was delivered on March 15, 1965.

President Johnson later went on to say: "What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and state of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life. Their cause must be our cause too. Because it's not just Negroes, but really it's all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome."

"A Great Society" for the American people and their fellow humans elsewhere was the vision of Lyndon B. Johnson. In his first years of office he obtained passage of one of the most extensive legislative programs in the nation's history.

Johnson was born in 1908 in central Texas, not far from Johnson City, which his family had helped settle. He felt the pinch of rural poverty as he grew up, working his way through Southwest Texas State Teachers College, now a part of the Texas State University system. Millions of elderly people found comfort and assistance through the 1965 Medicare amendment to the Social Security Act which President Johnson supported.

Answer: Harry S. Truman

Harry S. Truman gave this speech before a joint session of Congress on March 12, 1947. In this speech, he espoused "The Truman Doctrine" which called on the U.S. to aid those nations who struggle for national self-determination. He spoke at length about Greece and Turkey which were trying to determine their own political future and, according to Truman, needed American aid and guidance. Truman also pointed out that totalitarian regimes at that time were "forced" on the people of Bulgaria and Romania. He believed that the U.S. should play a significant part in helping nations rise against the imposition of unjust governments.

He later said in the speech: "The free peoples of the world look to us for support in maintaining their freedoms. If we falter in our leadership, we may endanger the peace of the world. And we shall surely endanger the welfare of this nation."

Truman was the 33rd President of the United States from 1945 to 1953. As President Franklin D. Roosevelt's third vice president, he succeeded to the presidency in April of 1945, when President Roosevelt died after just beginning his historic fourth term. Truman died in 1972.

Answer: General Douglas MacArthur

On May 12, 1962, Five Star General Douglas MacArthur accepted the Sylvanus Thayer Award and delivered this pro-military speech to the corps of cadets at the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York.

In the same speech, General MacArthur said: "The soldier, above all other men, is required to practice the greatest act of religious training -- sacrifice. In battle and in the face of danger and death, he discloses those divine attributes which his Maker gave when he created man in his own image. No physical courage and no brute instinct can take the place of the Divine help which alone can sustain him. However horrible the incidents of war may be, the soldier who is called upon to offer and to give his life for his country is the noblest development of mankind."

Commissioned in the Corps of the Engineers, MacArthur was sent by the United States Army early in his career to the Philippines. By 1904 had been promoted to the rank of first lieutenant.

MacArthur was named Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) and he received the formal surrender of Japan. President Harry S. Truman appointed him as head of the Allied occupation of Japan. He was given job of organizing the war crimes tribunal in Japan.

Later, in the Korean War, he was Commander-in-Chief of the United Nations Command (UNCOM), but was relieved of his command for making public statements about disagreements with President Truman.

On his arrival back in the United States MacArthur led a campaign against Harry S. Truman and his administration. MacArthur gained support from right-wing members of the Senate such as Joe McCarthy who led the attack on Truman's administration.