Edith Hamilton Quotes
Convention, so often a mask for injustice.
Hamilton, Edith. The Greek Way. W. W. Norton & Company, 1930, p. 268.
In 1968 John Carlos and Tommie Smith had won an Olympic track medal, and while standing on the ceremonial medal stand they each raised a black-gloved fist in a Black power salute as the Star Spangled Banner was played and the American flag was raised. The scene was televised around the world. See {619664} for Carlos’ statement.
In some nations like Holland medically assisted suicide us not only legal but is considered a moral course of action. In other nations it is illegal, but most individual physicians will assist a dying patient in terrible pain by increasing the dosage of pain killers which relives pain but also speeds death. In the US the individual states have different laws and rules. What can be a humanitarian action in one state, can be a felony in another. That is what happened to Kervorkian who served a long prison sentence for doing what the family and deceased begged him to do and would be legal and moral in another state.
This is a memorable historical quotations because it shows the extreme level of hypocrisy and lack of logic of which man is capable of when his way of life and world view is threatened. In this case Gordon sees the right to own slaves as a basic civil right. He does not see that the right of possessing slaves totally denies virtually all civil rights to the slave. In his and other Southern views, to assure a man’s liberty he had to have the right and freedom to deny freedom to others, torture others at will, destroy families and remove all hope and aspiration of some people.
The reason this quotation is important, it was the first time in American history that a President had tied racial discrimination to morality. Before that other Presidents had argued against segregation on pragmatic grounds or on legal, Constitutional grounds. Kennedy’s private moral declaration had a huge impact on Black leaders throughout the country who heard about it by word of mouth. That statement forged a bond between JFK and Blacks while most whites did not see anything striking in the statement.
Edith Hamilton was an American educator and internationally known author who was one of the most renowned classicists of her era in the United States. A graduate of Bryn Mawr College, she also studied in Germany at the University of Leipzig and the University of Munich. Hamilton began her career as an educator and head of the Bryn Mawr School, a private college preparatory school for girls in Baltimore, Maryland; however, Hamilton is best known for her essays and best-selling books on ancient Greek and Roman civilizations.
