Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.
NUMBER:
81
AUTHOR:
Archibald MacLeish (1892–1982)
QUOTATION:
Races didn’t bother the Americans. They were something a lot better than any race. They were a People. They were the first self-constituted, self-declared, self-created People in the history of the world. And their manners were their own business. And so were their politics. And so, but ten times so, were their souls.
ATTRIBUTION:
ARCHIBALD MACLEISH, Librarian of Congress, “The American Cause,” address delivered at Faneuil Hall, Boston, Massachusetts, November 20, 1940.—MacLeish, A Time to Act; Selected Addresses, p. 115 (1943).
