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The whole history of progress of
human liberty
Shows that all concessions
Yet made to her august claims
Have been born of earnest struggle.
If there is no struggle
There is no progress.
Those who profess to favor freedom,
And yet deprecate
agitation,
Are men [and women]
who want crops
Without plowing
up the ground,
They want rain
Without thunder
and lightning.
They want the
ocean
Without the awful
roar of its waters.
This struggle
may be a moral one;
Or it may be a
physical one;
Or it may be both
moral and physical;
But it must be
a struggle.
Power concedes
nothing without a demand.
It never did,
and it never will.
Find out just
what any people
Will quietly submit
to
And you have found
the exact measure
Of injustice and
wrong
Which will be
imposed upon them,
And these will
continue till they are resisted. . .
The limits. .
. are prescribed
By the endurance
Of those whom.
. [are] oppress[ed].
Men [and Women]
may not get all they pay for
in this world,
but they pay for all they get.
If we ever get
free
from the oppressions
and wrong heaped on us,
we must pay for
their removal.
We must do this
by labor,
by suffering,
by sacrifice,
and if needs be
by our lives and the lives of others
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