"I have an irrepressible desire to live till I can be assured that the world is a little better for my having lived it."-"Abraham Lincoln"
Abraham Lincoln, the American president remembered as Honest Abe, is renowned for his strong leadership during the Civil War and for ending slavery in the United States. He was born in a Kentucky cabin in 1809. He taught himself law and passed the Illinois bar in 1837, the same year he first spoke out against slavery. The Southern states seceded in response to his election to the presidency in 1860. Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, mere days after General Robert E. Lee surrendered to end the war.
"Perseverance is a great element of success. If you only knock long enough and loud enough at the gate, you are sure to wake somebody up-"Henry Wadsworth Longfellow"
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, a beloved American poet of the 19th century, is best known for "The Song of Hiawatha" and "Evangeline." He was born in Maine in 1807. He knew Latin by the age of six, and when he taught at Bowdoin College, he wrote the textbooks himself. He courted his second wife while teaching at Harvard and frequently walked the several miles from Cambridge to Boston across the West Boston Bridge. The bridge that replaced it was named the Longfellow Bridge in his honor. He died in 1882.
"Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip."-"Will Rogers"
American humorist Will Rogers was considered the Mark Twain of his generation. He was born in 1879 in Oklahoma, of Cherokee descent, and left school early to become a cowboy. In South Africa his showy roping skills won him a job in a traveling Wild West show, and he quickly switched over to vaudeville and film acting roles. He wrote six books and 4,000 syndicated columns. An avid flier, he died in a plane crash in 1935.
"It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan -"Eleanor Roosevelt"
Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was a powerful political figure in her own right, crusading tirelessly for humanist causes. She was born in New York in 1884 and was orphaned young. After Franklin was struck by polio, she acted as his eyes and ears. She was central to the creation of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which she considered her crowning achievement, and wrote numerous essays, including a long-running column called "My Day." She died in 1962.
"If you haven't forgiven yourself something, how can you forgive others? -"Dolores Huerta"
American labor leader Dolores Huerta cofounded the United Farm Workers and played a major role in the American civil-rights movement. She was born in a mining town in New Mexico in 1930 and raised in California's Central Valley, where she saw the plight of farmworkers up close. She abandoned teaching for activism after witnessing her students' poverty. Her best-known campaign was the successful grape boycott of the 1960's. She currently serves as president of the Dolores Huerta Foundation, an organization aimed at promoting social justice in agricultural regions of California.
"When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object. -"Milan Kundera"
Milan Kundera, the modernist Czech novelist best known for The Unbearable Lightness of Being, laces politics and philosophical digressions into his complex narrative structure. He was born in 1929 on April Fool's Day, and his first novel was, appropriately enough, The Joke. An ardent reformist, he was ejected from the Communist party twice for speaking out against repression. In 1975, he fled to France, where he still teaches.
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