While remaking America, Obama might find inspiration from some of his favorite quotations inscribed on a new rug in the Oval Office. Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Only it turns out – after the rug has already be sewn and laid down – that the quote attributed to Martin Luther King Jr. was not an original King quote.
Obama's favorite quote, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." is attributed to King.
The words actually orgiginated from Theodore Parker whose roots in the republic ran so deep that his grandfather commanded the Minutemen at the Battle of Lexington.
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| Theodore Parker |
Another familiar quote from Lincoln woven into Obama's rug is "government of the people, by the people and for the people," the well-known utterance from the close of his Gettysburg Address in 1863.
Funny that in 1850, Parker wrote, "A democracy -- that is a government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people."
Theodore Parker, Oval Office wordmeister for the ages.
Theodore Parker Theodore Parker (August 24, 1810-May 10, 1860) was a preacher, lecturer, and writer, a public intellectual, and a religious and social reformer.
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