Known sourcecanonical
"There is what I call the American idea. . . . This idea demands, as the proximate organization thereof, a democracy,--that is, a government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people; of course, a government of the principles of eternal justice, the unchanging law of God. For shortness' sake I will call it the idea of Freedom."
Theodore Parker / Speech at the N. E. Antislavery Convention, Boston, May 29, 1850.
Speech at the N. E. Antislavery Convention, Boston, May 29, 1850.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 9th ed. (Little, Brown, 1905), public domain