Quote#Kindness
I mean not to boast; I would not excite envy, but manly emulation. We…
Quote byJohn Hancock · 1737–1793
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: Boston Massacre Oration (1774).
English (original)
I mean not to boast; I would not excite envy, but manly emulation. We have all one common cause; let it, therefore, be our only contest, who shall most contribute to the security of the liberties of America. And may the same kind Providence which has watched over this country from her infant state still enable us to defeat our enemies!
— John Hancock
More from John Hancock
Surely you never will tamely suffer this country to be a den of thieves.
That people who pay greater respect to a wealthy villain than to an honest, upright man in poverty, almost deserve to be enslaved; they plainly show that wealth, however it may be acquired, is, in their esteem, to be preferred to virtue.
A well-disciplined militia is a safe, an honorable guard to a community like this, whose inhabitants are by nature brave, and are laudably tenacious of that freedom in which they were born.
I have always, from my earliest youth, rejoiced in the felicity of my fellow-men
Some boast of being friends to government; I am a friend to righteous government, to a government founded upon the principles of reason and justice; but I glory in publicly avowing my eternal enmity to tyranny.
I have the most animating confidence that the present noble struggle for liberty will terminate gloriously for America.