"Talk is cheap"

[Honeycombe8]

Hillary Clinton's latest stump speech includes the theme, "talk is cheap," directed at you-know-you.

Oh, really? I say. Here are quotes from some past "cheap talk" speeches.

"I have a dream..." (MLK)

"And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." (JFK)

"Four score and seven years ago, our forefathers brought forth on this continent a new nation...." (Abe)

"The only thing we have to fear....is fear itself." (FDR)

"Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'" (Churchill)

"But you must believe me when I tell you that I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties as King as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love." (King Edward VIII)

"I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death." (Patrick Henry)

"Indifference is not a beginning, it is an end. And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor -- never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten. The political prisoner in his cell, the hungry children, the homeless refugees -- not to respond to their plight, not to relieve their solitude by offering them a spark of hope is to exile them from human memory. And in denying their humanity we betray our own." (Elie Wiesel...on the holocaust)

"Duty, Honor, Country *** The unbelievers will say they are but words, but a slogan, but a flamboyant phrase. Every pedant, every demagogue, every cynic, every hypocrite, every troublemaker, and I am sorry to say, some others of an entirely different character, will try to downgrade them even to the extent of mockery and ridicule." (Gen. MacArthur)

"And we shall overcome." (LBJ)


Everything begins with talk. Hope and inspiration begin with talk. Great leaders get their ideas across through talk. It is not cheap. It costs a great deal to those who are brave enough to step up to the plate and say what is so.