QuotesCosmos
The Day We Celebrate (Forefathers' Day), Address, New England Society of Brooklyn (December 21, 1888).
“

Let every man honor and love the land of his birth and the race from which he springs and keep their memory green. It is a pious and honorable duty. But let us have done with British-Americans and Irish-Americans and German-Americans, and so on, and all be Americans...If a man is going to be an American at all let him be so without any qualifying adjectives; and if he is going to be something else, let him drop the word American from his personal description.

— Henry Cabot Lodge

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Let every man honor and love the land of his birth and the race from which he springs and keep their memory green. It is a pious and honorable duty. But let us have done with British-Americans and Irish-Americans and German-Americans, and so on, and all be Americans...If a man is going to be an American at all let him be so without any qualifying adjectives; and if he is going to be something else, let him drop the word American from his personal description." in the context of "The Day We Celebrate (Forefathers' Day), Address, New England Society of Brooklyn (December 21, 1888)." to mean that wisdom is timeless.

Source: Wikiquote: "Henry Cabot Lodge" (Quotes) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app

Tags

#Henry Cabot Lodge#let#american#going#man#britishamericans#germanamericans#irishamericans#americansif#description#qualifying#adjectives
Henry Cabot Lodge

About Henry Cabot Lodge

Henry Cabot Lodge (May 12, 1850 – November 9, 1924) was an American Republican Senator and historian from Massachusetts. A PhD in history from Harvard, he was a long-time friend and confidant of Theodore Roosevelt. Lodge had the role (but not the official title) of the first Senate Majority Leader. He is best known for his positions on foreign policy, especially his battle with President Woodrow Wilson in 1919 over the Treaty of Versailles. Lodge demanded Congressional control of declarations of war; Wilson refused and blocked Lodge's move to ratify the treaty with reservations. As a result, the United States never joined the League of Nations.