The imperialists and domestic reactionaries will certainly not take their defeat Lying down and they will struggle to the last ditch. After there is peace and order throughout the country, they will still engage in sabotage and create disturbances in various ways and will try every day and every minute to stage a comeback. This is inevitable, beyond all doubt, and under no circumstances must we relax our vigilance.
And we ask the American people to play an important part of our layered defense. We ask for cooperation, patience and a commitment to vigilance in the face of a determined enemy.
Freedom is like holding a small bird. If you squeeze it too hard, you will kill it. But if you don't hold it firmly enough, it will fly away. Indeed, freedom can be both fragile and elusive, and so-as the McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum so powerfully reminds us-it requires our eternal vigilance, our willingness, our ability, our conviction to stand up for that which we think is right.
But you must remember, my fellow-citizens, that eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty, and that you must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing.
And I realize that the decision to be human is not one single instant, but is a thousand choices made very day. It is choices we make every second and requires constant vigilance. We have to fight to remain human.
A votary of ahimsa must cultivate the habit of unremitting toil, sleepless vigilance, ceaseless self-control.
It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become prey to the active. The conditions upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime, and the punishment of his guilt.
