Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.
NUMBER:
694
AUTHOR:
Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
QUOTATION:
Yet this corporate being, though so insubstantial to our senses, binds, in Burke’s words, a man to his country with “ties which though light as air, are as strong as links of iron.” That is why young men die in battle for their country’s sake and why old men plant trees they will never sit under.
ATTRIBUTION:
WALTER LIPPMANN, Essays in the Public Philosophy, chapter 3, part 2, p. 36 (1955).
The quotation is from Edmund Burke’s speech on “Conciliation with America” (1775).
