Final Exam Essay Choices

Final Exam Essays. 50% Of the final.
This should say something about the value I have for the time you take to research and organize your writing response. No question about it-thinking will be required to be successful.

For the final exam I am asking you to deliberate over a famous quote that can be used to make meaning out of the second half of the 20th Century. In other words I would like you to explain, justify, or assess how one of the below quotes can be used to develop a higher level of thinking on a topic or theme we explored from 1945-2000. Please feel free to agree, problematize or even trouble any of the positions that are taken in the quotes as it applies to your theme or topic.

First, pick the quote you want to use, next connect to a topic (s)or theme (s) that you feel would be appropriate. Finally develop a 5 paragraph essay complete with an introduction, thesis, 3 body paragraphs, and a conclusion. I am asking you to frame out your essay with either a traditional outline or graphic organizer. Again, I will supply this and you may use it during the written part of the exam. Please feel free to post any questions or see me in person. Remember, our exam is on Thursday, June 3rd.

#1. Constitutions are checks upon the hasty action of the majority. They are self imposed restraints of a whole people upon the majority of them to secure the sober action and respects for the rights of the minority. -Howard Taft (1911)


#2. The issue [of consumerism] is deeper than greed and selfishness. Material consumption-buying and possessing things-has become the primary way of belonging in America and around the world. If we can not buy, if we can not consume, we simply can't belong." -Jim Wallis (1997)

#3. I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take them, but to inform their discretion by education. -Thomas Jefferson, 1820

#4. Feminism is an entire world view or gestalt , not just a laundry list of women's issues. -Charlotte Bunch (1981)

#5. The time is at hand when the voices of of the feminine mystique can no longer drown out the inner voice that is driving women on to be complete. - Betty Friedan, 1963

#6. Capitalism is an economic order marked by the private ownership of the means of production vested in a minority class called "capitalists" and by a market system that determines the incomes and distributes the outputs arising from the its productive activity. It is a social order characterized by a "bourgeois" culture, among whose manifold aspects the drive for wealth is the most important. -Robert L. Heilbroner 1974.

#7. Before we engage ourselves [foreign policy], we must know what we are doing; and once we have engaged ourselves , we must prevail, or the impact will be catastrophic. -Henry Kissinger, 1980

#8. What I do object to about America is the herd thinking. There is no room for individuals in your country- and yet you are dedicated to saving the world for individualism. Bertrand Russell, 1964.

#9. The strength of our nation [America] must continue to be used in the interest of all our people rather than a privileged few. It must continue to be used unselfishly in the struggle for world peace and the betterment of mankind. Harry Truman-1949

#10 The business of American is not business. Neither is it war. The business of America is justice, and securing the blessings of liberty. George Will, 1991

# 11. In one generation we have moved from denying a black man service at a lunch counter to elevating one to the highest military office in the nation, and to be a contender for the presidency. This is a magnificent country and I am proud to be one of its sons. Colin Powell, 1995.

# 12. We are not fighting for integration, nor are we fighting for separation. We are fighting for recognition as human beings. Malcolm X, 1964

# 13. History teaches us the mistakes we are going to make. Laurence Peter, 1977

#14. History is not concerned with predicting: the ability to predict would mean a closed and determined universe or, perhaps worse, a managed one. And if we know anything from our observation of the drama of history, it is that history is open, full of extraordinary potential and inexplicable turns and changes. Page Smith, 1964