"My Creed" by Dean Alfange

This Week Magazine & Reader's Digest (October 1952) ^ | 1952 | Dean Alfange

[loveliberty2]

From Bartleby's:

   Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations.  1989.

NUMBER:	71
AUTHOR:	Dean Alfange (1900–  )
QUOTATION:	I do not choose to be a common man. It is my right to be uncommon—if I can. I seek opportunity—not security. I do not wish to be a kept citizen, humbled and dulled by having the state look after me. I want to take the calculated risk; to dream and to build, to fail and to succeed. I refuse to barter incentive for a dole. I prefer the challenges of life to the guaranteed existence; the thrill of fulfillment to the stale calm of utopia. I will not trade freedom for beneficence nor my dignity for a handout. I will never cower before any master nor bend to any threat. It is my heritage to stand erect, proud and unafraid; to think and act for myself, enjoy the benefit of my creations, and to face the world boldly and say, this I have done. All this is what it means to be an American.
ATTRIBUTION:	DEAN ALFANGE, creed.—Who’s Who in America, 1984–85, vol. 1, p. 42. These words have appeared at the end of his entry in several successive editions.   Originally published in This Week Magazine. Later reprinted in The Reader’s Digest, October 1952, p. 10, and January 1954, p. 122, lacking these words: “I will never cower before any master nor bend to any threat” and “to stand erect, proud and unafraid.”
SUBJECTS:	American people

[loveliberty2]

When going through one of my late father's Bibles, I came across these inspiring words. They had been clipped from what appeared to be a Masonic publication. The clipping was yellowed with age, but my father had drawn a box around the words, "I do not choose to be a common man."

He had underlined the words, "I want to take the calculated risk; to dream and to build, to fail and to succeed." Within that sentence, he had double-underlined the word "fail" and boxed the word "succeed."

My father was born in 1907 to an alcoholic father and had to drop out of school at 14 to support his siblings and mother. He was a remarkable man who never achieved wealth, but he was an inspiration to youth through his positive attitude, his work in his church and community and the example he set by the dedicated life he lived.

Dean Alfange's "My Creed" must have struck a chord in his heart, and his keeping the words in the Bible he read from daily may, perhaps, now speak to many today, although my father has been dead for over 20 years. That is my hope.

[Celtic Cross]

“Through snow and sleet and darkness and hail,
We always will,
deliver mail”

-The Mailman’s creed

[HushTX]

I love this.

Thank you for sharing. And thank you for sharing about your father.

[loveliberty2]

Thank you. According to another web site, "The Honorable Dean Alfange was an American statesman born December 2, 1899, in Constantinople (now Istanbul). He served in the U.S. Army during World War I and attended Hamilton College, graduating in the class of ’22. Hamilton offers the “Dean Alfange Essay Prizes” established by Dean Alfange and awarded to the students who write the best and second-best essays on a feature or an issue of American constitutional government.

 

"Alfange was the American Labor candidate for governor of New York and a founder of the Liberal Party of New York."

Perhaps those who call themselves "progressives" today should consider the deeply-held conviction of what this Labor candidate for Governor of New York believed. His "I will not trade freedom for beneficence nor my dignity for a handout" flies in the face of the policies they are imposing on individuals today under the guise of "helping them."