Today the 23rd April is reputedly William Shakespeare’s birthday. He was born in 1564, the same year as Christopher Marlowe, Galileo and Charles Loyseau amongst others.
Marlowe was the foremost Elizabethan writer next to Shakespeare. He died quite young at the age of 29, stabbed in a pub in Deptford, leaving us with seven major plays including Tamburlaine Parts 1 & 2, The Jew of Malta and Dr. Faustus.
Galileo Galilei is thus described by the eminent professor Stephen Hawking: "Galileo, perhaps more than any other single person, was responsible for the birth of modern science." His achievements include important astronomical observations and support for Copernicus.
From Charles Loyseau, we have A Treatise on Orders and Simple Dignities, written in 1610, which evaluated French society and law, and was used to justify French social organisation of the ‘Ancien Régime’ until 1789. He described the three orders and how they function in society. The First Estate (The Clergy), The Second Estate (Nobility) and The Third Estate (Commoners) which included men of letters, (doctors, philosophers, teachers) financiers (anyone handling finances among provinces, parishes, or individuals) merchants, men of affairs (business men of any kind, notaries, attorneys, etc.), peasants, and laborers. They were distinguished by the work they provided, starting with men of highest education and monetary positions, descending to those men who had no job (beggars, vagabonds), who were considered the lowest of society. Loyseau is very critical of this order and did not consider it to be a sign of dignity to be part of the Third Estate. Some of us would disagree and claim that to be part of the third estate is rather a mark of distinction. 
Shakespeare gave us just about everything else, but mainly the English language, and it is the use to which that language is put which brings me to Theodore Roosevelt's contribution to the 23rd April. He was the 26th President of the United States from 1901 to 1909. A year after his presidency, whilst travelling in France, he delivered a speech at the Sorbonne in Paris, France on the 23rd April 1910. The topic/title of the speech was "Citizenship in a Republic". Rather like Lincoln's Gettysburg Address it contains an oft quoted passage, which has been used by many a politician and statesmen to justify some endeavour of their own - an endeavour perhaps not too popular or subject to heavy criticism, whether triumphant or in despair. (Richard Nixon quoted it at his inauguration and at his resignation) It is dubbed "the man in the arena" speech:
...It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat…
Within the text of the speech, Roosevelt himself quoted Abraham Lincoln, in defining his ideas relating to the formation of a Republic. He said:
... we should not take part in acting a lie any more than in telling a lie. We should not say that men are equal where they are not equal, nor proceed upon the assumption that there is an equality where it does not exist; but we should strive to bring about a measurable equality, at least to the extent of preventing the inequality which is due to force or fraud. Abraham Lincoln, a man of the plain people, blood of their blood, and bone of their bone, who all his life toiled and wrought and suffered for them, at the end died for them, who always strove to represent them, who would never tell an untruth to or for them, spoke of the doctrine of equality with his usual mixture of idealism and sound common sense. He said (I omit what was of merely local significance):
"I think the authors of the Declaration of Independence intended to include all men, but they did not mean to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not mean to say all men were equal in colour, size, intellect, moral development or social capacity. They defined with tolerable distinctness in what they did consider all men created equal- equal in certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. This they said, and this they meant. They did not mean to assert the obvious untruth that all were actually enjoying that equality, or yet that they were about to confer it immediately upon them. They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society which should be familiar to all - constantly looked to, constantly laboured for, and, even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people, everywhere."
There is something about the precision of the English language that focuses the mind and makes us think better of ourselves and hopefully leads to better understanding. We are not all equal in our use of it, and some use it better than others; nonetheless, we can thank Shakespeare for his use of it. We all owe him that, equally. (or should it be, 'we all, equally, owe him that' ?).
The full text of the speech can be found at:
I am not sure how right he is about present day USA, but who am I to criticise?
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