Today we are at the edge of a new era of progress toward the American dream. It is an opportunity as large and as exciting as that granted to those who settled this continent. Our basic goal has not been changed, but the growth of our Nation, the progress of science and knowledge, the change in our way of life, makes it necessary to shape new tools to reach old goals. And by moving ahead only can we hope to preserve the values of the past.
Lyndon B. JohnsonRelated topics
basic change continent dream edge era hope knowledge large moving nation necessary opportunity past preserve reach science way todayRelated quotes
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Steve Jobs
Conservatives - or better, pro-corporate apologists - hijacked the vocabulary of Jeffersonian liberalism and turned words like "progress," "opportunity," and "individualism" into tools for making the plunder of America sound like divine right ... This "degenerate and unlovely age," as one historian calls it, exists in the mind of Karl Rove - the reputed brain of George W. Bush - as the seminal age of inspiration for politics and governance of America today.
Bill Moyers
South America had been an island continent, far bigger and far more diverse than Australia, for tens of millions of years before the Isthmus of Panama rose just a couple of million years ago. The resulting flood of North American mammals across the new land bridge corresponds in time with the decimation of the native South American fauna. In fact, most large mammals generally considered distinctly South American... are all recent migrants from North America.
Stephen Jay Gould
We've been in the mountain of war. We've been in the mountain of violence. We've been in the mountain of hatred long enough. It is necessary to move on now, but only by moving out of this mountain can we move to the promised land of justice and brotherhood and the Kingdom of God. It all boils down to the fact that we must never allow ourselves to become satisfied with unattained goals. We must always maintain a kind of divine discontent.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Perhaps you don't desire poetry as much as you would like to have my torchy knowledge of your possible futures, but I dare say poetry will do you far more good. For knowing the future only makes you timid and complacent by turns, while poetry can shape you into the kind of souls who can face any future with boldness and wisdom and nobility, so that you need not know the future at all, so that any future will be an opportunity for greatness, if you have greatness in you.
Orson Scott Card