Greatness is not measured by what a man or woman accomplishes, but by the opposition he or she has overcome to reach his goals.
Clever gimmicks of mass distraction yield a cheap soulcraft of addicted and self-medicated narcissists.
Hope and optimism are different. Optimism tends to be based on the notion that there's enough evidence out there to believe things are gonna be better, much more rational, deeply secular, whereas hope looks at the evidence and says, "It doesn't look good at all. Doesn't look good at all. Gonna go beyond the evidence to create new possibilities based on visions that become contagious to allow people to engage in heroic actions always against the odds, no guarantee whatsoever. " That's hope. I'm a prisoner of hope, though. Gonna die a prisoner of hope.
You can't lead the people if you don't love the people. You can't save the people if you don't serve the people.
There is a price to pay for speaking the truth. There is a bigger price for living a lie.
The country is in deep trouble. We've forgotten that a rich life consists fundamentally of serving others, trying to leave the world a little better than you found it. We need the courage to question the powers that be, the courage to be impatient with evil and patient with people, the courage to fight for social justice. In many instances we will be stepping out on nothing, and just hoping to land on something. But that's the struggle. To live is to wrestle with despair, yet never allow despair to have the last word.
You have to have a habitual vision of greatness. . . you have to believe in fact that you will refuse to settle for mediocrity. You won't confuse your financial security with your personal integrity, you won't confuse your success with your greatness or your prosperity with your magnanimity. . . believe in fact that living is connected to giving.
I meet new Walt Whitmans everyday. There are a dozen of them afloat. I don't know which Walt Whitman I am.
Listen, Harriet. I do unterstand. I know you don't want either to give or to take. . . You don't want ever again to have to depend for happiness on another person. " "That's true. That's the truest thing you ever said. " "All right. I can respect that. Only you've got to play the game. Don't force an emotional situation and then blame me for it. " "But I don't want any situation. I want to be left in peace.
Oh, but it was splendid the things women were doing for men all the time, thought Jane. Making them feel, perhaps sometimes by no more than a casual glance, that they were loved and admired and desired when they were worthy of none of these things - enabling them to preen themselves and puff out their plumage like birds and bask in the sunshine of love, real or imagined, it didn't matter which.
Gettysburg. . . . You cant understand it. You would have to be born there.