Source: Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1990 Update), Journeys in Space and Time [Episode 8], 54 min 55 sec
Context: Those worlds in space are as countless as all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the earth. Each of those worlds is as real as ours and every one of them is a succession of incidents, events, occurrences which influence its future. Countless worlds, numberless moments, an immensity of space and time. And our small planet at this moment, here we face a critical branch point in history, what we do with our world, right now, will propagate down through the centuries and powerfully affect the destiny of our descendants, it is well within our power to destroy our civilization and perhaps our species as well. If we capitulate to superstition or greed or stupidity we could plunge our world into a time of darkness deeper than the time between the collapse of classical civilization and the Italian Renaissance. But we are also capable of using our compassion and our intelligence, our technology and our wealth to make an abundant and meaningful life for every inhabitant of this planet.
“We are squandering our wealth in many respects, to the extent that we persist in our imperial delusions, we're also going to squander our freedom.”
Moyer's Journal, 2008 August 15.
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Andrew Bacevich 13
United States Army officer 1947Related quotes
2010s, 2015, Speech on (20 July 2015)
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (March 14, 2007).
“A society without the means to detect lies and theft soon squanders its liberty and freedom.”
A Conversation with Martin de Maat (1998)
Context: I think many of us go through our life not fully having permission to be who we are and what we're going to become. Most of us are often looking for approval. We hate it when we're not approved of. It's that approval that has us in our minds worrying about what we're doing as we're doing it, trying to figure out whether or not it's appropriate or will be accepted. We walk through our lives like we're on our first date. Trying to see if we're appropriate and trying not to step on other peoples' toes... you know, cautiously, prophylactically, for fear of not being approved of. In this work, there's only approval.
6 October 1996 "Down With the Presidency" http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/down-presidency.html
1990s
“As the expression goes, we spend our youth attaining wealth, and our wealth attaining youth.”
Source: Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture
UN Address (1999)
Context: For how many thousands of years now have we humans been what we insist on calling "civilized?" And yet, in total contradiction, we also persist in the savage belief that we must occasionally, at least, settle our arguments by killing one another.
While we spend much of our time and a great deal of our treasure in preparing for war, we see no comparable effort to establish a lasting peace. Meanwhile, emphasizing the sloth in this regard, those advocates who work for world peace by urging a system of world government are called impractical dreamers. Those impractical dreamers are entitled to ask their critics what is so practical about war.