On Larry King Live http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_qAgaGYh3w, in response to the question "Who in this administration fascinates you the most?" February 26, 2006
“Confessions of a Wild Bore” in Assorted Prose (1965)
"The Nation's Capital" (29 July 2003)
2000s
“Patience is not very different from courage. It just takes longer.”
#54
Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten Second Essays (2001)
“We are role models to a lot of young people, not just African Americans and soldiers.”
As quoted in "Who is Brigadier General Vincent Brooks?" http://www.barzey.com/2003/04/who-is-brigadier-general-vincent-brooks.html (April 2003), Barzey
2013, Second Inaugural Address (January 2013)
Context: We, the people, still believe that our obligations as Americans are not just to ourselves, but to all posterity. We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires and crippling drought and more powerful storms. The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult. But America cannot resist this transition, we must lead it. We cannot cede to other nations the technology that will power new jobs and new industries, we must claim its promise. That’s how we will maintain our economic vitality and our national treasure -- our forests and waterways, our crop lands and snow-capped peaks. That is how we will preserve our planet, commanded to our care by God. That’s what will lend meaning to the creed our fathers once declared.
2000s, God Bless America (2008), Slavery and the American Cause
Context: The Declaration of the causes and Necessity of Taking up Arms, on July 6, 1775, was the very first occasion for the American people to speak to the world with a single voice. In its first sentence, the Second Continental Congress affirmed without equivocation that the idea of the ownership of some human beings by other human beings was an utter absurdity, and that to think otherwise was incompatible with reason or revelation. Thus from the outset—a year before the Declaration of Independence—the American people were committed to the antislavery cause, and to the inseparability of personal freedom and free government. The American people knew from the outset that the cause of their own freedom and that of the slaves was inseparable. This would become the message that Abraham Lincoln would bring to the American people, and to the world, for all time.
Rio archbishop calls for 'missionary disciples' in Americas https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/28469/rio-archbishop-calls-for-missionary-disciples-in-americas (16 November 2013)
“It is hard to have patience with people who say 'There is no death' or 'Death doesn't matter.”
There is death. And whatever is matters. And whatever happens has consequences, and it and they are irrevocable and irreversible. You might as well say that birth doesn't matter.
A Grief Observed (1961)
