“Fellow citizens, we have been called to leadership in a period of consequence. We have entered a great ideological conflict we did nothing to invite. We see great changes in science and commerce that will influence all our lives. And sometimes it can seem that history is turning in a wide arc, toward an unknown shore. Yet the destination of history is determined by human action, and every great movement of history comes to a point of choosing.”

De historie kan niets voorspellen, behalve één ding: dat geen groote wending in de menschelijke verhoudingen ooit uitkomt in den vorm, waarin vroeger levenden zich haar hebben kunnen verbeeld.
Source: In the Shadow of Tomorrow (1936), Ch. 20.

2012-10-26
http://foxnewsinsider.com/2012/10/26/transcript-mitt-romney-delivers-speech-on-the-economy/
TRANSCRIPT: Mitt Romney Delivers Speech on the Economy
Fox News
2012

The Call of Freedom.

Presidency (1977–1981), The Crisis of Confidence (1979)
Context: We know the strength of America. We are strong. We can regain our unity. We can regain our confidence. We are the heirs of generations who survived threats much more powerful and awesome than those that challenge us now. Our fathers and mothers were strong men and women who shaped a new society during the Great Depression, who fought world wars, and who carved out a new charter of peace for the world.
We ourselves are the same Americans who just 10 years ago put a man on the Moon. We are the generation that dedicated our society to the pursuit of human rights and equality. And we are the generation that will win the war on the energy problem and in that process rebuild the unity and confidence of America.
We are at a turning point in our history. There are two paths to choose. One is a path I've warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self- interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility. It is a certain route to failure.
All the traditions of our past, all the lessons of our heritage, all the promises of our future point to another path, the path of common purpose and the restoration of American values. That path leads to true freedom for our Nation and ourselves. We can take the first steps down that path as we begin to solve our energy problem.
Energy will be the immediate test of our ability to unite this Nation, and it can also be the standard around which we rally. On the battlefield of energy we can win for our Nation a new confidence, and we can seize control again of our common destiny.

Source: The Price of the Ticket: Collected Nonfiction, 1948-1985

Homage to Catalonia (1938)

A Power Governments Cannot Suppress, p. 270.
Context: To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places — and there are so many — where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

The day Francisco Franco, the dictator, died. Frases que reflejan el recorrido de Manuel Fraga, 16th January 2012, Gara, 16th January 2012, castellà http://www.gara.net/azkenak/01/315809/es/Frases-que-reflejan-recorrido-Manuel-Fraga,
Franco and Francoism