"When you exhaust all possibilities, remember this: you haven't. If we
all did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound
ourselves." — Thomas Edison
Why can't we live together?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwBjrboyPQc&feature=related
"You are not here merely to make a living. You are here to enable the
world to live more amply, with greater vision, and with a finer spirit
of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world. You
impoverish yourself if you forget this errand."
— U.S. President Woodrow Wilson
“We must live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”
- Martin Luther King Jr.
I choose to make my focus on the truly great peace makers of
society... The men who spoke of peace and became beacons of hope and
light. Those are the men you should remember... the ones that inspire
brotherhood and love of neighbors.
There is discrimination in this world and slavery and slaughter and
starvation. Governments repress their people; millions are trapped in
poverty while the nation grows rich and wealth is lavished on
armaments everywhere. These are differing evils, but they are the
common works of man. They reflect the imperfection of human justice,
the inadequacy of human compassion, our lack of sensibility towards
the suffering of our fellows. But we can perhaps remember -- even if
only for a time -- that those who live with us are our brothers; that
they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek -- as
we do -- nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and
happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.
Surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin
to teach us something. Surely, we can learn, at least, to look at
those around us as fellow men. And surely we can begin to work a
little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own
hearts brothers and countrymen once again. The answer is to rely on
youth -- not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will,
a quality of imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of
the appetite for adventure over the love of ease. The cruelties and
obstacles of this swiftly changing planet will not yield to the
obsolete dogmas and outworn slogans. They cannot be moved by those who
cling to a present that is already dying, who prefer the illusion of
security to the excitement and danger that come with even the most
peaceful progress.
It is a revolutionary world we live in, and this generation at home
and around the world has had thrust upon it a greater burden of
responsibility than any generation that has ever lived. Some believe
there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous
array of the world's ills. Yet many of the world's great movements, of
thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man. A young
monk began the Protestant reformation; a young general extended an
empire from Macedonia to the borders of the earth; a young woman
reclaimed the territory of France; and it was a young Italian explorer
who discovered the New World, and the 32 year-old Thomas Jefferson who
[pro]claimed that "all men are created equal."
These men moved the world, and so can we all. Few will have the
greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a
small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be
written the history of this generation. *It is from numberless diverse
acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped.* Each time a
man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or
strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope,
and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and
daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the
mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
Few are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure
of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a
rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it
is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a
world that yields most painfully to change. And I believe that in this
generation those with the courage to enter the moral conflict will
find themselves with companions in every corner of the globe."
- Robert Kennedy
Why can't we live together?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwBjrboyPQc&feature=related
How many of you would read this to your kids?