That everybody can do something, without regard to how old or young they are, rich or poor or middle class they are, how busy or not busy they are and what level skills they have. Everyone can do something. And everybody should do something. ... And if you do it, you'll be happier.
We have seen a man dragged to death in Texas simply because he was black. A young man murdered in Wyoming simply because he was gay. In the last year alone, we've seen the shootings of African Americans, Asian Americans, and Jewish children simply because of who they were. This is not the American way. We must draw the line. Without delay, we must pass the Hate Crimes Prevention Act and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. And we should reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act.
My father left me with the feeling that I had to live for two people, and that if I did it well enough, somehow I could make up for the life he should have had. And his memory infused me, at a younger age than most, with a sense of my own mortality. The knowledge that I, too, could die young drove me both to try to drain the most out of every moment of life and to get on with the next big challenge. Even when I wasn't sure where I was going, I was always in a hurry.
First, I worry about climate change. It's the only thing that I believe has the power to fundamentally end the march of civilization as we know it, and make a lot of the other efforts that we're making irrelevant and impossible
I don’t think we’ve found a way to promote economic and political integration in a manner that benefits the vast majority of people in all societies…
In the end if you want to promote democracy and you believe in it, then you have to understand that voters usually see these grand political issues through the prism of their own experience, how it impacts themselves, their families, their communities, how they imagine their children will live. … If ordinary people don’t perceive that our grand ideas are working in their lives, then they can’t develop, the higher level of consciousness, if I can use a kind of touchy-feely word, that American philosopher Ken Wilber wrote a whole book about, called A Theory of Everything. He said, you know, the problem is the world needs to be more integrated but it requires a consciousness that’s way up here, and an ability to see beyond the differences among us. So I worry about that.
The central reality of the twenty-first century world, as the spread of terrorism and the vulnerability of the United States to it demonstrate, is that our era is globally interdependent but far from integrated. We learned on 11 September that the very forces of globalisation we helped to create - open borders and commerce, easy travel, instant communications, instant transfers and widened access to information and technology - can be used to build or destroy, to unite or divide.
At the same time, old confrontations have taken on frightening urgency, especially the India-Pakistan conflict over Kashmir and the violent stalemate in the Middle East. Progress on these and other global challenges requires us to develop a larger strategy for American foreign policy, rooted in a fundamental commitment to move the world from interdependence to an integrated global community committed to peace and prosperity, freedom and security.
At the heart of all these struggles is a global battle of ideas, especially in the Islamic world, where fundamentalist rivalries have twisted religion to justify suicide assassination of innocents as a legitimate political tool blessed by Allah. This epic battle revolves around three very old and fundamental questions: can we have inclusive communities or must they be exclusive? Can we have a shared future or must our futures be separate? Can we possess the whole truth or must we join others in searching for it?
These dilemmas present perhaps the most enduring conundrum of human history: can people derive their identity primarily by positive association or does life's meaning also require negative comparison to others?
Q. How fundamental is the clash of values in war on terror & how long will it continue?
A. Well, I think the clash of values is more important than the religious differences. What will they have if they win a war only because they can force both sides into the killing of civilians? That is basically what happened in Lebanon . Hezbollah fired all those rockets and then hid among civilian populations. What kind of world will they be leaving for their children and grandchildren? Do they really believe they have the absolute truth and that they cannot accommodate differences?
The central question for our time is not how you worship God, or even whether you worship God. It's whether you believe in this life you can be in possession of the absolute truth and you have the right to impose it on others. We need to remember that too, those of us who are the targets of terror. Because we are rich, we are strong, we have sometimes been insensitive to the weak and to the claims of people who couldn't get high enough on our agenda. So if we want to exhort people and persuade them as well as prevent them from engaging in terror we have to act like we believe our common humanity is more important.
He was a martyr of peace but was the victim of hate. If people can't let go of the hatred of their enemies they risk sowing the seeds of hate among themselves.
You can put wings on a pig, but you don't make it an eagle. Describing a modified piece of legislation.
I believe I'm a better authority than anybody else in America on my own wife. I have never known a person with a stronger sense of right and wrong in my life - ever.
