Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.
Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
Inaugural address, 20 January 1961, in Vital Speeches 1 February 1961, p. 2
John F Kennedy
Whether you think you can or whether you think you can’t, you’re right!
Henry Ford
You see things; and you say ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say ‘Why not?’
George Bernard Shaw
Within each of us lies the power of our consent to health and sickness, to riches and poverty, to freedom and to slavery. It is we who control these, and not another.
Richard Bach (Illusions)
Never look down on anybody unless you’re helping him up.
Jesse Jackson
To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Inspiration may be a form of superconsciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness - I wouldn’t know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self- consciousness.
Aaron Copland (1900 - 1990)
We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action.
Frank Tibolt
You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
Jack London (1876 - 1916)
Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time… The wait is simply too long.
Leonard Bernstein (1918 - 1990)
I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled [poets] to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.
Socrates (469 BC - 399 BC), In “Apology,” sct. 21, by Plato.
Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration.
Thomas A. Edison (1847 - 1931), Harper’s Monthly, 1932
A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.
Maya Angelou
There is no use trying, said Alice; one can’t believe impossible things. I dare say you haven’t had much practice, said the Queen. When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
Lewis Carroll
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
George Bernard Shaw
The journey is the reward.
Chinese Proverb
People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.
Elizabeth Kubler Ross