Because I worked at the White House on 9/11, I carry the memories and the pain of that day in a wound that is particularly deep - one that is very personal. Some of you were not in government on 9/11, and some are from parts of the country where people do not think much today about terrorism. I appreciate that some may not share the same sense of sadness and anger. But I must ask you to take on the perspective that President Bush and I had on September 11th and the days following - the brutal unprovoked murders of mothers and fathers - sons and daughters...the phone calls of desperate good byes...symbols of American wealth and power in flames and ruins. Five years have passed. I concede it may be difficult for some to stay committed to this mission - maintaining the necessary intensity and commitment - without that perspective.
Alberto GonzalesRelated topics
american anger ask bush carry commit commitment country day deep desperate five following good government house intensity maintaining mission necessary pain people personal perspective power president sadness sense september share stay take terrorism think wealth white wound today years phone days partsRelated quotes
Senator Obama and I have had and argued our differences, and he has prevailed. No doubt many of those differences remain.
These are difficult times for our country. And I pledge to him tonight to do all in my power to help him lead us through the many challenges we face.
I urge all Americans ... I urge all Americans who supported me to join me in not just congratulating him, but offering our next president our good will and earnest effort to find ways to come together to find the necessary compromises to bridge our differences and help restore our prosperity, defend our security in a dangerous world, and leave our children and grandchildren a stronger, better country than we inherited. Whatever our differences, we are fellow Americans. And please believe me when I say no association has ever meant more to me than that.
John McCain
I had read in the story-cube that the speed of light was a universal limit; that in a thousand years of experimentation-despite any number of false dawns-no one had ever managed to circumvent it. This had made me feel hemmed in and claustrophobic-it was like being told I must never run or skip down the long, dreary corridors of the house, but must walk instead, with my neck straight and my hands held behind my back. I felt affronted, as if the speed of light was a personal assault on my liberty. Why should I not go as fast as I pleased? Why should I not skip and run? But I could no more explain why the speed limit existed than I could explain why two and two did not make five. It was simply the way things were, one of those rules-like the edict not to visit certain parts of the house-that were not to be questioned.
Alastair Reynolds
What we are looking at on all our TV sets is a man who finally, after 24 years of frenzied effort, became the President of the United States with a personal salary of $200,000 a year and an unlimited expense account including a fleet of private helicopters, jetliners, armored cars, personal mansions and estates on both coasts and control over a budget beyond the wildest dream of King Midas ... and all the dumb bastard can show us, after five years of total freedom to do anything he wants with all this power, is a shattered national economy, disastrous defeat in a war we could have ended four years ago on far better terms than he finally came around to, and a hand-picked personal staff put together through five years of screening, whose collective criminal record will blow the minds of high-school American History students for the next 100 years.
Hunter S. Thompson
I'm not very different from anyone else who has ever tried to accomplish something with his life. My motivation comes from my personal life, from watching what my mother and father went through when I was growing up, from what we experienced as migrant workers in California. That dream, that vision grew from my own experience with racism, with hope, with a desire to be treated fairly, and to see my people treated as human beings and not as chattel. It grew from anger and rage, emotions I felt 40 years ago when people of my color were denied the right to see a movie or eat at a restaurant in many parts of California. It grew from the frustration and humiliation I felt as a boy who couldn't understand how the growers could abuse and exploit farm workers when there were so many of us and so few of them.
Cesar Chavez
If Christ were to walk in this world today, do you know what would happen to Him? He would be placed in a mental institution and given psycho-therapy, just as would His Saints. The world would crucify Him today just as it did 2000 years ago, for the world has not learned a thing, except more devious forms of hypocrisy. And what would happen if, in one of my classes at the university, I would one day tell my students that all the learning of this world is of no importance beside the duty of worshipping God, accepting the God-man who died for our sins, and preparing for the life of the world to come? They would probably laugh at me, and the university officials, if they found out, would fire me-for it is against the law to preach the Truth in our universities. We say that we live in a Christian society, but we do not: we live in a society.
Seraphim Rose
