I know
America's youth. I believe in them. We can be proud that they are
better educated, more committed, more passionately driven by
conscience than any generation in our history.
No people has ever been so close to the achievement of a just and
abundant society, or so possessed of the will to achieve it.
Because our strengths are so great, we can afford to appraise our
weaknesses with candor and to approach them with hope.
Standing in this same place a third of a century ago, Franklin
Delano Roosevelt addressed a Nation ravaged by depression and
gripped in fear. He could say in surveying the Nation's troubles:
"They concern, thank God, only material things."
Our crisis today is the reverse.
We have found ourselves rich in goods, but ragged in spirit;
reaching with magnificent precision for the moon, but falling into
raucous discord on earth.
We are caught in war, wanting peace. We are torn by division,
wanting unity. We see around us empty lives, wanting fulfillment.
We see tasks that need doing, waiting for hands to do them.
To a crisis of the spirit, we need an answer of the spirit.
To find that answer, we need only look within ourselves.
When we listen to "the better angels of our nature," we find that
they celebrate the simple things, the basic things--such as
goodness, decency, love, kindness.
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