Wisdom

875 – “My father had a favorite: saying: ‘Whoever does not talk to his father never knows what his grandfather said.’ He was trying to express the linear quality or wisdom. His morality was not something that he made up on his own; it had been given to him by his own father and his grandfather before that, a mixture of Hutus and Tutsis stretching back hundreds of years to the time out of memory when our people had migrated to this hilly triangle between lakes.”

–Paul Rusesabagina

Today is Father’s Day, if you have the chance visit or speak to your father today.

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815 – President Andrew Johnson on the United State Government

“Our Government springs from and was made for the people — not the people for the Government. To them it owes allegiance; from them it must derive its courage, strength, and wisdom. But while the Government is thus bound to defer to the people, from whom it derives its existence, it should, from the very consideration of its origin, be strong in its power of resistance to the establishment of inequalities. Monopolies, perpetuities, and class legislation are contrary to the genius of free government, and ought not to be allowed. Here there is no room for favored classes or monopolies; the principle of our Government is that of equal laws and freedom of industry. Wherever monopoly attains a foothold, it is sure to be a source of danger, discord, and trouble.”

–Andrew Johnson, 17th President of the United States of America (more…)

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692 – Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society Quote

“The challenge of the next half century is whether we have the wisdom to use that wealth to enrich and elevate our national life, and to advance the quality of our American civilization.

Your imagination, your initiative, and your indignation will determine whether we build a society where progress is the servant of our needs, or a society where old values and new visions are buried under unbridled growth. For in your time we have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society.

The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice, to which we are totally committed in our time. But that is just the beginning.

The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talents. It is a place where leisure is a welcome chance to build and reflect, not a feared cause of boredom and restlessness. It is a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community.

It is a place where man can renew contact with nature. It is a place which honors creation for its own sake and for what it adds to the understanding of the race. It is a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goals than the quantity of their goods.

But most of all, the Great Society is not a safe harbor, a resting place, a final objective, a finished work. It is a challenge constantly renewed, beckoning us toward a destiny where the meaning of our lives matches the marvelous products of our labor.”

–Lyndon B Johnson, 36th President of the United States of America

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305 – “And in that year [1928], I think I learned far more than I taught. The greatest lesson was this one. Nothing at all matters more than trained intelligence. It is the key to success in life, but is the key to meaning in life. And that is true for a nation, too. Our greatest national resource probably is not even listed in your textbooks. Our greatest resource is the skill, the vision, and the wisdom of our people.”

–Lyndon Johnson, 36th President of the United States of America
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