I suppose, in a way, this has become part of my soul. It is a symbol of my life. Whatever I have done that really matters, I've done wearing it. When the time comes, it will be in this that I journey forth. What greater honor could come to an American, and a soldier?
I have spent my life judging the distance between American reality and the American dream.
We can't afford to sacrifice another generation of American children to bureaucratic politics. We've got to get it done. The future, the health, the life - our nation depends on it and it's just foolish to think or act otherwise.
We have to program the mind of the public that age is not ugly. Age is just age. Wake up, American children, and stop listening to other people's voices. Know yourself, be true to yourself and make a contribution. It took me half my life to know myself. I listened to other people's opinions and took them as gospel.
Before it became a ubiquitous part of urban life, Starbucks was, in most American cities, a radically new idea.
I went to public schools, and while Gary was, like most American cities, racially segregated, it was at least socially integrated - a cross section of children from families of all walks of life.
What you do on immigration policy, what you do on education policy, what you do on tax, regulatory, and energy policy, all connects together - and will be based on a simple determination about what will make life better in America for American citizens.
By requiring all 30 million Americans age 18 to 25 to perform two years of national service, in the military or civilian life, we will be asking for a shared sacrifice from all American citizens.
Life is not living in the suburbs with a white picket fence. That's not life. Somehow our American culture has made it out that that's what life needs to be - and that if it's not that, it's all screwed up. It's not.
I think the most important thing that I think everyone in America must have is belief that wherever they live, whatever station they have in life, that the American dream is alive and well. I think the fracturing of trust and confidence is in the American dream.
I'm convinced that the Great Lakes region will be at the center of an internally-focused North American economy when the hallucination of oil-powered globalism dissolves. Places like Buffalo, Cleveland, and Detroit will have a new life, but not at the scale of the twentieth century.
Freedom. Freedom of religion. Freedom to speak their mind. Freedom to build a life. And yes, freedom to build a business. With their own hands. This is the essence of the American experience.
I've had a terrific life, from building one company to be the second largest company in the securities industry and merging that into American Express, and becoming president of that company.
The family I'm from, well, no one had their name on big buildings. My family were builders of a different kind. Builders in the way most American families are. They used whatever tools they had - whatever God gave them - and whatever life in America provided - and built better lives and better futures for their kids.
I got into journalism not to be a journalist but to try to change American foreign policy. I'm a corny person. I was a dreamer predating my journalistic life, so I got into journalism as a means to try to change the world.
There's something really beautiful about people from all different walks of life... who are bound together by this big idea about American identity and American unity and American interests.
In 'Shadow Tag,' Erdrich creates scenes from a fictional marriage, that of two American Indians, Irene and her painter husband Gil, that suggest some of the worst psychological torments and stresses of real life.
The liberation of Iraq, which is already hard to justify from the perspective of American interests, at least had the virtue of freeing Iraqis from a brutal dictator. Despite all the anarchy and violence, life has gotten better for most Iraqis.
Now I've devoted my life to making sure that I can be a trailblazer for any other African American kids or any other gay kids or any other kids that just feel weird or uncomfortable and have their own issues and don't know how to express themselves. I want to be like a beacon for those kids now.
Envy is the central fact of American life.
