Long

Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you; it means learning to respect and use your own brains and instincts; hence, grappling with hard work.

What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.

A cleaner neighborhood begins with your own broom. A more beautiful city begins with a seed in your own garden. A more just society begins in your own heart.

I do not believe that the poison clouds of polluted air must inevitably consume our atmosphere. I believe there are answers, and I think I am looking into the faces of several hundred of those answers this morning.

Do the little things right and the big things will take care of themselves. Don't look for the touchdown run all the time; think about hitting in there tough play after play and then, boom, all of a sudden a big play will present itself.

To be in a locker room before a big game and to look into strong faces, which say, 'If we can only do it today' — to be with aggressive, ambitious people who have lost themselves in something bigger than they are — this is what living is all about.

The right to protest exists to protect the powerless from the powerful. When protest itself becomes a form of power, it must be exercised with the same responsibility we demand of all power.

The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war. We do not want a war. We do not now expect a war. This generation of Americans has already had enough — more than enough — of war and hate and oppression.

If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, like Shakespeare wrote poetry, like Beethoven composed music; sweep streets so well that all the host of Heaven and Earth will have to pause and say, 'Here lived a great street sweeper, who swept his job well.'

Those who discovered and pioneered this land had to have rare qualities of courage and imagination, nor did these qualities stop there. Even the modern-day immigrants have been possessed of courage beyond that of their neighbors — the courage to tear up centuries-old roots and leave their homelands, to come to this land where even the language was strange.

This democracy of ours which sometimes we've treated so lightly, is more than ever a comfortable cloak, so let us not tear it asunder, for no man knows once it is destroyed where or when he will find its protective warmth again.

It's all baloney to talk about this younger generation winning the peace. We won't come to power for 20 years. The same generation that got us into this mess has got to get us out of it. What really matters is not what new thoughts we kids are thinking but what new thoughts you older guys are thinking.