What is your favorite quote and why?
America is at its best when given a challenge. I have two quotes that are very much in that vein. The first is from Thomas Paine's pamphlet Crisis. Written during the height of the Revolutionary War,
"What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value."
The other is John F. Kennedy's speech on why America should go to the moon. He challenged America to do what had been almost unthinkable a decade before. This time America was challenged to live up to its potential, and it did.
]]>"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win"