Mostly I am sorry for the way I thought of other people. Like a good general, I had treated everyone who wasn't with me as against me.
Lee AtwaterRead
It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth, but it is a truth that the country, caught up in its ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime.
Interpretation
The speaker reflects on a difficult experience that revealed profound truths about society's moral challenges.
In this quote, Lee Atwater suggests that personal struggles, particularly those as serious as a deadly illness, can lead to important insights about broader societal issues. He implies that the moral decay and ambitions of the country can be better understood through individual suffering, indicating a relationship between personal hardship and collective awareness.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about personal growth after adversity.
Mostly I am sorry for the way I thought of other people. Like a good general, I had treated everyone who wasn't with me as against me.
I acquired more wealth, power, and prestige than most. But you can acquire all you want and still feel empty. What power wouldn't I trade for a little more time with my family? What price wouldn't I pay for an evening with friends? It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth, but it is a truth that the country, caught up in its ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime.
Apart from the mercy of God, there is no other source of hope for mankind.
Our Age of Anxiety is, in great part, the result of trying to do today's job with yesterday's tools and yesterday's concepts.
Transcendence constitutes selfhood.
It is most cheering and encouraging for me to know that in the efforts which I have made and am making for the restoration of a righteous peace to our country, I am upheld and sustained by the good wishes and prayers of God's people. No one is more deeply than myself aware that without His favor our highest wisdom is but as foolishness and that our most strenuous efforts would avail nothing in the shadow of His displeasure.
God hath work to do in this world; and to desert it because of its difficulties and entanglements, is to cast off His authority. It is not enough that we be just, that we be righteous, and walk with God in holiness; but we must also serve our generation, as David did before he fell asleep. God hath a work to do; and not to help Him is to oppose Him.
We are all ruled in what we do by impulses; and these impulses are so organized that our actions in general serve for our self preservation and that of the race.
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