If any one idea can justly be called the American idea, it is that a child's circumstances at birth should not determine the station in life that that child will occupy as an adult.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the belief that a child's future should not be dictated by their socio-economic background at birth.
Steven Weinberg's quote reflects a fundamental principle of equality and opportunity in American society. It advocates for the idea that every child, regardless of their circumstances at birth, should have the chance to rise and succeed based on their abilities and efforts, rather than being limited by their initial socio-economic conditions.
In practice
During a speech about education reform, one might quote this to emphasize the importance of equal opportunities for all children.
It was one time when people thought the value of the fine structure constant was important. Now of course it's still important, of course, as a practical matter,but we now know that the value it has is a function, that in any fundamental theory you derive the fine structure constant as a function of all sorts of mass ratios and so on and it's not really that fundamental.
Americans swept away the instruments of English hereditary inequality - entails and titles of nobility - even before we had a constitution.
It's very difficult to convince other countries that they shouldn't pursue nuclear weapons programs if we ourselves are actively developing a component of a strategic defense system.
[Science] is corrosive of religious belief, and it's a good thing too.
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
I'm offended by the kind of smarmy religiosity that's all around us, perhaps more in America than in Europe, and not really that harmful because it's not really that intense or even that serious, but just... you know after a while you get tired of hearing clergymen giving the invocation at various public celebrations and you feel, haven't we outgrown all this? Do we have to listen to this?
In that moment Ged understood the singing of the bird, and the language of the water falling in the basin of the fountain, and the shape of the clouds, and the beginning and end of the wind that stirred the leaves; it seemed to him that he himself was a word spoken by the sunlight.
All I require of a religion is that it be tolerant of those who do not agree with it.
What is the government? Nothing, unless supported by opinion.
Upon the glazen shelves kept watch Matthew and Waldo, guardians of the faith The army of unalterable law.
We are our stories. We tell them to stay alive or keep alive those who only live now in the telling.
The gospel of grace nullifies our adulation of televangelists, charismatic superstars, and local church heroes. It obliterates the two-class citizenship theory operative in many American churches. For grace proclaims the awesome truth that all is gift. All that is good is ours, not by right, but by the sheer bounty of a gracious God.
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