If you want to know where I come by the passionate commitment I have to bringing people together without regard to race, it all started with my grandfather.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the importance of familial influence in shaping one's values and commitments, particularly towards unity and inclusivity.
In this quote, William J. Clinton reflects on how his grandfather's influence instilled in him a strong sense of dedication to fostering connections among diverse groups of people, irrespective of their racial backgrounds. It emphasizes the foundational role that family plays in developing our beliefs and the principles we uphold throughout our lives.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech at a multicultural event to highlight the importance of family in embracing diversity.
You know, there was a recent poll which said that young people in the generation of the students here felt it was far more likely that they would see a UFO than that they would draw Social Security... It's very important you understand this. Once you understand this, you realize this is not an episode from the X Files, and you're not more likely to see a UFO if you do certain specific things.
When we got organized as a country, [and] wrote a fairly radical Constitution, with a radical Bill of Rights, giving radical amounts of freedom to Americans, it was assumed that Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly...When personal freedom is being abused, you have to move to limit it.
For too long we've been told about 'us' and 'them.' Each and every election we see a new slate of arguments and ads telling us that 'they' are the problem, not 'us.' But there can be no 'them' in America. There's only us.
There is a huge body of business evidence now showing that energy savings give better service at lower cost with higher profit. We have to tear down barriers to successful markets and we have to create incentives to enter them.
Demand that your government pays more attention. It's immoral that people in Africa die like flies of diseases that no one dies of in the United States. And the more disease there is, the more political unrest there will be, leading to more Darfurs, which the U.S. will have to pay to fix.
I was not elected to produce a pile of vetoes.
Ne speaketh not; and yet there lies a conversation in his eyes.
The most dangerous word in any human tongue is the word for brother. It's inflammatory.
Close friends and relatives, while not meaning to do so, often handicap on through 'opinions' and sometimes though ridicule, which is meant to be humorous. Thousands of men and women carry inferiority complexes with them all through life, because some well-meaning, but ignorant person destroyed their confidence through opinions or ridicule
The thorn from the bush one has planted, nourished and pruned pricks more deeply and draws more blood.
We need a witness to our lives. There's a billion people on the planet... I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you're promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things... all of it, all of the time, every day. You're saying 'Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness'.
The most congenial social occasions are those ruled by cheerful deference of each for all.
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