I've always argued that this country has benefited immensely from the fact that we draw people from all over the world.
Alan GreenspanRead
Revolutions are something you see only in retrospect.
Interpretation
Revolutions are often only understood after they have occurred, reflecting on their implications.
Alan Greenspan's quote speaks to the nature of revolutions, suggesting that their significance and impact are often only clear when viewed through the lens of hindsight. It implies that change can be confusing and complex in the moment, yet the outcomes and lessons learned become more apparent as time passes.
In practice
During a discussion on historical events, someone might quote Greenspan to emphasize how we only appreciate certain revolutions after they've shaped our present.
I've always argued that this country has benefited immensely from the fact that we draw people from all over the world.
There's no other job in public life that is like chairman of the Fed.
Since 1948 I have spent every single day thinking how the economic and political worlds have changed.
Most high-income people in our country do not realize that their incomes are being subsidized by their protection from competition from highly skilled people who are prevented from immigrating to the United States. But we need such skills in order to staff our productive economy, so that the standard of living for Americans as a whole can grow.
I don't know where the stock market is going, but I will say this, that if it continues higher, this will do more to stimulate the economy than anything we've been talking about today or anything anybody else was talking about.
Every economy exists, no matter what the level of democracy, has elements of crony capitalism. It's - given human nature and given the democratic structures, which we all, I assume, adhere to, that is an inevitable consequence.
Average working people need more fresh starts. Big corporations, banks, and Donald Trump need fewer.
The most rigid structures, the most impervious to change, will collapse first.
There is no debate about whether or not climate change is happening. We will deal with it as a challenge. But we also take it as an opportunity to invest.
When I was 15 years old in the tenth grade, I heard Martin Luther King, Jr. Three years later, when I was 18, I met Dr. King and we became friends. Two years after that I became very involved in the civil rights movement. I was in college at the time. As I got more and more involved, I saw politics as a means of bringing about change
Change is as inexorable as time, yet nothing meets with more resistance.
What does it look like to build a city, state, or nation invested in communities thriving rather than their death and destruction? To ask this question is the first act of an abolitionist.
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