We Americans know - although others appear to forget - the risk of spreading conflict. We still seek no wider war.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the awareness of Americans regarding the dangers of escalating conflicts, emphasizing a desire for peace.
Lyndon B. Johnson reflects on the awareness among Americans of the consequences of spreading conflict, suggesting that while others may overlook this understanding, there remains a strong desire among Americans to avoid wider wars. This sentiment underscores a national consciousness regarding the importance of peace and the dangers inherent in warfare, reminding us of the delicate balance between conflict and harmony.
In practice
In a speech about foreign policy, one might quote Johnson to emphasize the importance of avoiding unnecessary conflicts.
You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, "you are free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result.
Peace is a journey of a thousand miles and it must be taken one step at a time.
We do this in order to slow down aggression. We do this to increase the confidence of the brave people of South Vietnam who have bravely born this brutal battle for so many years with so many casualties. And we do this to convince the leaders of North Vietnam-and all who seek to share their conquest-of a simple fact: We will not be defeated. We will not grow tired. We will not withdraw either openly or under the cloak of a meaningless agreement.
So far are we generally from thinking what we often say of the shortness of life, that at the time when it is necessarily shortest we form projects which we delay to execute, indulge such expectations as nothing but along train of events can gratify, and suffer those passions to gain upon us which are only excusable in the prime of life.
You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered.
If government is to serve any purpose it is to do for others what they are unable to do for themselves.
Man is fully responsible for his nature and his choices.
It’s natural to die. The fact that we make such a big hullabaloo over it is all because we don’t see ourselves as part of nature. We think because we’re human we’re something above nature.
I too saw the wooden horse blocking the stars.
Absolute silence leads to sadness. It is the image of death.
Even two of humanity's most intimate possessions - a sense of self and a body image - are fluid, highly modifiable creations of the brain's mischievous deployment of electricity and a handful of chemicals. They both can change or be changed on less than a second's notice.
Thinking gives off smoke to prove the existence of fire. A mystic sits inside the burning. There are wonderful shapes in rising smoke that imagination loves to watch. But it's a mistake to leave the fire for that filmy sight. Stay here at the flame's core.
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