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.
The God-image in man was not destroyed by the Fall but was only damaged and corrupted (βdeformedβ), and can be restored through God's grace. The scope of the integration is suggested by the descensus ad inferos, the descent of Christ's soul to hell, its work of redemption embracing even the dead. The psychological equivalent of this is the integration of the collective unconscious which forms an essential part of the individuation process.
Lawyers spend their professional careers shoveling smoke.
The most persistent sound which reverberates through man's history is the beating of war drums.
The more lucidly we think, the more we are cut off: the more deeply we enter into reality, the less we can think.
I am so in favor of the actual infinite that instead of admitting that Nature abhors it, as is commonly said, I hold that Nature makes frequent use of it everywhere, in order to show more effectively the perfections of its Author.
Walks. The body advances, while the mind flutters around it like a bird.
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