I have news for the forces of greed and the defenders of the status quo: your time has come - and gone. It's time for change in America.
Interpretation
The quote calls for a transformative shift against greed and complacency in society.
William J. Clinton's quote emphasizes the necessity for change in America, directly confronting those who prioritize greed and maintain the status quo. It serves as a rallying cry for progress and reform, suggesting that the current state of affairs is no longer acceptable and that new ideas and actions are urgently needed for a better future.
In practice
This quote could be used in a political rally to inspire supporters to push for policies that drive change.
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.
...we're told by TV and Reader's Digest that a crisis will trigger massive personal change--and that those big changes will make the pain worthwhile. But from what he could see, big change almost never happens. People simply feel lost. They have no idea what to say or do or feel or think. they become messes and tend to remain messes.
Changing communities and changing our country is going to last a lot longer than how many footballs you catch or how many touchdowns you make.
We need to intentionally invest in health, in home ownership, in entrepreneurship, in access to democracy, in economic empowerment. If we don't do these things, we shouldn't be surprised that racial inequality persists because inequalities compound.
Whatever there be of progress in life comes not through adaptation but through daring.
If there has been any progress in the Chinese society and politics over the last 20 years, it is all because the citizens have been pushing for change.
I believe at the heart of any revolution for social justice and human dignity are consent and agency, the unequivocal belief that I own my body - not the state, not the church/mosque/temple, not the street and not the family.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.