. . . the time has also come to identify and preserve free-flowing stretches of our great rivers before growth and development make the beauty of the unspoiled waterway a memory.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of preserving natural waterways before they are altered by human development.
Lyndon B. Johnson's quote highlights the urgency of recognizing and protecting the pristine sections of our rivers. As societal growth and expansion threaten these beautiful landscapes, it becomes crucial to act swiftly to ensure that future generations can experience the unblemished beauty of these waterways rather than only hear about them as remnants of the past.
In practice
During a speech about environmental conservation, this quote can highlight the need for river preservation.
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.
April ... hath put a spirit of youth in everything.
We travel together, passengers on a little spaceship, dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil, all committed, for our safety, to its security and peace. Preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work and the love we give our fragile craft.
Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.
We tend to block off many of our senses when we're staring at a screen. Nature time can literally bring us to our senses.
At two o'clock in the morning, if you open your window and listen, You will hear the feet of the Wind that is going to call the sun. And the trees in the Shadow rustle and the trees in the moonlight glisten, And though it is deep, dark night, you feel that the night is done.
I choose to listen to the river for a while, thinking river thoughts, before joining the night and the stars.
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