When I was young, poverty was so common that we didn't know it had a name.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the normalization of poverty in society and how those experiencing it may not even recognize it as a distinct issue.
Lyndon B. Johnson's quote highlights the pervasive nature of poverty during his youth, illustrating how it was such a common experience that it lacked distinction or recognition. This suggests that societal conditions can shape perceptions of hardship, making individuals unaware of their own struggles because they are shared widely among their peers. It encourages reflection on the social context of poverty and the importance of naming and addressing such issues.
In practice
In a discussion about social issues, one might say, 'As Lyndon B. Johnson reflected, poverty was so common in his youth that it didn't even have a name.'
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.
As I don't know about tomorrow, I never save the best for later.
I keep turning over new leaves, and spoiling them, as I used to spoil my copybooks; and I make so many beginnings there never will be an end. (Jo March)
While new rights are attributed to or indeed almost presumed by the individual, life is not always protected as the primary value and the primordial right of every human being. The ultimate aim of medicine remains the defence and promotion of life.
My life should be unique; it should be an alms, a battle, a conquest, a medicine.
If, as they say, the threat of the hangman's noose has a powerful way of focusing one's attention, the same can be said of pregnancy.
Music is the soundtrack to the crappy movie that is my life.
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