touchstone quotations: Barack Obama on Hope

Monday, January 19, 2009

Barack Obama on Hope

Hope in the face of difficulty, hope in the face of uncertainty, the audacity of hope: In the end, that is God's greatest gift to us, the bedrock of this nation, a belief in things not seen, a belief that there are better days ahead.

Barack Obama
Democratic National Convention, Keynote Speech
July 27, 2004

Change Can Happen.

Source: barackobama.com

Joseph Campbell on Interesting Times

I have read somewhere of an old Chinese curse: "May you be born in an interesting time." This is a very interesting time. There are no models for anything that is going on. It is a period of free fall into the future, and each has to make his or her own way. The old models are not working; the new have not yet appeared. In fact, it is we who are even now shaping of the new in the shaping of our interesting lives. And, that is the whole sense (in mythological terms) of the present challenge: we are the ancestors of an age to come, the unwitting generators of its supporting myths, the mythic models that will inspire its lives.

Joseph Campbell
1904 - 1987
Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine, 2013