Paul Tsongas

My father's generation gave to my generation a land of wealth and purpose and world economic dominance.

Don't fear your mortality, because it is this very mortality that gives meaning and depth and poignancy to all the days that will be granted to you.

America is the sum of all our journeys as we search for our national community and our national culture.

I want to deploy the leadership to meet the challenges that face us and to restore America's greatness.

You are Americans. You love this country. Together we are entrusted with the principles that represent mankind's greatest political and social achievement.

I am an American. I love this country.

That's a good question. Let me try to evade you.

No one is immune from the larger events of his or her time - the Depression, World War II, civil rights, Vietnam, the spring of 1989 in China. These events intrude upon our lives and radically affect our directions.

Two hundred years ago, our Founding Fathers gave us a democracy. It was based upon the simple, yet noble, idea that government derives its validity from the consent of the governed.

Let's try winning and see what it feels like. If we don't like it, we can go back to our traditions.

That sense of sacredness, that thinking in generations, must begin with reverence for this earth.

When George Bush used the Willie Horton ad, he knew what he was doing.

Thinking in generations also means enabling our young to have a decent standard of living.

I have pretty much made up my mind to do this.

Seven and half years ago I began my own journey. For me and my family it was a time of adversity. But during that adversity I derived a deeper faith. And born out of that adversity was a commitment to devote myself to those people and to those issues that truly matter to me.

You are part of that horrid expression, the best and the brightest. It can be a terrible burden if you let it be, but it is the great challenge of your time. And being a warrior in that challenge should be wondrous.

A commencement is a time of joy. It is also a time of melancholy. But then again, so is life.

This land, this water, this air, this planet - this is our legacy to our young.

Our only weapons in this war of your lifetime are the weapons of the mind.

Our destiny is greatness and we must return to its fulfillment.