A life without criticism is not worth living.

Every time you stand up for an ideal, you send forth a tiny ripple of hope.

What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr's cause has ever been stilled by an assassin's bullet...

I believe that in this generation those with the courage to enter the conflict will find themselves with companions in every corner of the world.

Too often we honor swagger and bluster and the wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others.

Each nation has different obstacles and different goals, shaped by the vagaries of history and of experience. Yet as I talk to young people around the world I am impressed not by the diversity but by the closeness of their goals, their desires and their concerns and their hope for the future.

Our future may lie beyond our vision, but it is not completely beyond our control. It is the shaping impulse of America that neither fate nor nature nor the irresistible tides of history, but the work of our own hands, matched to reason and principle.