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Martha Stewart
Multi-Media Lifestyle Entrepreneur
Martha Stewart: For me, an American Dream, if you read Theodore Dreiser, or you read other people who have written about what they consider the American Dream, it always has to do with monetary success, or poor boy makes good, or that kind of thing. To me that's not what it's all about. It's about, actually, when you get to be my age, having kind of a serenity about your life, and a good feeling about what you have done and what you can still do.
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Robert Strauss
Presidential Medal of Freedom
I think that what we have to strive for is the kind of America that we almost have, and we are getting closer every year, and that is an America that has the kind of opportunity and climate that everybody can dream. It's hard to believe you can expect some of these poor people who are born into poverty and into homes with no parent, no father, no mother, alcohol, drugs -- you can't expect those people to have dreams. But I have found that everyone in this country who has an opportunity does have their own individual dream. Maybe it's just for a job that pays a good wage, and that's a very good dream for some people. For other people, it's the presidency, or great wealth, a great invention. But as long as we have the kind of climate where people can dream, then they will dream, and a lot of those dreams will come true. But an awful lot of people in this country today cannot have that kind of dream, because it would be too foolish. We're moving in the right direction, and I am always an optimist, and I am very high on that climate becoming the climate that permeates this country all the way across, not just for those of us who have been more blessed.
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Amy Tan
Best-Selling Novelist
I realize now that the most important thing that is an American Dream -- in looking at people living in other countries, in looking at the life my sisters had not growing up in this country -- is the American freedom to create your own identity. I think that's uniquely American. In no other country do you have that opportunity. It's not to say that everything will happen fairly and the way that you want. But I think that this is a country where that opportunity -- to be as wild as you want, as generous as you want, as crazy as you want, as artistic as you want, that all of that, the whole range -- exists. And we have a Constitution, a tradition, a culture that supports that. I hope it continues to support that. I hope it especially continues to support the arts in that direction. It is that self-determination of your identity, to define what it means to be an American, and that nobody defines that for you.
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