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Jimmy Carter
Nobel Prize for Peace
What I pointed out was that our nation had been faced in years leading up to that time with severe challenges and blows: the loss of the war in Vietnam, the assassination of President Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.; the Watergate scandals, where a president had to resign in disgrace; the revelations that the CIA had deliberately plotted murder. These were blows to our country. But I thought the resilience of our nation was sufficient to overcome that kind of difficulty, and that we needed to look at ourselves and see where is the strength of our country. And the purpose of the speech, I said that we are faced with an energy crisis. We are becoming increasingly dependent on foreign oil; our nation's security is in danger. It's not a politically popular thing to do something about this, to save energy, to conserve. But I believed that our country was strong enough to do it. And that was the purpose and the essence of the speech. But the political opponents just took the negative side, that we had serious problems, and characterized it as it never was, as a "malaise speech." We still suffer malaise in this country, and I'll use the word this time. But what gnaws at the vitals of our nation are the unsolved problems of juvenile delinquency, teenage pregnancy, school dropouts, drug addiction, homelessness, joblessness. We don't know in this country the extent of these problems, and we cover our eyes. It's more convenient not to look at them. I think this country obviously has the ability, as no other nation in the world does, to address those problems successfully. That's going to be a major part of my own work the next four, five or more years. Just to show that in Atlanta, Georgia, we can marshal all the resources in our community and bring about a simultaneous addressing of these human problems and see if we can do something about them. It's a kind of thing that is not only an affliction on a nation or in a community, but a wonderful opportunity to show the strength and idealism and benevolence of American people.
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Jimmy Carter
Nobel Prize for Peace
Jimmy Carter: I think it's a choice of what kind of leadership the United States wants to provide in the world. It's defining, in our country, the definition of greatness. What is a great nation? It's obvious that we are now the only superpower. There is no more Soviet Union as we've known it. We will have an unchallenged, open, panoramic opportunity on a global scale to demonstrate the finest aspects of what we know in this country: peace, freedom, democracy, human rights, benevolent sharing, love, the easing of human suffering. Is that going to be our list of priorities or not? I don't see any indication yet, after the Soviet Union has disintegrated, that our country is adopting these kinds of concepts as the thrust of our nation's influence. I hope that will come. And that's a challenge to our country that I see as greatest. What are the decisions going to be? We can drift along as though there were still a Cold War, wasting hundreds of billions of dollars on weapons that will never be used, ignoring the problems of people in this country and around the world, being one of the worst environmental violators on earth, standing against any sort of viable programs to protect the world's forests, or to cut down on acid rain or the global warming or ozone depletion. We can ignore human rights violations in other countries. Or we can take on these things as a true leader ought to and say, "This is the inspiring challenge of America for the future."
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Steve Case
Co-Founder, America Online
Steve Case: I think it's really about hope and optimism and possibility. I think a great example -- because we happen to be talking when Ronald Reagan passed away, and this has been a week celebrating his life. I think he is the prototypical example of the American dream. Somebody who came up from modest beginnings, had a certain perspective on life and was an actor, when people didn't necessarily think he could act or that he should act, and then moved from that into a position of leadership in the Motion Picture Association, and then decided to move into politics as governor and then president. I think most people would have to say -- whether you liked his politics or didn't -- that he in his 93 years on earth lived an extraordinary life and really is an example of the boundless possibilities and optimism of America.
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Steve Case
Co-Founder, America Online
I find it interesting that in America, even though most people are more optimistic and most people around the world do view America as the city on the hill and more entrepreneurial and more risk taking and less traditional, still in America most people don't take risks, and most people are pretty traditional. It's actually a relatively small number of people that really are those risk takers, and a relatively small number of people that end up really having an impact on the world, and it doesn't take a lot of people. It just takes a few people who really care and stick with it, and that I think is what America is about. I think that's one of the things that's great really about The American Academy of Achievement, really shining a spotlight on that notion that anything is possible, but it starts with somebody having a dream and sticking with that through thick and thin.
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Dale Chihuly
Master Glass Artist
Dale Chihuly: I've never thought about what the American Dream was, but I guess I would say that it's being able to pursue whatever you want to do. For me it's being able to do what you want to do and survive. For somebody else I suppose it could mean having an income, but who would want to have an income from something you didn't want to do? I guess you might if you were in a place where you couldn't have that, but the American Dream to me is pursuing whatever you want to do and finding a way to be successful at doing it.
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