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Ernest Gaines
A Lesson Before Dying
I could probably name 50 guys my age -- who would be my age now had they lived -- who were destroyed in their 20s and their 30s and their 40s because of the world they lived in. Violence, death by gunshots or a knife or heart attacks or whatever, strokes because of the kind of stress they had to live under. They did not have my chance. So I'm only a chronicler. Who am I to write about some things, certain things? Yeah, I went from picking the potatoes and picking the cotton to winning all these awards and getting paid for my stories and my books I made, and the films and all that sort of thing, but I think about the others as well, the ones who never had a chance, and what I received just cannot possibly make up for what they've lost. It cannot possibly make up for it. And I realize that not all of us are going to have what I have, but how can we -- how can the world -- make it easier, so that these young men don't wish for death at 20 and 30 years old, take any chance at 20 or 30 years old, or even their teens, because they don't care, because they don't see any future in their lives? If we can get a world like that, fix a world like that, make a world like that, then I think that would be the ideal American Dream, but I don't know if that's going to happen in our time.
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Bill Gates
Co-Founder and Chairman, Microsoft Corporation
Bill Gates: I think the American Dream is kind of a global dream now, that young people can come up with new ideas and create companies that make a contribution, not just jobs, but whatever their innovations that they bring about. Capitalism is this unbelievable open system that if you combine it with good infrastructure, good education, the creativity that we find for people who have had those chances is always going to surprise us. It's always going to come up with new seeds, new medicines, new software, new movies, things that make the world a better place.
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Vince Gill
Country Music Hall of Fame
The American Dream to me is, it's a fair chance. I think that's all anybody could ever want and anybody could ever expect. I see an awful lot of people that think they're entitled to things. You've got to earn them, you know. They have to be earned. You're not entitled to -- you know. You parent a kid, and they think they're entitled to every toy on the shelf. And you just go, I don't think so. To me, that's what I'd like to see. The American Dream for me would be a fair chance for everybody, not just the "haves." You see a lot of life where most people are too hung up on the pecking order of things, and not everyone does get a fair chance. It was always my argument with my father about anything was, until there's a level playing field, you can't have a right answer to something. So that would be my definition of the American Dream is a fair chance for everybody.
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