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John Lewis
Champion of Civil Rights
"At times history and fate meet at a single place in man's unending search for freedom. So it was more than a century ago at Lexington and at Concord. So it was at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama." He condemned the violence in Selma, and he mentioned the fact that one good man, a man of God, was killed. Reverend James Reed, a white minister from Boston, had participated in a march on March 9th. And then the night of March 9th he went out to try to get something to eat with two or three other white ministers, and they were jumped and beaten by members of the Klan, and a day or so later he died at a local hospital in Birmingham. President Johnson recognized that, but before he closed that speech and introduced the Voting Rights Act he said, "We shall overcome." He said it more than once, "And we shall overcome." And he became the first President to use the theme song of the Civil Rights Movement in a major speech, and Dr. King was so moved he started crying, and we all cried a little when we heard Lyndon Johnson say, "And we shall overcome."
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John Lewis
Champion of Civil Rights
I still talk about the Beloved Community. I still talk about the one America, one family, one house. The American house, the world house, we all live in the same house. Sometimes I feel like I've passed this way once before. I think the movement and what I went through during the height of the Civil Rights Movement prepared me to stand up and fight for what I think is right and fair and just, but it also prepared me to be patient in a sense, to take the long hard look. That the struggle to redeem the soul of America, to create the Beloved Community, or to bring about change, is not a struggle that lasts for one day or one month or one year, but is a struggle of a lifetime. So if you're trying to get a piece of legislation through the Atlanta City Council, or try to get a piece of legislation through the Congress, or try to change your fellow members to move to a certain -- you just keep working at it. You don't give up. You hang in there. And that's what we did during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, and that's what we continue to do today, for the fight is not just for today, but it's for tomorrow and the next year and years to come.
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Maya Lin
Artist and Architect
Maya Lin: To me the American Dream is probably being able to follow your own personal calling. And to be able to do what you want to do is an incredible freedom that we have. It provides for opportunities that you don't get in that many other countries. I think the American Dream also represents that we have a responsibility to share it, and to not just sort of hoard that freedom, but hopefully share that freedom with other countries and with people within our own country that don't have that freedom.
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George Lucas
Creator of "Star Wars"
If America is the pursuit of happiness, the best way to pursue happiness is to help other people. Because there's nothing else that will make you happy. You can be as rich, and famous, and powerful as you want to be, and it will not bring you happiness. That's said over and over and over, again. It's such a cliché that it hardly needs to be said, but people don't understand that it's actually true. You can find people rich, powerful and famous, and they aren't happy. And you can find people who have discovered the fact that it's really helping people, it's really being compassionate toward other human beings that makes you happy, that gives you a spiritual fulfillment -- a kind of fulfillment that goes way beyond anything you can buy. This is a 5,000 year old idea, and every prophet, every intelligent, rational, successful person has said it. It's a very, very simple idea and the most important part of it is, true.
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