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Paul Nitze
Presidential Medal of Freedom
My father was a professor of French literature and languages and was a member of the faculty of the University of Chicago, a most distinguished faculty. But, I watched what they were able to do during World War I and they were ineffective. No one really listened to them. And, it seemed to me that the things that were going on in the world were dangerous, weren't being handled right, and I would like to be involved in trying to do better than my father and his friends were able to do. And, I thought one needed to go into something different than academia in order to be effective in world affairs.
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Paul Nitze
Presidential Medal of Freedom
We were in pretty good economic shape, very good economic shape. The problem was that one country after another was going bankrupt because they were spending their gold and dollar reserves, and wanted to buy things from the United States. So we were running a persistent balance and payment surplus with the rest of the world of some $5 to $8 billion per year. And, you could see that over a few years, why the gold and dollar reserves of all the rest of the world would go down to close to zero and trade would stop. And therefore, something had to be done, and had to be done by us in order to limit this drain upon the rest of the world. And, I guess I was the first one to prepare a piece of paper arguing this point and saying we needed to have a plan which would pump something of the order of $5 billion per year into the world economy, over and above what it would earn through sales to the United States.
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Paul Nitze
Presidential Medal of Freedom
Paul Nitze: For the last forty years (1950-1990), the backbone of U.S. foreign and defense policy has been containment of the Soviet Union, containment of Soviet expansionism, while building a better world amongst the free nations. And, those two were intimately linked. You had to construct the positive end of our policy was constructing a world order of some kind for those who wanted to participate in it. While doing that, you had to defend it against those who were trying to destroy it, particularly the Communists and their allies. That we have done, and the surprising thing is the persistence with which the American people have backed that policy over 40 years. Nobody thought they could do it and that the American people would have that degree of persistence. Certainly neither George Kennan nor I anticipated that it would take that long. George thought it might take ten to 15 years, I thought it would take one to two generations for containment to bring the Soviets to a realization that they ought to change the focus of what they were about. And, it took twice that long, at least. But, now that they have changed their focus, what does that do? What is the substitute for containment as the backbone of our foreign policy? We should have such a new line of foreign policy. I believe that it ought to be the promotion of both diversity and order. Diversity within an order established by the organs of the UN, the regional organizations. We ought to back them on the order part of it, and we ought to promote greater diversity amongst the various parts that don't threaten the structure as a whole.
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Jessye Norman
Legendary Opera Soprano
I think one of the things, when I talk to younger performers, whether they're singers or violinists or pianists, is that I feel that I have encouraged them to go beyond the limitations of the box in which we can be placed as classical performers. That it really is all right to be a cellist, and to play the Elgar Concerto, but to be also interested in the music of the Silk Road, as Yo-Yo Ma has shown so brilliantly. That the music need not have been composed originally for the classical cello. That doesn't mean that you can't play it, and that doesn't mean that you shouldn't be interested in it. Why should a person who's playing the Brahms Second Piano Concerto not be interested in the ragtime music of Scott Joplin? Why should a singer who's singing Mimi -- a Puccini (role) -- not be interested in the music of Cole Porter? I feel that we so often limit ourselves, because we think that we have to follow a certain line, that we have to follow and do what's been done before, instead of finding our own paths and making our own way. I hope that my performance life encourages -- particularly other singers -- not to be limited, not to be put into a box and to be told, "You are that kind of soprano, so therefore this is the kind of music that you're supposed to sing." I said one clever thing -- and I say this all the time -- I said one clever thing in my entire life, and I was asked this question when I was about 23 or 24 years old. When I was doing probably the second interview I'd ever done in my life, and the interviewer said, "What kind of soprano are you? You sing this and you sing that and you've got sort of fiorituri possibilities.." meaning sort of like coloratura sopranos, " so what kind of soprano are you exactly?" And so then I said, in all of my sort of 23 or 24 years, "I think that pigeon holes are only comfortable for pigeons."
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Jessye Norman
Legendary Opera Soprano
Jessye Norman: I love to quote Einstein, when he actually said that, for him, the gift of fantasy, the act of creativity in his life -- the brilliant life of this brilliant man -- that the act of fantasy, creativity, had meant more to him in his life than the ability for absorbing knowledge. Can you imagine that? From Einstein? That the gift of going into one's own mind and thinking of something, thinking that there could be something called the Internet that could connect people all over the world through a little machine that is on your desk, or on your lap or nowadays in your handbag. From where does it come? It comes from deeply inside of us. It comes from that place that is not trying to do anything except live. It isn't thinking about whether or not this is a good idea, whether or not anybody else is going to think this is good, whether it's a workable idea. It is simply there. And some people have the courage to go with it. I had the privilege of seeing Bill Gates receive an award last night and had a chance to chat to him just a moment. When I think of my friends that were in California at the time that there was something in Bill Gates's garage that he wanted people to see, and that he thought was going to be something very interesting, and there were people that were smart enough to say, "Okay, I'll go with you," and other people that said, "Don't be so silly," that he kept going anyway. And look where it has taken us. And people working in this field in technology tell us we are only at the beginning.
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