I am done with great things and big things
Great institutions and big success
And I am for those tiny, invisible, molecular, moral forces
That work from individual to individual through the cranies of the world
Like so many rootlets
Or like the capillary oozing of water
Yet which, if you give them time
Will rend the hardest monuments of man’s pride
The paradox of our time in history
Is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers
We have wider freeways but narrower viewpoints
We spend more but we have less
We buy more but we enjoy it less
We have bigger houses and smaller families
More conviniences and less time
We have more degrees but less depth
More knowledge but less judgement
More experts but more problems
More medicine but less wellness
Disarmament with mutual honor and confidence is a continuing imperative
Together we must learn how to compose differences
Not with arms but with intellect and decent purpose
Another war could utterly destroy this civilization
Which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years
We must guard against the aquisition of unwarranted influence
Whether sought or unsought
By the military industrial complex
Lyrics respectively by..
William James
Attributed to Columbine High School Student (1999)
Dwight D. Eisenhower (1961)