Political Quotes

“Mr. President, for those from my generation, they will recall the name of James Dean. Some will recall him as a movie actor, others as a model for a generation, or at least a portion of a generation. He was a free spirit by anyone's description. Some folks may recall a drag race in one of his movies. The drag racing was popular at a time when young Americans fell in love with their cars, which has been for much of our history but, following World War II, gained strength and power. In the particular scene of this James Dean movie, he and another fellow line up their cars at a cliff overlooking the ocean, and they race toward the cliff, both accelerating as hard as they can. Of course, the contest is to see who can get ahead and stay in there the longest without turning away from the cliff. One can see that this is not long-term planning. It did fit the particular egos of the characters involved. Some may think that is fanciful. Surely, no rational person would point their car toward a cliff and accelerate. Some would say, 'Well, they didn't believe a cliff was there.' But, of course, no one who was in that gang in the movie was under the impression the cliff was not there. They knew very well it was there. It was part of their ego, part of their image to show how brave they were to accelerate the cars as they moved toward that cliff.”