"If only you could sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person."
Fred McFeely Rogers, known professionally as Mister Rogers, was an American television personality, Presbyterian minister, and author. He was the creator, showrunner, and host of the preschool television series Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, which ran from 1968 to 2001.
"This is what I give. I give an expression of care every day to each child, to help him realize that he is unique. I end the program by saying, Youve made this day a special day, by just your being you. Theres no person in the whole world like you; and I like you just the way you are. And I feel that if we in public television can only make it clear that feelings are mentionable and manageable, we will have done a great service for mental health."
"You know, I think everybody longs to be loved, and longs to know that he or she is lovable. And, consequently, the greatest thing that we can do is to help somebody know that theyre loved and capable of loving."
"Yes, when I was here the first word of the alma mater was Men…Men of Dartmouth, give a rouse… Well, now the first word is Dear. Some things change for the better."
"Our world hangs like a magnificent jewel in the vastness of space. Every one of us is a part of that jewel. A facet of that jewel. And in the perspective of infinity, our differences are infinitesimal."
"Well, what is essential about you? And who are those who have helped you become the person that you are? Anyone who has ever graduated from a college, anyone who has ever been able to sustain a good work, has had at least one person and often many who have believed in him or her. We just dont get to be competent human beings without a lot of different investments from others."
"Little by little we human beings are confronted with situations that give us more and more clues that we arent perfect."
"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that theres free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate."
"With much care and skill power has been broken into fragments in the American township, so that the maximum possible number of people have some concern with public affairs."
"The people reign over the American political world as God rules over the universe. It is the cause and the end of all things; everything rises out of it and is absorbed back into it."
"I should say that when people talk about capitalism its a bit of a joke. Theres no such thing. No country, no business class, has ever been willing to subject itself to the free market, free market discipline. Free markets are for others. Like, the Third World is the Third World because they had free markets rammed down their throat. Meanwhile, the enlightened states, England, the United States, others, resorted to massive state intervention to protect private power, and still do. Thats right up to the present. I mean, the Reagan administration for example was the most protectionist in post-war American history. Virtually the entire dynamic economy in the United States is based crucially on state initiative and intervention: computers, the internet, telecommunication, automation, pharmaceutical, you just name it. Run through it, and you find massive ripoffs of the public, meaning, a system in which under one guise or another the public pays the costs and takes the risks, and profit is privatized. Thats very remote from a free market. Free market is like what India had to suffer for a couple hundred years, and most of the rest of the Third World."
"I appeal to all pupils, students and young people, asking you to focus on the horizons that are opening up for you, and which you could only dream of a year ago. Our future will depend on your desire for education and moral values as well as on your entrepreneurial spirit."
"We have created a wealthy society with tens of millions of talented, resourceful individuals who play virtually no role whatsoever as citizens. Bringing these people in — with their networks of influence, their knowledge, and their resources — is the key to creating the capacity for shared intelligence that we need to solve our problems."
Al Gore