21st century

“ No nation on Earth is better positioned for the new century than America because of the diversity of our economy and our citizens, because of our commitment to excellence, because of our technological advantages. The 21st century will be ours if we make the right choices and do the right thing for the American people. ”

“ We are approaching a time unlike any in our past, in which ideas and information will move around the world at unprecedented speed, and in which there will be more opportunity for people to live out their dreams than ever before. I strongly urge today's young Americans to step forward and accept the challenge of helping to shape our Nation as we move into the 21st century. ”

“ Whether, whether our ancestors came here on the Mayflower, on slave ships, whether they came to Ellis Island or LAX in Los Angeles, whether they came yesterday or walked this land a thousand years ago, our great challenge for the 21st century is to find a way to be one America. We can meet all the other challenges if we can go forward as one America. ”

“ They cover every field of human effort. They have to do with political development, the relations of capital and labor, invention, science, literature, production, commerce, and a dozen other life interests, all of which will be considered in this work. The greatness of the world’s progress can be most clearly shown by pointing out the state of affairs in the several branches of human effort at the opening and closing of the century and placing them in sharp contrast. ”

“ Modern life is both complex and intense, and the tremendous changes wrought by the extraordinary industrial development of the last half century are felt in every fiber of our social and political being. ”

“ The result was on the one hand a vast and unexampled development of industry. Life and civilization in the late 19th and early 20th century were Industry in its whole conception, language, and accomplishment: the object of life was to make goods. Now before this giant aspect of things, the new democracy stood aghast and impotent. ”

“ For half a century we called upon unbounded invention and untiring industry to create an order of plenty for all of our people.
The challenge of the next half century is whether we have the wisdom to use that wealth to enrich and elevate our national life, and to advance the quality of our American civilization. ”

“ Trains cross the deserts and pierce the barriers of mountains; ships find unerring pathways upon the trackless oceans. Day by day discoveries are increasing. What a wonderful century this is! It is an age of universal re-formation. Laws and statutes of governments civil and federal are in process of change and transformation. Sciences and arts are being moulded anew. Thoughts are metamorphosed. The foundations of human society are changing and strengthening. Today sciences of the past are useless. ”

“ We are passing into a new age, such as none of these great men dreamed of, an age as exigent and perilous as any that have gone before it. The ascendency of physical science, the political enfranchisement of the masses, the universal spread of education, the emancipation of critical thought, the gigantic growth of the press, the enormous increase and aggregation of wealth, the multiplication of large cities, the world-wide facilities of intercourse,—these and other causes more subtle are rapidly transforming human society. ”

“ Many have called the 20th century the American Century. The question before us today is about the next century, looking just a few years ahead.
Let me tell you a story that will help shape that century, a story you probably haven't heard about. It's about a battle between those who want to change things and those who want to protect the status quo. And in this battle those who support change are telling those who want to stand pat: Lead, follow, or get out of the way. ”

“ We might consider the question of the twentieth century progress from other points of view, such as agriculture, architecture, household art, literature, medicine, surgery, social relations, etc., though in doing so we should be considering simply developments of existing conditions. ”

“ Share of modern countries in the commerce of the world.—It is unnecessary, I hope, to say more to impress upon the student the fact that a period of great change in the world’s history, which began half a century ago, still continues; and that the coming generation will be called upon to carry on this change, and guide it for the welfare of humanity in the future. ”

“ If we go back and examine the evolution of government and industry, all this will be made clear; so clear that all may understand it. Certain fixed laws direct and regulate the growth of everything, and they are the same for all departments in the universe. The statement of the laws by which the sidereal and solar systems have evolved, will also describe those which the earth has obeyed, and are the laws of all material, governmental, industrial, intellectual, social, moral and religious change. ”

“ The second century was one of recovery from the war, of continuing progress toward a more streamlined, automated and efficient society, and of the slow but steady return toward the surface of the earth. ”

“ That this growth in wealth will go on during the twentieth century cannot be doubted, but that the proportionate rate of increase will equal that of the century now at its end may well be questioned, the inventive activity and application of nature’s forces within this century having reached a development which seems to preclude as great a future rate of progress. The nineteenth may, therefore, perhaps remain the banner century in material progress. ”

“ So marked are the changes which society exhibits—especially a society in a progressive state—that the outward and visible forms which our civilisation presents to-day, its public and private buildings, its means of communication, the appliances with which it works, its machinery, its docks, its artificial harbours, its instruments of war and its instruments of peace, have most of them undergone a complete change, and many of them several complete changes, within the last sixty years. ”

“ At the outset of his career the set of opinion had been towards a larger and more popular policy than of old. New facilities of communication, new industrial energy, and a quick accumulation of wealth, as well as the social changes which followed hard on these economical changes, all pointed forward to political progress, to an adaptation of our institutions to the varied conditions of the time. The nation was quivering with a new sense of life ”

“ Today we count among out national blessings a time of unprecedented prosperity, with an expanding economy, record low rates of poverty and unemployment among our people, and the limitless opportunities to improve the quality of life that new technologies present to us. We can give thanks today that for the first time in history, more than half the world's people live under governments of their own choosing. ”

“ Rarely have Americans lived through so much change in so many ways in so short a time. Quietly, but with gathering force, the ground has shifted beneath our feet, as we have moved into an information age, a global economy, a truly new world. ”

“ During the past century, and practically during the lifetime of many here present, there have taken place the two greatest revolutions in all history—one in the material world, created by the application of natural forces to industry ”

“ And the ground wasn’t so solid any more, what with the newspaper headlines and new patterns for living emerging out of the vast technological and sociological changes the mid-Twentieth Century offered. ”

“ I believe there are powerful forces at work in the trend of modern thought, science, and method, in the direction of bringing order, control, and design into this confused gigantic conflict, and the discussion of these constructive forces must necessarily form the crown of my forecast of America's future. ”

“ The nineteenth century—in the life of the wage-earning multitudes—was a century of disturbance. The twentieth promises to be a century of consolidation. What completed product will emerge from its city aggregation, the children of the crowd? ”

“ The new promise of the global economy, the Information Age, unimagined new work, life-enhancing technology--all these are ours to seize. That is our honor and our challenge. We must be shapers of events, not observers, for if we do not act, the moment will pass and we will lose the best possibilities of our future. ”

“ As the twentieth century rapidly approaches its end, there is a marked acceleration in the efforts of governments and peoples to reach common understandings on issues affecting the future of humankind. ”

“ All of us are looking to the future to what could and should be the next 40 years of growth-growth of our economies and our freedom, growth of human progress in our own countries and around the world. ”

“ Three centuries later the rebirth of western humanity expressed itself in the industrial revolution that flooded across the planet and became an early stage of the planet-wide sweep that has played havoc with nature, turned the old society upside down and presently promises to produce a new society for a reborn human race. ”

“ Throughout the past two centuries mankind has been confronted by an epoch-making, many sided development--the great revolution of 1750-1970. As I write, the great revolution is modifying the structure and functioning of human society and, consequently, the forces which condition, shape and, in large measure, determine the directions and channels in which humanity lives, moves and has its being. ”

“ What is the measure of development possible to each epoch, and what is the form which corresponds to it in the present, which will secure for the future a more extended development, and which will bring with it new forms? ”

“ Year by year, however, with the growth of intelligence and the spread of education, the respective States are becoming less subject to internal and civil convulsions; and in this respect the rapid development of industrial and productive activity gives promise of a still more satisfactory condition of things in the proximate future. ”

“ Taking a broader view—for we might go on with the material details of progress all about us ad infinitum, did patience and strength hold out—we look abroad over the land, and note the great elements of a progress peculiarly American, in the growth and distribution of population, in manufactures, agriculture, and commerce. Each and all have been incalculably aided by perpetual invention. ”

“ For two centuries, new ideas, institutions and practices have followed discoveries and inventions as regularly as day follows night. The consequent flood of innovations that has swept through the West and across the planet in the past two generations has made drastic social change a matter of the utmost urgency. ”

“ That end, as it was natural for one to feel who had swept such a wide range of comparative studies, was the reconstruction of a past national life, or of the processes of a long organic development, and the estimate of their part in the great competitive struggle of races and peoples and institutions, in which our present civilization and its complex problems have been evolved. ”

“ Yet that decade was the cradle of a new epoch, in which inventions first came into view, or were brought to practical completion, which have had a deeper and more permanent influence than any political event could have upon the shaping of human society. ”

“ All one can do is to note past progress and the drift of the present current, which, whatever government is at the nominal head of affairs, seems to be towards widespread—in fact, quite general—advance both in knowledge and industrial activity. ”

“ Progress has engendered retrogression. What must be done that progress may engender nothing else but progress, that is to say, prosperity, health, security, education and intellectual development equal for all? ”

“ Our time, of all others, is characterized by these general trends: organization and rationalization of methods and processes, machinery, cooperation, internationalization, considerable development of science and technology, concern to apply data to the progress of societies, extension of instruction at all levels, aspiration and latent desire to give all civilization wider intellectual foundations of the orient plans. ”

“ But little progress, he said, had been made in the early centuries for the reason that opportunity had been confined to a few, and it was only recently that any considerable part of the world’s population had been in a position to become efficient ”

“ The prophets of our day talk of the coming world state, which is not likely to appear so long as the barriers of sea and mountain remain; yet each year witnesses a closer blending of the commercial, industrial, and political interests of all nations. Thus we see how governments have been evolved and national life expanded in accordance {46} with slowly developing civilization. ”

“ The development of modern industry, with its facility in the production of livelihood, promises a time, and that at no very great distance, when this opportunity may be common property, and men everywhere may be able to participate in that unending search after love, beauty, justice, truth—the highest of which humanity is capable. ”

“ Evidences of domestic development and improvement reveal themselves on every side. The 35essential traits of mediævalism were gradually disappearing; and with the steady realization on the part of the commercial elements in the community of their increasing importance in the complex life of the time, there went many significant changes, indicating the slow collapse of the old régime and the consolidation of society upon its modern foundations. ”

“ The new life resulting from the Crusades, the rise of commerce and industry, the organization of city governments, the rise of lawyer and merchant classes, the formation of new national States, the rise of a new "Estate" of tradesmen and workers, the new knowledge, the evolution of the university organizations, and the discovery of the art of printing—all these forces had united to develop a new attitude toward the old problems and to prepare western Europe for a rapid evolution out of the mediaeval conditions which had for so long dominated all action and thinking. ”