| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from I Have A Dream by Martin Luther King, Jr.: freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and
staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the
veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith
that unearned suffering is redemptive.
Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to Georgia,
go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our
northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will
be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.
I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties
and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a
dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Meno by Plato: the style in which he himself answers all comers; and any Hellene who likes
may ask him anything. How different is our lot! my dear Meno. Here at
Athens there is a dearth of the commodity, and all wisdom seems to have
emigrated from us to you. I am certain that if you were to ask any
Athenian whether virtue was natural or acquired, he would laugh in your
face, and say: 'Stranger, you have far too good an opinion of me, if you
think that I can answer your question. For I literally do not know what
virtue is, and much less whether it is acquired by teaching or not.' And I
myself, Meno, living as I do in this region of poverty, am as poor as the
rest of the world; and I confess with shame that I know literally nothing
about virtue; and when I do not know the 'quid' of anything how can I know
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Rape of Lucrece by William Shakespeare: The sweets we wish for turn to loathed sours,
Even in the moment that we call them ours.
'Unruly blasts wait on the tender spring;
Unwholesome weeds take root with precious flowers;
The adder hisses where the sweet birds sing;
What virtue breeds iniquity devours:
We have no good that we can say is ours,
But ill-annexed Opportunity
Or kills his life or else his quality.
'O Opportunity, thy guilt is great:
'Tis thou that executest the traitor's treason;
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