Reading the Fine Print

There are moments in life when none of us—no matter how much we read or write in our regular lives—are particularly looking to be inspired by language. Standing in line at airport security during the travel madness that is the week between Christmas and New Year’s comes to mind as one of those times. Yet sometimes we can be surprised when we least expect it.

Ho John Lee/CC.

I was more than a little reluctant to relinquish my old passport, with its battle-scarred pages documenting midnight border crossings on the train and visas from Istanbul, but I discovered while flipping through the pages of my shiny new one that the State Department has implemented some changes in design during the last decade. My new passport’s current lack of stamps or visas made me frown, but something else caught my eye. Each set of pages now begins with a brief quote, a sentence or two from sources as varied as the people who make up our nation. And amidst the uncertainty of our world, the turbulence of our recent election, and the grave challenges (yet also remarkable opportunities) that rise before us in the new year, I think I might have unwittingly stumbled across a top ten list worth pondering.

1. …And that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. –Abraham Lincoln
2. Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair. –George Washington
3. We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. –Declaration of Independence
4. We have a great dream. It started way back in 1776, and God grant that America will be true to her dream. –Martin Luther King, Jr.
5. Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty. –John F. Kennedy
6. This is a new nation, based on a mighty continent, of boundless possibilities. –Theodore Roosevelt
7. Whatever America hopes to bring to pass in the world must first come to pass in the heart of America. –Dwight D. Eisenhower
8. For this is what America is all about. It is the uncrossed desert and the unclimbed ridge. It is the star that is not reached and the harvest sleeping in the unplowed ground. Is our world gone? We say “Farewell.” Is a new world coming? We welcome it—and we will bend it to the hopes of man. –Lyndon B. Johnson
9. We send thanks to all the Animal life in the world. They have many things to teach us as people. We are glad they are still here and we hope it will always be so. –Thanksgiving Address, Mohawk version
10. Every generation has the obligation to free men’s minds for a look at new worlds…to look out from a higher plateau than the last generation. –Ellison S. Onizuka

Whether from a president who held the country together during its greatest crisis or an explorer whose sacrifice we will forever honor, one thing is true: no matter their brevity, words always have the power to challenge, to inspire, to help us dream. Even when we find them staring back at us from the pages of an empty passport.