"I think if we're consistent about the value of every person, that spark of divinity that we say exists in every person, then we can't tolerate what's happening anyplace where people's dignity is not being respected. I would like to see a world where that value is respected."
- Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) House Democratic Whip, since 2002; U.S. Congresswoman, since 1987.

"Some people say it sounds trite, but I believe the single most important concept in the world is selfless service. I honestly believe that that's where true happiness lies."
- Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf,
Commander in Chief, Gulf War

"I would hope that people could learn to get along better. That we wouldn't have the kind of inhumanity toward others that we see now on a national basis in wars, and on a personal basis where one person hits another person over the head to take his tennis shoes. "
- Norman Augustine, President, Chairman, and CEO, Lockheed Martin Corp., 1995-1997

"We need to finally break through on diversity... The young people today are in my view far ahead of my generation in terms of accepting differences among people."
-Daniel Carp, Chairman and CEO,
Eastman Kodak Company, since 2001

"I'd like to see the enormous income gap close between the people who work on the factory floor and the people who own the factory. It is just horrendous that in America it's getting wider, wider here than in Britain or Germany or Finland or France. It's scandalous, and it's a prescription for enormous social disorder. Of course, I'd also like to see race relations improve radically."
- Julian Bond, NACCP Chairman

"The first thing that springs to mind when I think about an ideal world is that it's important for people to understand their own power. As individuals we create the world we live in whether we sit around all day or get up and act."
- Deb Callahan, President, League of Conservation Voters

"My first hope for the larger world would be that more children are raised with a father in the house -- in a traditional, two-parent family if you will. A second hope I have for the world is that we would see some greater progress made toward raising wages and standard of living for middle- and low-income wage earners. And the same thing for people in the Third World. I mean, obviously you also want the larger things like peace, vaccines, and disease eradication."
- James Carville, CNN-TV Crossfire co-host

"What I want to see is that we have a very strong sense of community in terms of taking care of one another's essential needs and sharing the goodies. I would gladly pay far more income tax if it went toward that kind of sharing, because I know I've been lucky. No special virtue, I've been lucky: I've been loved; I've had people care about me; I've had the chance to develop my talents. And there are people who are unlucky."
- Marcia Angell, Editor in Chief, The New England Journal of Medicine, 1999-2000

"The idea I grew up with and that I thought I would achieve in a lifetime of teaching literature was that what finally matters is the solitary woman or man who finds herself or himself by going off and reading and thinking."
- Harold Bloom, Yale University Professor of Humanities

"I would like to have more people recognize that there's something greater than mankind. I call it Mindkind, in which we recognize our kinship to the other marvelous creatures we share this planet with."
- Dudley Herschbach, Nobel Laureate, Chemistry, 1986, and Baird Professor of Science, Harvard University

"The idea of America is the idea of a perpetually perfectible world: 'a more perfect union,' states the Constitution; 'a system approaching near to perfection,' boasted Benjamin Franklin; 'the world's best hope,' according to Henry Cabot Lodge."

"Some questions ought to be--must be--asked of all national leaders, and they need to be answered in the most graphic and unequivocal way: questions about the big-picture priorities and ideals of those who have a privileged grasp on the coming course of events. The project documented here was a fresh attempt to ask some of those necessary questions and also to elicit some pure and spontaneous answers. If it's not to much trouble, sir, could you please just make it come straight from the shivering heart of your deep and secret soul?"

"As a figure of speech, 'vision' is something that every leader has to have. Who would follow a person without it, someone drifting aimlessly at the whim of circumstance or chance? But there are also substantive and serious reasons to ask all people with power and influence to paint (rather than sing, dance, or recite poetry about) their notion of an ideal world."