“Nevertheless, we all of us, to varying degrees, believed that when you saw the person you were copied from, you’d get some insight into who you were deep down, and maybe too, you’d see something of what your life held in store.”
“Walter: You wouldn’t understand yet, son, but your daddy’s gonna make a transaction . . . a business transaction that’s going to change our lives. . . . That’s how come one day when you ‘bout seventeen years old I’ll come home . . . I’ll pull the car up on the driveway . . . just a plain black Chrysler, I think, with white walls—no—black tires . . . the gardener will be clipping away at the hedges and he’ll say, ‘Good evening, Mr. Younger.’ And I’ll say, ‘Hello, Jefferson, how are you this evening?’ And I’ll go inside and Ruth will come downstairs and meet me at the door and we’ll kiss each other and she’ll take my arm and we’ll go up to your room to see you sitting on the floor with the catalogues of all the great schools in America around you. . . . All the great schools in the world! And—and I’ll say, all right son—it’s your seventeenth birthday, what is it you’ve decided? . . . Just tell me, what it is you want to be—and you’ll be it. . . . Whatever you want to be—Yessir! You just name it, son . . . and I hand you the world!”
“I suppose it was mainly us newcomers who talked about ‘dream futures’ that winter, though a number of veterans did too . . . It couldn’t last, of course, but like I say, just for those few months, we somehow managed to live in this cosy state of suspension in which we could ponder our lives without the usual boundaries.”
“Asagai: Then isn’t there something wrong in a house—in a world—where all dreams, good or bad, must depend on the death of a man?
Beneatha: AND YOU CANNOT ANSWER IT!
Asagai: I LIVE THE ANSWER!”
“She’ll be struck by my good looks and charm and musical talent . . . Then she’ll give in and dance with me and follow me up to New York after graduation, to be my groupie.”
“Asagai, while I was sleeping in that bed in there, people went out and took the future right out of my hands! And nobody asked me, nobody consulted me – they just went out and changed my life.”
“Immigration is by definition a gesture of faith in social mobility. It is the expression in action of a positive belief in the possibility of a better life. It has thus contributed greatly to developing the spirit of personal betterment in American society and to strengthening the national confidence in change and the future.”
“Perhaps our brightest hope for the future lies in the lessons of the past. The people who have come to this country have made America, in the words of one perceptive writer, ‘a heterogeneous race but a homogeneous nation.’ ”
“Desire that your life count for something great! Long for your life to have eternal significance. Want this! Don’t coast through life without a passion.”
“Romans 4 says to ‘call the things that are not as though they were.’ That simply means that you shouldn’t talk about the way you are. Talk about the way you want to be. If you’re struggling in your finances, don’t go around saying, ‘Oh, man, business is so slow. The economy is so down. It’s never going to work out.’ That’s calling the things that are as if they will always be that way. That’s just describing the situation. By faith you have to say, ‘I am blessed. I am successful. I am surrounded by God’s favor.’”
“I run with purpose in every step. My best days are still out in front of me. My greatest victories are in my future. I will become everything I was created to be. I will have everything God intended for me to have. I am the redeemed of the Lord, and I say so today!”
“I still don’t know what it really means to grow up. However, if I happen to meet you, one day in the future, by then, I want to become someone you can be proud to know.”
“I look forward to the universal establishment of minimum standards of life and labor, and their progressive elevation as the increasing energies of production may permit.”
“As long as I kept my mental focus on destinations that were ahead, destinations that I had the audacity to dream might hold a red Ferrari of my own, I protected myself from despair. The future was uncertain, absolutely, and there were many hurdles, twists, and turns to come, but as long as I kept moving forward, one foot in front of the other, the voices of fear and shame, the messages from those who wanted me to believe that I wasn’t good enough, would be stilled.”
“No matter what I had in my pocket, no matter what my suit cost, nobody could prevent me from acting as if I was a winner. Nobody could prevent me from acting as if my problems were all in the process of being solved. Pretty soon, my acting as if was so convincing that I started to believe it myself. I began to think futuristically, as if I had already passed the test as I weighed what would happen next.”
“Still a dreamer, yet more of a realist that ever before, i knew this was my time to sail. On the horizon I saw the shining future, as before. The difference now was that I felt the wind at my back. I was ready.”
“Six million,” Hannah said, “but that’s not all the Jews there are. In the end, in the future, there will be Jews still. And there will be Israel, a Jewish state, where there will be a Jewish president and a Jewish senate. And in America, Jewish movie stars.”