Great quote

Read this quote today in a book called American Voices.  It's a quote from a presentation given by David McCullough in 2005. 

"Nor was there ever anything like the past.  Nobody lived in the past, if you stop to think about it.  Jefferson, Adams, Washington---they didn't walk around saying 'Isn't this fascinating, living in the past?'  They lived in the present just as we do.  The difference was it was their present, not ours.  And just as we don't know how things are going to turn out for us, they didn't either." 

Such an thought provoking idea.

Along with this quote from the same source:

" The laws we live by, the freedoms we enjoy, the institutions that we take for granted--as we should never take for granted--are all the work of other people who went before us.  And to be indifferent to that isn't just to be ignorant, it's to be rude.  And ingratitude is a shabby failing.  How can we not want to know about the people who have made it possible for us to live as we live, to have the freedom we have, to be citizens of this greatest of countries in all time? It's not just a birthright, it is something that others struggled for, strived for, often suffered for, often were defeated for and died for, for us, for the next generation."

May we never forget what went into making this country.  The literal blood, sweat, and tears.  May we never take lightly their intention in developing our government the way they did.