    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1998, Book I)]
    [June 5, 1998]
    [Pages 899-901]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at the Grand Opening of the Thoreau Institute in Lincoln
    June 5, 1998

        Thank you; please sit down. Well, we've been here a long time in
    this beautiful setting, and if Thoreau were here, he would say we need
    more silence and less talk. But I have immensely enjoyed what has been
    said.
        Senator Kerry has been a consistent,
    devoted supporter of the environment, and he was profoundly eloquent
    about it today. Senator Kennedy has worked
    so hard for projects like this one for so long now, but he has a way of
    telling a personal story that brings home to

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    people, who might not otherwise be engaged, the importance of the
    moment.
        You know, I thought I'd get a few brownie points for coming here and
    saying, because of his work here, I gave Don Henley the National Humanities Medal last year. But that's
    nothing compared to Ted Kennedy coming here and calling him the ``big
    fish'' and the ``distant drummer'' at the same time. [Laughter]
        I would very much like to thank all the people who Don mentioned. I
    know Ed Begley, Jr., and Tony
    Bennett were on before; they've been good
    friends of ours. I thank Jimmy Buffett and Joe
    Walsh and all the musicians and other friends of
    Don who have helped. I thank you, Kathi, for
    your magnificent work. And I'm grateful to the National Endowment for
    the Humanities for supporting this project. And I thank you all for
    clapping when we said we weren't going to let it be done away with,
    along with the NEA.
        I'd like to recognize two people who aren't here today, but who
    played an important role in getting this endeavor off the ground with
    Don: the late Paul Tsongas and the late Michael Kennedy. Thank you, to
    them.
        Hillary and I got to walk a little along the path coming down here
    today. It's very frustrating being where we are now because back when we
    had real lives, we used to walk in the woods a lot. [Laughter] And so to
    be able to come here and only be able to walk 200 yards so that our
    friends with the cameras could at least get a good picture, so the
    American people could get a real feel for the magnificent work that's
    been done here--it winds up almost being more real to them than it is to
    us sometimes. [Laughter] But it was enough just to see what moved
    Thoreau to move here on July 4, 1845, so that he could live deeply and
    deliberately.
        In a way, he was engaging in his own experiment in independence, in
    the finest tradition of American citizenship. A lot of you know that
    Thoreau was a friend of Emerson, who talked about our Revolution as
    ``the shot heard 'round the world.'' In many ways, Thoreau's sojourn
    here at Walden was also a shot heard 'round the world. And it continues
    to echo today. That's why, as Hillary said, we have to, all of us,
    support saving it, along with our other national treasures.
        I want to reiterate something Don said in a rather delicate, soft,
    Southern fashion: They need more money here. [Laughter] And since we'll
    probably be on television, if anyone within the sound of my voice--
    [laughter]--who ever read Thoreau, who was ever inspired by his writings
    and what he stood for, we have to raise a $12 million endowment and pay
    off a construction loan. Send a check. [Laughter] You'll be proud you
    did. [Applause] Thank you.
        Well, let me get back to the point I mentioned. Thoreau has echoed
    over the decades and now more than a century. And what do we have to
    learn from him, and what does it mean in 21st century terms? First, we
    have to live in harmony with nature. What does that mean? That's one
    thing for one guy living on a pond. You've got 260 million people in
    this country; they can't do that. What does it mean?
        For us, it means that we have to completely give up the notion that
    we can only grow our economy if we destroy the environment, and we'll
    just do it little by little. We have to learn a whole new way of
    thinking so that we grow our economy by improving the environment and
    living in greater harmony with ourselves here in this country and around
    the world. It is a fundamental insight that Americans of all political
    factions, all backgrounds, all walks of life must embrace.
        Second, in an era where for the first time in history more people on
    the globe live under governments of their own choosing than do not, the
    first time ever a majority of people live under governments of their own
    choosing, it is well to remember that oppression still lives in the
    world and that there is a great deal of tension and, as the Good Book
    says, wars and rumors of war. We must not forget both the power and
    moral superiority of civil disobedience over violence in the face of
    injustice.
        As Hillary said, Dr. King, Gandhi, Mandela, all were moved by the
    insights of Thoreau. We must not forget that today. We must not forget
    for a moment the value of self-reliance; nor must we forget the fact
    that Thoreau came here and wrote about solitude, that he learned more
    about his fellow human beings and the proper relations among people from
    his solitude, because if he had too much contact with other people, he
    thought you came to take too much for granted and frittered too much
    away. We must be both self-reliant and interdependent, and that is a
    lesson that Thoreau learned that we can learn from him today. And in a
    world

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    that is getting smaller and smaller and smaller, it is a very important
    lesson, indeed.
        Finally--I love this quote, so I want to close with it. We have to
    understand that in a fundamental, moral way we are interconnected not
    only with nature but with all other people, and that any attempt to
    define ourselves in a way that elevates us at someone else's expense,
    any effort anywhere in the world by people to put themselves in a group
    that can only succeed if they're putting someone else down, is wrong
    and, in this world, unaffordable. Listen to what Thoreau said: ``Let us
    settle ourselves and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud
    and slush of prejudice and delusion till we come to a hard bottom and
    rocks in place which we can call reality.''
        It is a great mistake to think this man was just a dreamer. Like all
    truly wise people, he understood that altruism was the ultimate form of
    enlightened self-interest, that no one can pursue self-interest and
    material things devoid of a heart or a spirit.
        Today we still have a whole lot of ``mud and slush of prejudice and
    delusion'' in this and every other society. With all our prosperity, we
    still can't afford it; there is too much to be done.
        So let us hope and pray that Walden Pond will flourish. Let us hope
    and pray that people will come to these woods forever from now on, to
    learn not only more about themselves and their relationship with nature
    but the proper order of human society and the responsibility of every
    citizen to preserve it. If that happens, Don Henley and all of his cohorts will have given an astounding gift
    to America's future.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 5:30 p.m. on the lawn of the Institute. In
    his remarks, he referred to musician Don Henley, founder, and Kathi
    Anderson, executive director, Thoreau Institute; actor Ed Begley, Jr.;
    singer Tony Bennett; musicians Jimmy Buffett and Joe Walsh; and
    President Nelson Mandela of South Africa.