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

    [[Page 899]]

    Question-and-Answer Session With Students at the Thoreau Institute in
    Lincoln, Massachusetts
    June 5, 1998

    Writings of Henry David Thoreau

        Participant. I'm Liz Coogan from Concord
    Middle School here in Massachusetts, and this question is for you, Mr.
    President and Mr. Henley. What do Thoreau's writings and Walden Woods
    mean to you?
         The President. To me they mean two things. First, when I was very
    young and was first exposed to Thoreau's writings, he crystallized the
    feelings that I had when I was in nature and awakened in me a sense of
    profound obligation to respect and to preserve the natural environment.
        The second thing that impressed me about Thoreau from the very
    beginning is how much he learned about himself and about human nature
    and society by living apart from it for a while, how much, in effect, he
    learned about life by being a solitary person living alone for an
    extended period of time.
        It made a huge impression on me because most people wouldn't think
    that you could learn that much about life living alone. But when I saw
    what he wrote about solitude, for example, he persuaded me that you
    could learn quite a lot.

    [At this point, musician Don Henley, founder of
    the institute, responded that Thoreau had helped him discover
    spirituality in nature, as well as a sense of place. Hillary Rodham
    Clinton said she also appreciated
    Thoreau's emphasis on the importance of nature, calling him one of the
    founding fathers of the Nation's environmental movement. Russian
    students at the Municipal Children's Ecological Center in St.
    Petersburg, Russia, who participated by live video hookup, then
    presented Mrs. Clinton with a copy of an artwork they had previously
    presented to the Thoreau Institute.]

    Environmental Issues Education

         The President. I would just like to say that I very much appreciate
    the work that you're doing at the institute to teach the Russian
    children about the environment and how we have to preserve it.
        Most adults in all industrial countries were raised to believe that
    in order to have a strong economy you have to destroy part of the
    environment, and we have to change that. We have to raise a whole
    generation of young people who believe that the only way to preserve the
    economy over the long run is to take care of the environment. And if we
    all work at it together, we'll be successful.
        Russian Participant. I think, Mr. President, that we cannot only be
    hopeful that everything will be the way you said right now, but we can
    be positive that it is going to be like that in the future.
        The President. Spacibo [Thank you].

    Note: The President spoke at 4:34 p.m. in the Education Center.
    Participants present at the institute were students from Boston Latin
    School, Lincoln-Sudbury High School, and Concord Middle School. The
    Russian video participant spoke in Russian, and his remarks were
    translated by an interpreter.