[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (1999, Book II)]
[December 31, 1999]
[Pages 2357-2358]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at a Dinner for the Millennium Celebration Creators
December 31, 1999

    Thank you so much. Good evening. It's a real honor for Hillary and 
Chelsea and me to welcome all of you to the White House. Tonight I rise 
to offer three toasts. The first is to all of you. It is an honor to 
turn this page in history with you because so many of you, each in your 
own way, have contributed so indelibly to the narrative of this American 
century.
    The second toast I offer is to my wife, for it was she who inspired us all to welcome the new 
millennium by honoring our past and imagining our future. Over the past 
2 years leading up to this wonderful night, no one has done more to 
infuse this milestone with national purpose. And I am very grateful to 
her and to all those who have helped.
    The third toast is, in a way, the most daunting, because I'm 
supposed to say something profound to a thousand years of history in 2 
or 3 minutes. In the State of the Union I get a whole hour--[laughter]--
to talk about a single year, and usually I run over. [Laughter] Tonight 
we rise to the mountaintop of a new millennium. Behind us we see a great 
expanse of American experience and before us vast frontiers of 
possibility still to be explored.
    I think we would all agree that we are most fortunate to be alive at 
this moment in history. We end this century and the millennium with 
soaring optimism. Never before has our Nation enjoyed, at once, so much 
prosperity, social progress, and national self-confidence, with so 
little internal crisis or external threat. Never before have we had such 
a blessed opportunity and, therefore, such a profound responsibility to 
build the more perfect Union of our Founders' dreams.
    When our children's children look back on this century, they will 
see that this hopeful and promising time was earned by the bravery and 
hard work of men and women who, in the words of our great poet laureate 
Robert Pinsky, did not merely celebrate our 
oldest ideals like trophies under glass but kept them bright with use. 
They will see this moment was earned through the hard-won fight for 
freedom, from the beachheads of Normandy to the buses of Montgomery to 
the villages of Kosovo. At home and abroad, it has been our great 
privilege to advance the light of human liberty.
    They will see this moment was earned through the drive for 
discovery. At the outset of the century, not even the most farsighted of 
our forebears could have predicted all the miracles of science that have 
emerged from our labs: antibiotics and vaccines, silicon chips and

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the Internet, microscopes that envision the infinitesimal, and 
telescopes that elucidate the infinite, soon-to-be complete blueprint 
for human life itself.
    And they will see that this moment was earned through a passion for 
creativity. National power may spring from economic and military might, 
but the greatness of a nation emanates from the life of the mind and the 
stirrings of the soul. So many of you have contributed to that 
greatness, and we are all grateful.
    In this century, American artists of the page and the canvas, the 
stage and screen, have drawn from our diverse palate of cultural 
traditions and given the world a great gift of uniquely American 
creations with universal and timeless appeal.
    The new century and the new millennium will bring a cascade of new 
triumphs. We see new hope for peace in lands bedeviled by ancient 
hatreds, new technologies both opening the storehouse of human knowledge 
for people across the globe and offering the promise of alleviating the 
poverty that still haunts so many millions of our children. We see 
scientists rapidly approaching the day when newborns can expect to live 
well past 100 years, and children will know ``cancer'' only as a 
constellation of stars. But by far, my most solemn prayer for this new 
millennium is that we will find, somehow, the strength and wisdom in our 
hearts to keep growing together, first, as one America and then, as one 
people on this ever smaller planet we all call home.
    If you look at the glowing diversity of race and background that 
illuminates America's house on this evening, a vivid illustration, we 
see that human capacity is distributed equally across the human 
landscape. I cannot help but think how different America is, how 
different history is, and how much better, because those of you in this 
room and those you represent were able to imagine, to invent, to 
inspire. And by the same token, I cannot help but dream of how much 
different and how much better our future can be if we can give every 
child the same chance to live up to his or her God-given potential and 
to live together as brothers and sisters, celebrating our common 
humanity and our shared destiny.
    This is the future I hope every American will take a moment to 
imagine on this millennial evening. This is the future I pray we can all 
join together to build. So I ask you to join me in a toast to 
yourselves, to the First Lady, and to 
our shared future.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 8:02 p.m. on the State Floor at the White 
House.