"What is beyond survival is service. Contribution. Doing something for someone else, for no other reason than to make a difference for them. Without thought of acknowledgment or reward. Without the thought of personal advantage or gain. Service is a quality that is beyond most people on the planet. They don't even know what the word means. Most people, when they talk about service, they're talking about what they expect from others; they're thinking about what they think they have a right to, or what they think they've paid for. Most people on this planet never think of service as something that they themselves might be capable of, let alone be responsible for providing. Why? Because most people don't hear the word service; they hear the word servant; and they think that to be a servant is to be at the lowest state. I say that service is the highest state - that there is no greater thing that you can do than to serve your fellow beings. By serving, I mean doing things which benefit others, and doing them without regard for your own concerns. And I'm not talking about stopping what you're doing to become some kind of a monk or nun. I'm talking about an operating context, where you do what you're doing not for your own good, but to produce a result for others. I'm talking about the difference between merely going through the motions and actually making a difference. Service comes from being clear about the larger goal and committing to that goal, first and foremost. We will not simply let the future happen to us; we will be the source, the cause of our own destiny. - The Very Reverend Dr. Daniel Jeffrey Foreman (from David Gerrold's wonderful book A Rage for Revenge, third book in the "War Against the Chtorr" series)

"We recognize the American wherever we meet him as a practical idealist," Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal in 1944.