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When I think about dreams,

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like many of you,

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I think about this picture.

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I was eight when I watched Neil Armstrong

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step off the Lunar Module
onto the surface of the Moon.

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I had never seen anything like it before,

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and I've never seen
anything like it since.

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We got to the Moon for one simple reason:

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John Kennedy committed us to a deadline.

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And in the absence of that deadline,

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we would still be dreaming about it.

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Leonard Bernstein said two things
are necessary for great achievement:

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a plan and not quite enough time.

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(Laughter)

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Deadlines and commitments

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are the great and fading
lessons of Apollo.

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And they are what give the word
"moonshot" its meaning.

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And our world is in desperate need
of political leaders

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willing to set bold deadlines

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for the achievement of daring dreams
on the scale of Apollo again.

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When I think about dreams,

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I think about the drag queens
of LA and Stonewall

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and millions of other people
risking everything

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to come out when that
was really dangerous,

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and of this picture of the White House
lit up in rainbow colors,

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yes --

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(Applause) --

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celebrating America's gay and lesbian
citizens' right to marry.

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It is a picture that in my wildest dreams
I could never have imagined

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when I was 18

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and figuring out that I was gay

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and feeling estranged from my country

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and my dreams because of it.

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I think about this picture of my family

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that I never dreamed I could ever have --

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(Applause) --

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and of our children holding this headline

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I never dreamed could ever be printed
about the Supreme Court ruling.

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We need more of the courage
of drag queens and astronauts.

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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But I want to talk
about the need for us to dream

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in more than one dimension,

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because there was something about Apollo
that I didn't know when I was 8,

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and something about organizing
that the rainbow colors over.

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Of the 30 astronauts in the original
Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs,

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only seven marriages survived.

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Those iconic images of the astronauts
bouncing on the Moon

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obscure the alcoholism
and depression on Earth.

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Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk,

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asked during the time of Apollo,

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"What can we gain by sailing to the moon

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if we are not able to cross the abyss
that separates us from ourselves?"

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And what can we gain by the right to marry

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if we are not able to cross the acrimony

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and emotional distance
that so often separates us from our love?

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And not just in marriage.

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I have seen the most hurtful, destructive,

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tragic infighting in LGBT and AIDS

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and breast cancer and non-profit activism,

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all in the name of love.

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Thomas Merton also wrote
about wars among saints

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and that "there is a pervasive form
of contemporary violence

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to which the idealist
most easily succumbs:

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activism and overwork.

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The frenzy of our activism
neutralizes our work for peace.

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It destroys our own
inner capacity for peace."

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Too often our dreams become
these compartmentalized fixations

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on some future

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that destroy our ability to be present
for our lives right now.

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Our dreams of a better life
for some future humanity

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or some other humanity in another country

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alienate us from the beautiful
human beings sitting next to us

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at this very moment.

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Well, that's just the price
of progress, we say.

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You can go to the Moon

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or you can have stability
in your family life.

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And we can't conceive of dreaming
in both dimensions at the same time.

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And we don't set the bar
much higher than stability

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when it comes to our emotional life.

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Which is why our technology
for talking to one another

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has gone vertical,

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our ability to listen
and understand one another

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has gone nowhere.

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Our access to information
is through the roof,

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our access to joy, grounded.

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But this idea, that our present
and our future are mutually exclusive,

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that to fulfill our potential for doing
we have to surrender

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our profound potential for being,

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that the number of transistors
on a circuit can be doubled and doubled,

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but our capacity for compassion
and humanity and serenity and love

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is somehow limited

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is a false and suffocating choice.

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Now, I'm not suggesting

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simply the uninspiring idea
of more work-life balance.

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What good is it for me to spend
more time with my kids at home

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if my mind is always somewhere else
while I'm doing it?

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I'm not even talking about mindfulness.

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Mindfulness is all of a sudden becoming
a tool for improving productivity.

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(Laughter)

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Right?

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I'm talking about dreaming

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as boldly in the dimension of our being

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as we do about industry and technology.

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I'm talking about
an audacious authenticity

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that allows us to cry with one another,

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a heroic humility that allows us
to remove our masks and be real.

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It is our inability
to be with one another,

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our fear of crying with one another,
that gives rise to so many

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of the problems we are frantically
trying to solve in the first place,

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from Congressional gridlock
to economic inhumanity.

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(Applause)

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I'm talking about what Jonas Salk
called an Epoch B,

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a new epoch in which we become
as excited about and curious about

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and scientific about
the development of our humanity

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as we are about the development
of our technology.

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We should not shrink from this opportunity

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simply because
we don't really understand it.

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There was a time
when we didn't understand space.

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Or because we're more used
to technology and activism.

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That is the very definition
of being stuck in a comfort zone.

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We are now very comfortable imagining
unimaginable technological achievement.

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In 2016, it is the dimension
of our being itself

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that cries out for its fair share
of our imagination.

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Now, we're all here to dream,

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but maybe if we're honest about it,

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each of us chasing our own dream.

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You know, looking at the name tags
to see who can help me with my dream,

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sometimes looking right through
one another's humanity.

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I can't be bothered with you right now.
I have an idea for saving the world.

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Right?

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(Laughter)

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Years ago, once upon a time,
I had this beautiful company

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that created these long journeys
for heroic civic engagement.

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And we had this mantra:

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"Human. Kind. Be Both."

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And we encouraged people to experiment
outrageously with kindness.

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Like, "Go help everybody
set up their tents."

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And there were a lot of tents.

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(Laughter)

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"Go buy everybody Popsicles."

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"Go help people fix their flat tires

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even though you know
the dinner line is going to get longer."

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And people really took us up on this,

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so much so that if you got
a flat tire on the AIDS ride,

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you had trouble fixing it, because there
were so many people there asking you

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if you needed help.

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For a few days,
for tens of thousands of people,

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we created these worlds

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that everybody said were the way
they wish the world could always be.

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What if we experimented
with creating that kind of world

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these next few days?

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And instead of going up to someone
and asking them, "What do you do?"

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ask them, "So what are your dreams?"

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or "What are your broken dreams?"

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You know, "TED."
Tend to Each other's Dreams.

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(Applause)

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Maybe it's "I want to stay sober"

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or "I want to build
a tree house with my kid."

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You know, instead of going up
to the person everybody wants to meet,

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go up to the person who is all alone

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and ask them if they want
to grab a cup of coffee.

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I think what we fear most

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is that we will be denied the opportunity
to fulfill our true potential,

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that we are born to dream

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and we might die
without ever having the chance.

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Imagine living in a world

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where we simply recognize
that deep, existential fear in one another

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and love one another boldly
because we know

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that to be human
is to live with that fear.

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It's time for us to dream
in multiple dimensions simultaneously,

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and somewhere that transcends
all of the wondrous things

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we can and will and must do

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lies the domain of all
the unbelievable things we could be.

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It's time we set foot into that dimension

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and came out about the fact
that we have dreams there, too.

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If the Moon could dream,

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I think that would be its dream for us.

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It's an honor to be with you.

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Thank you very much.

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(Applause)