Quotes of the Day

Post-Election Voices
On the night before his death, Martin Luther King mesmerized a Memphis congregation with an address in which he said, "I may not get [to the mountaintop] with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land." On election night we watched as Americans from Virginia, the capital of the Confederacy, to California voted for a President based not on the color of his skin but on the content of his character. Now we know what Dr. King saw from the mountaintop. We have overcome. Today.
Alan B. Posner,
Royal Oak, Michigan

Is it too early to nominate Barack Obama as TIME's Person of the Year?
Anthony Hayes,
Hastings, New Zealand

Americans can stand proud because we have elected Obama to our highest office. I hope the history of slavery and racism in this country is now behind us forever.
Jerry Halpern,
Fort Lee, New Jersey

What does Obama's victory mean? O for One America, B for Black is Beautiful, and A-M-A for the Ability, Management and Amiability of the U.S. in world affairs.
Jacob Sahayam,
Adelaide, South Australia

Now that we've brought "change" by giving even more power to the party that forced bad loans and obstructed critical Fannie Mae reforms while driving jobs overseas, it should not take long for Barack Obama's rehashed Carter-era insanity to set the record straight on which party is actually pushing the "failed policies of the past." The only question is whether or not he will be able to continue blaming Republicans for the disastrous policies of Democrats.
Robert Moon,
Cincinnati

Obama has captivated the American nation and my own heart. On the day he was elected, for just a moment, I wished I lived in a country where I could proudly proclaim that he was my President. As the world watches his every move, I just hope Obama remembers one thing: Yes, he can.
Anna Conneely,
Sydney

By electing Barack Obama, the American people have restored the world's faith in their judgment.
David Felton,
Perth, Western Australia

Through adoption, my husband and I have a multicultural family. I hope our two Latino angels will someday grasp fully the message that, as Obama said, "In America, all things are possible." God is in His Heaven, a Democrat is in the White House, and all is right with our world.
Teresa Little Smith,
Clinton, Connecticut

Congratulations, America: you now have credibility.
Peter Howe,
Dunsborough, Western Australia

As a biracial woman who is excited about Barack Obama and all of the accomplishments his presidency symbolizes, I can't help but slightly resent just how much focus goes onto his race. I'll teach my children that Obama in the White House was an enormous triumph for acceptance, but I hope that they, like me, will be unable to see why America imposes the racial divides that force us to choose.
Jennifer Outler,
Cambria Heights, New York

I now have two heroes: J.K. Rowling, who made my children readers, and Barack Obama, who made them voters.
Charles Hirschhorn,
Pacific Palisades, California

To the supporters of California's proposition 8, which bans same-sex marriage: 1963 called; it wants its bigotry back.
Julie Heinze,
San Clemente, California

Campaign '08: Memories...
My own "moment to remember" of the 2008 campaign is illustrated by one of your voices, Laura Ingraham: the Republicans' utter lack of vision [Nov. 10]. From McCain down to state assembly candidates, the overwhelming majority of ads never carried the remotest hint of what the Republicans would do if elected. Instead, they produced laundry lists of reasons why not to vote for the opposition. Republican mouthpieces complain that their candidates don't get positive coverage in the "mainstream" media. If you have no message, you probably won't get much coverage.
Dennis Sheehan,
Waupaca, Wisconsin

Gadgets and Gizmos
Your "Best Inventions" item on the Biochemical Energy Harvester suggests that if we strapped two of these generators to our knees we could produce five watts of power as we walk [Nov. 10]. Doing this for a little more than an hour a day would generate two kilowatt hours in a year. That would represent a saving of about 17 cents on an annual power bill. As my own bill exceeds $1000, such a tiny "saving" is amusing to contemplate. It is less amusing when we recognize that energy is needed to make this device. I estimate that refining the metal, manufacturing the components and delivering them to the consumer would require about 20 kilowatt hours of electricity. So we would have to walk for 10 years just to recover the energy used to make one pair of these things. At best this is an interesting toy; at worst it's another energy-wasting gizmo. The energy crisis is a very important topic. TIME should be more serious in reporting on "promising" solutions.
Doug Drumheller,
Cedar Crest, New Mexico

No disrespect to the québecois, but the Bixi public bike system has been in place in Paris for more than a year. I'm sure Parisians would be miffed to find that a city — Montreal — that appropriated their language is now getting credit for a bike system, known in Paris as Vélib', that has already met with acclaim across Europe.
Jonah Peppiatt,
Boston

You gave general motors cheers for the Chevy Volt, a car still in the design phase. Instead, the company deserves jeers for not reintroducing the EV1, the electric vehicle it launched in the 1990s and canceled on the ground that it was unprofitable. The car worked then, so it should work better now, considering the improvements in battery technology over the last decade. Let's get big business making cars the customers want to buy.
Peter Miller,
Seattle

Limits of Liberation
I have a question for Ingrid Newkirk, founder of PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) [Nov. 3]: Does owning an animal, or holding and petting it, deprive it of liberty?
Mark Dymiotis,
Melbourne

Spreading the Wealth Around
In his essay, Michael Kinsley agrees with Barack Obama that when governments spread wealth around it is "good for everybody" [Nov. 10]. Kinsley asks, "Who disagrees?" Anyone who knows anything of history would disagree with that assertion. Marx and Lenin advocated a similar idea: "From each according to his ability; to each according to his needs." The reality of a system where hard work is not rewarded is that people lose their incentive to work. That means there is less wealth to share, which is hardly "good for everybody." In the Soviet Union, it took about 70 years for this system to bring the economy to utter ruin. Let us hope that today we are wiser than to revisit that philosophy.
Joseph K.Valaitis,
Brecksville, Ohio

The final line of Kinsley's essay was telling. He implied that unless we spread the wealth around, we'll turn into a Colombia or Mexico, where people "live behind locked gates and hire guards to protect their family from kidnapping." Is Kinsley suggesting that to ensure their own safety the better-off should, via the government, pay protection money to the less well off? This would be playing with public money a similar game to the one rich people in banana republics play with their personal money.
Mark A. Mendlovitz,
Los Angeles

Obama has claimed that people who oppose higher taxes are selfish and equated paying taxes to donating to charity. America is not about equality of outcome, comrade. It's about equality of opportunity.
Jim Gleason,
Mandan, North Dakota

I have heard plenty of liberals say the wealthy need to pay their fair share. Well, according to Fortune, in 2006, the wealthiest 3% of taxpayers paid 54% of all income taxes. Democratic President John F. Kennedy reduced the highest marginal tax rate from 90% to 70% because he felt that all taxpayers, regardless of financial status, deserved to keep more of their money. The change led to increased economic activity, more jobs, and more savings.
Kent Frederick,
Chicago