Presidential Statement of the Day
By Gerald Ford, delivering the commencement address at Warner Pacific College, 23 May 1976:
Our national life has reached a point where we must recover transcendent qualities of spirituality and morality. I know of no better way for Americans to achieve personal and social regeneration. Franz Kafka wrote earlier in this century that “the fathers of the church were not afraid to go out into the desert because they had a richness in their hearts. But we, with richness all around us, are afraid because the desert is in our hearts.” As you today begin a new phase in your lives, I count on you to discover a spiritual richness in your hearts. America relies upon such an inward quest far more than an outward reach to the moon or even to the stars.