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Literary/Historical references from
Gov. Brown's State of the State address
In Gov. Jerry Brown's State of the State address on Thursday, Jan. 24, he quoted or made references to several notable figures from history and literature. Here are the subjects of those references and the quotes or context Brown used.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Brown said: I salute the teachers and the students, the parents and the college presidents, the whole school community. As the great jurist, Oliver Wendell Holmes, once said when describing what stirs people to action: "Feeling begets feeling and great feeling begets great feeling." You were alarmed, you stirred yourselves to action and victory was the outcome. -
Bible story in Genesis about Pharaoh and Joseph
Brown said: Recall the story of Genesis and Pharaoh's dream of seven cows, fatfleshed and well favored, which came out of the river, followed by seven other cows leanfleshed and ill favored. Then the lean cows ate up the fat cows. The Pharaoh could not interpret his dream until Joseph explained to him that the seven fat cows were seven years of great plenty and the seven lean cows were seven years of famine that would immediately follow. The Pharaoh took the advice of Joseph and stored up great quantities of grain during the years of plenty. When famine came, Egypt was ready. -
Franklin Roosevelt
Brown said: In the midst of the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt said: "There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected. This generation has a rendezvous with destiny." We -- right here in California -- have such a rendezvous with destiny. All around us we see doubt and skepticism about our future and that of America's. But what we have accomplished together these last two years, indeed, the whole history of California, belies such pessimism. -
Franklin Roosevelt -
King Charles III of Spain
Brown said: In 1769, under King Charles III, orders were issued to Jose de Galvez, the Visitor General of Baja California, to: "Occupy and fortify San Diego and Monterey for God and the King of Spain.´
Gaspar Portola and a small band of brave men made their way slowly north, along an uncharted path. Eventually, they reached Monterey but they could not recognize the Bay in the dense fog. With their supplies failing, they marched back to San Diego, forced to eat the flesh of emaciated pack mules just to stay alive. Undaunted, Portola sent for provisions from Baja California and promptly organized a second expedition. He retraced his steps northward, along what was to become El Camino Real, the Kings Highway. This time, Father Serra joined the expedition by sea. The rest is history, a spectacular history of bold pioneers meeting every failure with even greater success. -
Gaspar de Portola -
Father Junipero Serra -
Abraham Lincoln
Brown said: Then during the Civil War under President Lincoln came the Transcontinental Railroad and Land Grant Colleges, followed by the founding of the University of California. And oil production, movies, an aircraft industry, the longest suspension bridge in the world, aerospace, the first freeways, grand water projects, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Venture Capital, Silicon Valley, Hewlett Packard, Apple, Qualcomm, Google and countless others, existing and still just imagined. -
Abraham Lincoln -
Michel de Montaigne
Brown said: As Legislators, It is your duty and privilege to pass laws. But what we need to do for our future will require more than producing hundreds of new laws each year. Montaigne, the great French writer of the 16th Century, in his Essay on Experience, wisely wrote: "There is little relation between our actions, which are in perpetual mutation, and fixed and immutable laws. The most desirable laws are those that are the rarest, simplest, and most general; and I even think that it would be better to have none at all than to have them in such numbers as we have." -
William Butler Yeats
Brown said: We seem to think that education is a thing--like a vaccine--that can be designed from afar and simply injected into our children. But as the Irish poet, William Butler Yeats said, "Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire." -
"The Little Engine That Could"
Brown said: Taking off from his prepared text, Brown used the familiar children's story "The Little Engine That Could" to illustrate how California can overcome the monumental challenges it faces in creating a high-speed rail system. "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can," Brown intoned, quoting the phrase that provides resonance and payoff for the story of the little engine that saves the day and gets a big job done.
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