And the future is open. You have witnessed the memorable sight of history rising again to refute the determinist theologies, demonstrating once more that the world is unfinished and that the future is, within limits, yours to make. We need not be the slaves of history. This very inscrutability of the future implies the reality of individual freedom, the autonomy of individual purpose, the potency of individual choice. We need not be, as Tolstoi tried to persuade us we were in War and Peace , the slaves of history.
Individuals do make a difference.
In December 1931 a British politician crossing Fifth Avenue in New York around ten thirty at night looked in the wrong direction and was knocked down by an automobile. Suppose in addition that Lenin had died of typhus in Siberia in 1893 and that Hitler had been killed on the western front in 1916. It is given to few of us to be Churchills and Roosevelts, Lenins and Hilters, leaders who, for better or worse, have the power to shake the world. Village Hampdens shape the future too, withstanding the tyrants of the field with dauntless breast. Politics is still the greatest and the most honorable adventure.