As we think about the next 50 years, I remember a story President Kennedy told a week before he was killed. The story was about French Marshal Louis- Hubert-Gonzalve Lyautey, who walked one morning through his garden with his gardener. He stopped at a certain point and asked the gardener to plant a tree there the next morning. The gardener said, “But the tree will not bloom for 100 years.” The marshal replied, “In that case, you had better plant it this afternoon.

—Newton N. Minow on taking a long-term view, in A Vaster Wasteland.