As we ask God for some blessing, we have an obligation to participate ourselves in the fulfillment of those dreams, aspirations, hopes, and ideas. - Jimmy Carter

We have the heaviest concentration of lawyers on Earth —one for every five-hundred Americans; three times as many as are in England, four times as many as are in West Germany, twenty-one times as many as there are in Japan. We have more litigation, but I am not sure that we have more justice. No resources of talent and training in our own society, even including the medical care, is more wastefully or unfairly distributed than legal skills. Ninety percent of our lawyers serve 10 percent of our people. We are over-lawyered and under-represented.

I appreciate the chance to come. You've probably noticed that I was a little late in arriving. I met Alex Haley outside, and I made the mistake of saying, "Alex, how's your family?" Unfortunately, he told me. And it took a while to get in. Alex and I have a lot in common. I just came up a few minutes ago from an afternoon of campaigning in Virginia, and was in Williamsburg right across from where my own folks came to this country, I think 340 years ago, across the river from Jamestown. He and I were both in the Navy. We both were famous enough last year to be interviewed by Playboy magazine. We both wrote a book. Mine was called "Why Not The Best?"; his was.

There's another item I'd like to mention tonight, and that's the subject of energy. I presented to the Congress and to the American people last April, for the first time in the history of our Nation, a comprehensive energy policy. We had a severe blow in 1973 when the prices of oil were quadrupled almost overnight. And when an oil embargo was slapped on our country, that economically almost brought us to our knees. Other nations suffered the same challenge. They have reacted well. The consumption of oil in Germany, compared to 1973, is down. The consumption of oil in Sweden is down, France down, Italy down, Japan down. The consumption of oil in the United States since 1973 is up 87 percent. This year we are importing $45 billion worth of oil from overseas, half of the oil we use. And that's almost exactly the amount that we waste, that we don't have to waste. Notice that this is twice as much oil imported as all the agricultural products that we export. Something must be done.