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And two recipients who were not able to be here today, but I want to make mention of them because obviously their careers have helped to mark the landscape of American culture for decades -- Mr. Bob Dylan and Clint Eastwood, who are both recipients but could not make it today. So I wanted to make sure that we acknowledge them.
Now, all of us are here to share a recognition of the importance of the arts and the humanities -- pursuits and professions that enrich the mind, and nourish the soul, and strengthen the character of this country. They bring us joy. They bring us understanding and insight. They bring us comfort in good times and, perhaps especially, in difficult times in our own lives and in the life of our nation.
This recognition is what led to the founding of the Committee on the Arts and Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Each of these institutions plays a vital role in preserving and enhancing America's cultural legacy. They promote works of the past. They cultivate the talent of the future. They deserve our thanks.
It is one of the special privileges of this office that I have an opportunity, from time to time, to take part in award ceremonies like this; to honor individuals and institutions that are important to me, personally, and important to all of our citizens; to celebrate triumphs of the arts and the humanities that bring us closer to an understanding of what makes us American, but also what makes us human.
And one of the most extraordinary features of America's cultural inheritance is its dynamism and its diversity. It's a culture that produced Mark Twain and Toni Morrison, John Philip Sousa and Louis Armstrong, Marian Anderson and Alvin Ailey. It's a culture in which all of us can find a place, in which all of us can take great pride.
The men and women that we honor today are a part of this unique American tradition. In a cultural moment that too often prizes the sensational over the enduring, the trivial over the profound, it's worth recalling the contributions of the honorees in this room -- contributions that at once reflect and rise above the particular moments in which they're made.
With us are actors and authors, singers and sculptors, conductors, curators, collectors, civic leaders, champions of the arts and the humanities. Each has taken a different path to get here. Each has made the most of different gifts. But all of them have reached the peaks of cultural achievement. And all of them are a testament to the breadth and depth of the human spirit.
It's through contributions like theirs, as much as anything else, that a nation's legacy is forged. Ancient Greece and Rome are remembered for the rulers who conquered the known world, but also for the Odyssey and the Iliad, for a forum and a coliseum. Europe -- from the Renaissance through the Enlightenment -- is remembered for wars of religion and the stirrings of revolution, but also for the Sistine Chapel and the encyclopedia. The China that invented gunpowder and paper is also known for its poetry.
That is the legacy of these civilizations. That's how they are remembered. And we will be remembered, I hope, for what we do in our time to deliver progress for our people and to advance the dreams of all people. But I hope we will be remembered for something else, as well. I hope we will be remembered for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, for the School of American Ballet, for all that you, the honorees here today, have done to enrich and enhance America's legacy.
