Time & Perspective Quote by Paul Tsongas

Tsongas takes the shiny credential of being "the best and the brightest" and deliberately smears it with a little dirt. Calling it a "horrid expression" is a politician's way of puncturing a myth without alienating the people it flatters. By the late 20th century, that phrase carried the aftertaste of Vietnam-era hubris: elite managers and Ivy-smart planners who were so sure of their competence they mistook it for wisdom. Tsongas signals he knows the indictment and still wants to recruit you anyway.

The line works because it reframes privilege as obligation, then refuses the easy martyr pose. "Terrible burden if you let it be" is a quiet rebuke to performative guilt and self-seriousness. Your advantages are not tragic; your problem is what you do with them. He turns the moral question from identity ("am I one of them?") to agency ("will I act?").

Then he reaches for "warrior" and "wondrous", a pairing that tries to rescue ambition from cynicism. "Warrior" isn’t about violence so much as stamina: politics as sustained conflict against inertia, careerism, and the temptation to optimize your own life instead of repairing the civic one. "Wondrous" is the counterweight, insisting public struggle can be exhilarating rather than merely grim.

Contextually, Tsongas is speaking as a reform-minded Democrat of the post-Watergate, post-Vietnam hangover, trying to persuade educated young Americans that governance still deserves their talent. It’s a pep talk with teeth: you don’t get to bask in the label, but you do get to earn it.