Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The courage of life is often a less dramatic spectacle than the courage of a final moment; but it is no less a magnificent mixture of triumph and tragedy.
For one true measure of a nation is its success in fulfilling the promise of a better life for each of its members. Let this be the measure of our nation.
If this capsule history of our progress teaches us anything, it is that man, in his quest for knowledge and progress, is determined and cannot be deterred.
Wealth is the means, and people are the ends. All our material riches will avail us little if we do not use them to expand the opportunities of our people.
The wave of the future is not the conquest of the world by a single dogmatic creed but the liberation of the diverse energies of free nations and free men.
A man does what he must - in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures - and that is the basis of all human morality.
I am sorry to say that there is too much point to the wisecrack that life is extinct on other planets because their scientists were more advanced than ours.
I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end... where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice.
Abroad, the balance of power is shifting. There are new and more terrible weapons - new and uncertain nations - new pressures of population and deprivation.
The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission.
Our nation is founded on the principal that observance of the law is the eternal safeguard of liberty and defiance of the law is the surest road to tyranny.
If anyone is crazy enough to want to kill a president of the United States, he can do it. All he must be prepared to do is give his life for the president's.
I know my Republican friends were glad to see my wife feeding an elephant in India. She gave him sugar and nuts. But of course the elephant wasn't satisfied.
No one has been barred on account of his race from fighting or dying for America, there are no white or colored signs on the foxholes or graveyards of battle.
I have said that control of arms is a mission that we undertake particularly for our children and our grandchildren and that they have no lobby in Washington.
We live in a hemisphere whose own revolution has given birth to the most powerful force of the modern age; the search for freedom and self fulfillment of man.
Unconditional war can no longer lead to unconditional victory. It can no longer serve to settle disputes... can no longer be of concern to great powers alone.
Economic growth without social progress lets the great majority of the people remain in poverty, while a privileged few reap the benefits of rising abundance.
I am not so much concerned with the right of everyone to say anything he pleases as I am about our need as a self-governing people to hear everything relevant.
The time is not far off when many nations in many parts of the world of many political shades and commitments will possess nuclear or even thermonuclear weapons.
Only in winter can you tell which trees are truly green. Only when the winds of adversity blow can you tell whether an individual or a country has steadfastness.
So, let us not be blind to our differences - but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved.
The stories of past courage... can offer hope, they can provide inspiration. But they cannot supply courage itself. For this each man must look into his own soul.
Every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable .. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us.
Of all the multitudes who throughout history have spoken for human dignity in times of great suffering and loss, no voice is more compelling than that of Anne Frank.
There are three things in life which are real: God, human folly and laughter. Since the first two are beyond our comprehension, we must do what we can with the third.
Khrushchev reminds me of the tiger hunter who has picked a place on the wall to hang the tiger's skin long before he has caught the tiger. This tiger has other ideas.
Where else, in a non-totalitarian country, but in the political profession is the individual expected to sacrifice all-including his own career-for the national good?
Every president has taken comfort and courage when told...that the Lord "will be with thee. He will not fail thee nor forsake thee. Fear not-neither be thou dismayed."
Political sovereignty is but a mockery without the means of meeting poverty and illiteracy and disease. Self-determination is but a slogan if the future holds no hope.
The high office of the President has been used to foment a plot to destroy the American's freedom and before I leave office, I must inform the citizens of this plight.
I'm 43 years old and I'm the healthiest candidate for the Presidency of the United States. You've travelled with me enough to know that I'm not going to die in office.
It is true that my predecessor did not object, as I do, to pictures of one's golf skill in action. But neither, on the other hand, did he ever bean a Secret Serviceman.
We stand today on the edge of a new frontier - the frontier of the 1960's - a frontier of unknown opportunities and perils - a frontier of unfulfilled hopes and threats.
I just received the following wire from my generous Daddy; Dear Jack, Don't buy a single vote more than is necessary. I'll be damned if I'm going to pay for a landslide.
I must say that though other days may not be so bright, as we look toward the future, that the brightest days will continue to be those we spent with you here in Ireland.
Let us make it clear that we will never turn our backs on our steadfast friends in Israel, whose adherence to the democratic way must be admired by all friends of freedom.
The very word 'secrecy' is repugnant in a free and open society. ... There is little value in ensuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it.
We cannot be satisfied with things as they are. We cannot be satisfied to drift, to rest on our oars, to glide over a sea whose depths are shaken by subterranean upheavals.
There is something that happens when we leave the land and enter the ocean. It's unexpected, the environment feels strangely welcoming. The ocean almost feels like... home.
... the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward, and so will space.
The function and responsibility of the President is to set before the American people the unfinished business, the things we must do if we are going to succeed as a nation.
I am the Democratic Party's candidate for president who happens also to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my church on public matters - and the church does not speak for me.
No man who enters upon the office to which I have succeeded can fail to recognize how every president of the United States has placed special reliance upon his faith in God.
No responsibility of government is more fundamental than the responsibility of maintaining the highest standard of ethical behavior for those who conduct the public business.
While they came from a variety of religious backgrounds and held a wide variety of religious beliefs, each of our presidents in his own way has placed a special trust in God.
United, there is little we cannot do in a host of cooperative ventures. Divided, there is little we can do-for we dare not meet a powerful challenge at odds and split asunder.
But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask; why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?
There is an old saying that the course of civilization is a race between catastrophe and education. In a democracy such as ours, we must make sure that education wins the race.
I hear it said that West Berlin is militarily untenable - and so was Bastogne, and so, in fact, was Stalingrad. Any danger spot is tenable if men - brave men - will make it so.