“If we cannot end our differences at least we can make the world safe for diversity.”
“Once you say you're going to settle for second, that's what happens to you in life.”
“... ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”
“We will neglect our cities to our peril, for in neglecting them we neglect the nation.”
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”
“If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.”
“Our growing softness, our increasing lack of physical fitness, is a menace to our security.”
“It might be said now that I have the best of both worlds: a Harvard education and a Yale degree.”
“Don't buy a single vote more than necessary. I'll be damned if I'm going to pay for a landslide.”
“In giving rights to others which belong to them, we give rights to ourselves and to our country.”
“In the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding on the back of the tiger ended up inside.”
“I never know when I press these whether I am going to blow up Massachusetts or start the project.”
“True happiness is the full use of your powers along lines of excellence in a life affording scope.”
“Communism has never come to power in a country that was not disrupted by war or corruption, or both.”
“We prefer world law, in the age of self-determination, to world war in the age of mass extermination.”
“Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.”
“There is no city in the United States in which I can get a warmer welcome and fewer votes than Columbia, Ohio.”
“Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.”
“Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education. The human mind is our fundamental resource.”
“Tolerance implies no lack of commitment to one's own beliefs. Rather it condemns the oppression or persecution of others.”
“If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.”
“A young man who does not have what it takes to perform military service is not likely to have what it takes to make a living.”
“Written in Chinese, the word crisis, is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represent opportunity.”
“You can milk a cow the wrong way once and still be a farmer, but vote the wrong way on a water tower and you can be in trouble.”
“When we got into office, the thing that surprised me most was to find that things were just as bad as we'd been saying they were.”
“For without belittling the courage with which men have died, we should not forget those acts of courage with which men have lived.”
“It is time for a new generation of leadership, to cope with new problems and new opportunities. For there is a new world to be won.”
“There are risks and costs to a program of action, but they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.”
“The farmer is the only man in our economy who buys everything at retail, sells everything at wholesale, and pays the freight both ways.”
“Peace is a daily, a weekly, a monthly process, gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers, quietly building new structures.”