Once you say you're going to settle for second, that's what happens to you in life.

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.

Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.

There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction.

The greater our knowledge increases the more our ignorance unfolds.

Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.

War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.

A child miseducated is a child lost.

Communism has never come to power in a country that was not disrupted by war or corruption, or both.

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. Today's military rejects include tomorrow's hard-core unemployed.

Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.

Modern cynics and skeptics... see no harm in paying those to whom they entrust the minds of their children a smaller wage than is paid to those to whom they entrust the care of their plumbing.

Those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly.

Peace is a daily, a weekly, a monthly process, gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers, quietly building new structures.

The very word 'secrecy' is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings.

History is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future. To try to hold fast is to be swept aside.

If we cannot now end our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.

Our growing softness, our increasing lack of physical fitness, is a menace to our security.

If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.

Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education. The human mind is our fundamental resource.