Statesmanship is developed in the hard knocks of general experience, private and public.
Innovations and discoveries have created new industries giving more and more Americans better jobs and adding greatly to the prosperity and well being of all.
Before a battle, planning is everything. Once the fighting has begun, it’s worthless.
The seeker is never so popular as the sought. People want what they can’t get.
There must be justice, sensed and shared by all peoples, for, without justice the world can know only a tense and unstable truce.
We face a hostile ideology global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose and insidious in method.
We have the disgrace of racial discrimination, or we have prejudice against people because of their religion. We have not had the courage to uproot these things, although we know they are wrong.
A constitutional amendment for congressional term limits could never achieve the blessing of Congress; it could be initiated only by the states.
We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.
The president cannot escape from his office.
The gravity of the time is such that every new avenue of peace, no matter how dimly discernible, should be explored.
The essence of war is fire, famine, and pestilence. They contribute to its outbreak; they are among its weapons; they become its consequences.
A nation’s hope of lasting peace cannot be firmly based upon any race in armaments but rather upon just relations and honest understanding with all other nations.
Against the dark background of the atomic bomb, the United States does not wish merely to present strength, but also the desire and the hope for peace.
As nuclear and other technological achievements continue to mount, the normal life span will continue to climb. The hourly productivity of the worker will increase.
Every leader should have enough humility to accept, publicly, the responsibility for the mistakes of the subordinates he has himself selected and, likewise, to give them credit, publicly, for their triumphs.
Ideas more than once have prevailed against naked power. Guns and aircraft alone do not make a state powerful. Unless force is backed up by the will of the great body of people it loses its meaning.
Our best protection against bigger government in Washington is better government in the states.
Character in many ways is everything in leadership. It is made up of many things, but I would say character is really integrity.
Any nations right to a form of government and economic system of its own choosing is inalienable. Any nations attempt to dictate to other nations their form of government is indefensible.