A President’s hardest task is not to do what is right, but to know what is right.
Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose.
He’s a nice guy, but he played too much football with his helmet off.
He that in the latter part of his life too strictly inquires what he has done, can very seldom receive from his own heart such an account as will give him satisfaction.
A few years make such havoc in human generations that we soon see ourselves deprived of those with whom we entered the world, and whom the participation of pleasures or fatigues had endeared to our remembrance.
John ain’t been worth a damn since he started wearing $300 suits.
I am a compromiser and maneuverer. I try to get something. That’s the way our system works.
Organized crime constitutes nothing less than a guerilla war against society.
My most fervent prayer is to be a President who can make it possible for every boy in this land to grow to manhood by loving his country – instead of dying for it.
The test before us as a people is not whether our commitments match our will and our courage; but whether we have the will and courage to match our commitments.
Evil acts of the past are never rectified by evil acts of the present.
America has not always been kind to its artists and scholars. Somehow the scientists always seem to get the penthouse while the arts and humanities get the basement.
I want real loyalty. I want someone who will kiss my ass in Macy’s window, and say it smells like roses.
I want every family in America to have a carpet on the floor and a picture on the wall. After bread, you’ve got to have a picture on the wall.
All I have I would have given gladly not to be standing here today.
I do not find it easy to send the flower of our youth, our finest young men, into battle.
Come now, let us reason together.
We have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society.
We can and should have an abundance of trails for walking, cycling, and horseback riding, in and close to our cities. In the backcountry we need to copy the great Appalachian Trail in all parts of America.
The American people have a right to air that they and their children can breathe without fear.
Doing the right thing is not the problem. Knowing what the right thing is, that’s the challenge.