You cannot tell a poor boy from a small country town on the plains of South Dakota who has had the opportunity to be a teacher, a mayor, a senator, and a vice president, that America is not a nation of promise.
We can not expect to breed respect for law and order among people who do not share the fruits of our freedom.
I had no money to buy books, so between classes and work, I haunted the library. I even tutored in French with a sliding scale of payment: twenty dollars for an A, fifteen for a B, ten for a C, five for a D.
A politician never forgets the precarious nature of elective life. We have never established a practice of tenure in public office.
To be realistic today is to be visionary. To be realistic is to be starry-eyed.
The Senate is a place filled with goodwill and good intentions, and if the road to hell is paved with them, then it’s a pretty good detour.
Profit and morality are a hard combination to beat.
Foreign policy is really domestic policy with its hat on.
I learned more about the economy from one South Dakota dust storm that I did in all my years of college.
National isolation breeds national neurosis.
There is a great deal of difference between living and surviving. You can survive in debauchery, even in sickness and despair. But you live with a spirit of vitality and a spirit of participation, of being wanted, and having something to contribute.
What do we want for people? Human dignity, personal expression and fulfillment, justice, freedom.
There is a lot of difference between failure and defeat. Failure is when you are defeated and neither learn nor contribute anything.
It is not enough to merely defend democracy. To defend it may be to lose it; to extend it is to strengthen it. Democracy is not property; it is an idea.
I have seen in the Halls of Congress more idealism, more humanness, more compassion, more profiles of courage than in any other institution that I have ever known.
Anyone who thinks that the vice-president can take a position independent of the president of his administration simply has no knowledge of politics or government. You are his choice in a political marriage, and he expects your absolute loyalty.
Unfortunately, our affluent society has also been an effluent society.
The President has only 190 million bosses. The Vice President has 190 million and one.
More progress results from the violent execution of an imperfect plan than the perfection of a plan to violently execute.
The difference between hearsay and prophecy is often one of sequence. Hearsay often turns out to have been prophecy.
Our greatest songs are still unsung.