We live in a world that has narrowed into a neighborhood before it has broadened into a brotherhood.
If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking.
Hug your friends tight, but your enemies tighter ? hug ?em so tight they can?t wiggle.
The crotch, down where your nuts hang, is always a little too tight.
Never make a speech at a country dance or a football game.
We have talked long enough in this country about equal rights. It is time now to write the next chapter - and to write it in the books of law.
If government is to serve any purpose it is to do for others what they are unable to do for themselves.
Did you ever think that making a speech on economy is a lot like pissing down your leg? It seems hot to you, but it never does to anyone else.
No member of our generation who wasn't a Communist or a dropout in the thirties is worth a damn.
I want to make a policy statement. I am unabashedly in favor of women.
It's the price of leadership to do the thing you believe has to be done at the time it must be done.
Any man who's not willing to take half a loaf in a negotiation, well, that man never went to bed hungry.
This generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale through radioactive materials and a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels. Entire regional airsheds, crop plant environments, and river basins are heavy with noxious materials. Motor vehicles and home heating plants, municipal dumps and factories continually hurl pollutants into the air we breathe. Each day almost 50,000 tons of unpleasant, and sometimes poisonous, sulfur dioxide are added to the atmosphere, and our automobiles produce almost 300,000 tons of other pollutants.
Never miss an opportunity to say a word of congratulation upon anyone's achievement.
We have always believed that our people can stand on no higher ground than the school ground, or can enter any more hopeful room than the classroom. We blend time and faith and knowledge in our schools - not only to create educated citizens, but also to shape the destiny of this great Republic.
Sometimes among our more sophisticated, self-styled intellectuals--and I say self-styled advisedly; the real intellectual I am notsure would ever feel this way--some of them are more concerned with appearance than they are with achievement. They are more concerned with style then they are with mortar, brick and concrete. They are more concerned with trivia and the superficial than they are with the things that have really built America.
The poor suffer twice at the rioter's hands. First, his destructive fury scars their neighborhood; second, the atmosphere of accommodation and consent is changed to one of hostility and resentment.
The noblest search is the search for excellence.
I do not find it easy to send the flower of our youth, our finest young men, into battle.
A good president does with executive power what Pablo Picasso did with paint. He takes bills into new and slightly discomfiting territory. He puts extra eyes on policies. He moves the mouth of the Supreme Court from where it should be to where it must be.
There is nothing that exasperates people more than a display of superior ability or brilliance in conversation. They seem pleased at the time, but their envy makes them curse the conversationalist in their heart.
Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose.
A rioter with a Molotov cocktail in his hands is not fighting for civil rights any more than a Klansman with a sheet on his back and mask on his face. They are both more or less what the law declares them: lawbreakers, destroyers of constitutional rights and liberties and ultimately destroyers of a free America.
When the burdens of the presidency seem unusually heavy, I always remind myself it could be worse. I could be a mayor.
Of course, I may go into a strange bedroom every now and then that I don't want you to write about, but otherwise you can write everything.
Knowledge is of two kinds: we know a subject itself, or know where to find it.
A nation that fails to plan intelligently for the development and protection of its precious waters will be condemned to wither because of its shortsightedness. The hard lessons of history are clear, written on the deserted sands and ruins of once proud civilizations.
Doing what's right isn't the problem. It is knowing what's right.
When a person finds themselves predisposed to complaining about how little they are regarded by others, let them reflect how little they have contributed to the happiness of others.
You know when you're milking a cow and you have all that foamy white milk in the bucket and you're just about through, when all of a sudden the cow switches her tail through a pile of manure and slaps it into that foamy white milk. That's Bill Fulbright.
Ambition is an uncomfortable companion many times. He creates a discontent with present surroundings and achievements; he is never satisfied but always pressing forward to better things in the future. Restless, energetic, purposeful, it is ambition that makes of the creature a real man.
Light at the end of the tunnel? We don't even have a tunnel; we don't even know where the tunnel is.
I have learned that only two things are necessary to keep one's wife happy. First, let her think she's having her own way. And second, let her have it.
If we must disagree, let's disagree without being disagreeable.
Our understanding of how to live with one another is still far behind our knowledge of how to destroy one another.
I will not seek, and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president.
Education will not cure all the problems of society, but without it no cure for any problem is possible.
In 1790, the nation which had fought a revolution against taxation without representation discovered that some of its citizens weren't much happier about taxation with representation.
We did not choose to be the guardians of the gate, but there is no one else.
We can draw lessons from the past, but we cannot live in it.
I'm a powerful S.O.B., you know that?
'All men are created equal', 'government by consent of the governed', 'give me liberty or give me death'. Well, those are not just clever words, or those are not just empty theories.
The Organization of American States couldn't pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were written on the heel.
Republicans simply don't know how to manage the economy.
The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.
We need to remember that the separation of church and state must never mean the separation of religious values from the lives of public servants. . . If we who serve free men today are to differ from the tyrants of this age, we must balance the powers in our hands with God in our hearts.
Jerry Ford is so dumb he can't walk and chew gum at the same time.... He's a nice fellow, but he spent too much time playing football without a helmet.
Lincoln was right about not fooling all the people all the time. But Republicans haven't given up trying.
Four. That's what I want you to remember. If you don't get your idea across in the first four minutes, you won't do it. Four sentences to a paragraph. Four letters to a word. The most important words in the English language all have four letters. Home. Love. Food. Land. Peace. . .I know peace has five letters, but any damn fool knows it should have four.
If you're not listening, you're not learning.
Our objective in South Vietnam has never been the annihilation of the enemy. It has been to bring about a recognition in Hanoi that its objective - taking over the South by force - could not be achieved.
Heck by the time a man scratches his behind, clears his throat, and tells me how smart he is, we've already wasted fifteen minutes.
Government is best which is closest to the people. Yet that belief is betrayed by those State and local officials who engage in denying the right of citizens to vote. Their actions serve only to assure that their State governments and local governments shall be remote from the people, least representative of the people's will and least responsive to the people's wishes.
Better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in.
We are not about to send American boys 9 or 10 thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.
Evil acts of the past are never rectified by evil acts of the present.
I'm gonna hunker down like a jack rabbit in a dust storm
To hunger for use and to go unused is the worst hunger of all.
The job, of course, will never be finished. For a nation, as for an individual, education is a perpetually unfinished journey, a continuing process of discovery.
The CIA is made up of boys whose families sent them to Princeton but wouldn't let them into the family brokerage business.
If we are to live together in peace, we must come to know each other better.
While you're saving your face, you're losing your ass.
There is no issue of States' rights or National rights. There is only the struggle for human rights.
In a thousand unseen ways we have drawn shape and strength from the land.
One hundred years ago, the slave was freed. One hundred years later, the Negro remains in bondage to the color of his skin.
Peace is a journey of a thousand miles and it must be taken one step at a time.
Nothing comes free. Nothing. Not even good, especially not good.
All the historians are Harvard people. It just isn't fair. Poor old Hoover from West Branch, Iowa, had no chance with that crowd;nor did Andrew Jackson from Tennessee. Nor does Lyndon Johnson from Stonewall, Texas. It just isn't fair.
But more classrooms and more teachers are not enough. We must seek an educational system which grows in excellence as it grows in size. This means better training for our teachers. It means preparing youth to enjoy their hours of leisure as well as their hours of labor. It means exploring new techniques of teaching, to find new ways to stimulate the love of learning and the capacity for creation.
You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, "you are free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result.
Free speech, free press, free religion, the right of free assembly, yes, the right of petition... well, they are still radical ideas.
This right to vote is the basic right without which all others are meaningless. It gives people, people as individuals, control over their own destinies.
There is no Constitutional issue here. The command of the Constitution is plain. There is no moral issue. It is wrong - deadly wrong - to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote in this country. There is no issue of States' rights or National rights. There is only the struggle for human rights.
You know, doing what is right is easy. The problem is knowing what is right.
I am proud to be a member of a party that opens its doors to all men--and closes its hearts to none.
President Can't Swim.
There are no problems we cannot solve together, and very few that we can solve by ourselves.
If we quit Vietnam, tomorrow we'll be fighting in Hawaii, and next week we'll have to fight in San Francisco.
What convinces is conviction.
Every American citizen must have an equal right to vote. There is no reason which can excuse the denial of that right. There is no duty which weighs more heavily on us than the duty we have to ensure that right.
I am going to build the kind of nation that President Roosevelt hoped for, President Truman worked for, and President Kennedy died for.
It's too bad, but the way American people are, now that they have all this capability, instead of taking advantage of it, they'll probably just piss it all away.
Every man has a right to a Saturday night bath.
Whether we are New Dealer, Old Dealer, Liberty Leaguer or Red, whether we agree or not, we still have the right to think and speak how we feel.
If you have a mother-in-law with only one eye and she has it in the center of her forehead, don't keep her in the living room.
There are two kinds of speeches: the Mother Hubbard speech, which, like the garment, covers everything but touches nothing, and the French bathing suit speech, which covers only the essential points.
Democracy is a constant tension between truth and half-truth and, in the arsenal of truth, there is no greater weapon than fact.
I'll have those n**gers voting Democratic for the next 200 years.
Watch their hands, watch their eyes. Read eyes. No matter what a man is saying to you, it's not as important as what you can read in his eyes. The most important thing a man has to tell you is what he's not telling you; the most important thing he has to say is what he's trying not to say.
As man draws nearer to the stars, why should he not also draw nearer to his neighbor?
It is important that the United States remain a two-party system. I'm a fellow who likes small parties and the Republican Party can't be too small to suit me.
You aren't learning anything when you're talking.
The guns and the bombs, the rockets and the warships, are all symbols of human failure.
The Secretary of Labor is in charge of finding you a job, the Secretary of the Treasury is in charge of taking half the money you make away from you, and the Attorney General is in charge of suing you for the other half.
'If you let a bully come in and chase you out of your front yard, he'll be on your porch and the next day he'll rape your wife in your own bed.
...International education cannot be the work of one country. It is the responsibility and promise of all nations. It calls for free exchange and full collaboration...The knowledge of our citizens is one treasure which grows only when it is shared.
You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered.
I believe that the essence of government lies with unceasing concern for the welfare and dignity and decency and innate integrity of life for every individual. I dont like to say this and wish I didnt have to add these words to make it clear but I willregardless of color, creed, ancestry, sex or age.
Art is a nation's most precious heritage. For it is in our works of art that we reveal to ourselves and to others the inner vision which guides us as a nation. And where there is no vision, the people perish.
The prospect of penury in age is so gloomy and terrifying that every man who looks before him must resolve to avoid it; and it must be avoided generally by the science of sparing. For, though in every age there are some who, by bold adventures, or by favorable accidents, rise suddenly to riches, yet it is dangerous to indulge hopes of such rare events; and the bulk of mankind must owe their affluence to small and gradual profits, below which their expense must be resolutely reduced.
We must change to master change.
I'll tell you what's at the bottom of it. If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.
Democrats legislate; Republicans investigate.
If you're I politics and you can't tell when you walk into a room who's for you and who's against you, then you're in the wrong line of work.
If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: 'President Can't Swim.'
The men who have guided the destiny of the United States have found the strength for their tasks by going to their knees. This private unity of public men and their God is an enduring source of reassurance for the people of America.
The American city should be a collection of communities where every member has a right to belong. It should be a place where every man feels safe on his streets and in the house of his friends. It should be a place where each individual's dignity and self-respect is strengthened by the respect and affection of his neighbors. It should be a place where each of us can find the satisfaction and warmth which comes from being a member of the community of man. This is what man sought at the dawn of civilization. It is what we seek today.
This is a moment that I deeply wish my parents could have lived to share. My father would have enjoyed what you have so generously said of me-and my mother would have believed it.
No national sovereignty rules in outer space. Those who venture there go as envoys of the entire human race. Their quest, therefore, must be for all mankind, and what they find should belong to all mankind.
Being president is like being a jackass in a hailstorm. There's nothing to do but to stand there and take it.
To sustain an environment suitable for man, we must fight on a thousand battlegrounds. Despite all of our wealth and knowledge, we cannot create a redwood forest, a wild river, or a gleaming seashore.
But if future generations are to remember us more with gratitude than with sorrow, we must achieve more than just the miracles of technology. We must also leave them a glimpse of the world as God really made it, not just as it looked when we got through with it.
There are plenty of recommendations on how to get out of trouble cheaply and fast. Most of them come down to this: Deny your responsibility.
The fact that a man is a newspaper reporter is evidence of some flaw of character.
At times history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom.
Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men's skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact.
There's something special for everyone to do. Remember, no experience is a bad experience unless you gain nothing from it.
I want real loyalty. I want someone who will kiss my ass in Macy's window, and say it smells like roses.
Justice requires us to remember that when any citizen denies his fellow, saying, 'His color is not mine,' or 'His beliefs are strange and different,' in that moment he betrays America, though his forebears created this nation.
In modern warfare there are no victors; there are only survivors.
In my state, on the basis of the separate but equal doctrine, we have made enormous strides over the years in the education of both races. Personally, I think it would have been sounder judgment to allow that progress to continue through the process of natural evolution. However, there is no point crying about spilt milk.
There are no favorites in my office. I treat them all with the same general inconsideration.
We believe, that is, you and I, that education is not an expense. We believe it is an investment.
The best fertilizer for a piece of land is the footprints of its owner.
Education is the key to opportunity in our society, and the equality of educational opportunity must be the birthright of every citizen.
