138 quotes
It was generally conceded that had an election been held, Ho Chi Minh would have been elected Premier.
The White House Years: Mandate for Change: 1953–1956: A Personal Account (1963)
I propose to use whatever authority exists in the office of the President to end segregation in the District of Columbia, including the Federal Government, and any segregation in the Armed Forces.
Annual Message to Congress (1953)
Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionaries and rebels—men and women who dared to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.
Yet the promise of this life is imperiled by the very genius that has made it possible...Science seems ready to confer upon us, as its final gift, the power to erase human life from this planet.
I believe the only way to protect my own rights is to protect the rights of others.
Remarks at the United Negro College Fund luncheon (1953)
We must be ready to dare all for our country. For history does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.
It is only as we govern ourselves that we are well-governed.
Remarks on the Observation of Law Day (1958)
From behind the Iron Curtain, there are signs that tyranny is in trouble and reminders that its structure is as brittle as its surface is hard.
I believe as long as we allow conditions to exist that make for second-class citizens, we are making of ourselves less than first-class citizens.
Remarks at the United Negro College Fund luncheon (1953)
The chief of staff says I'm the guy.
No people on earth can be held, as a people, to be an enemy, for all humanity shares the common hunger for peace and fellowship and justice. ... No nation's security and well-being can be lastingly achieved in isolation but only in effective cooperation with fellow-nations.
The Chance for Peace (1953)
We are—proudly—a people with no sense of class or caste. We judge no man by his name or inheritance, but by what he does—and for what he stands.
Address at the Philadelphia Convention Hall (1956)
I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.
It is unwise to make education too cheap. If everything is provided freely, there is a tendency to put no value on anything. Education must always have a certain price on it; even as the very process of learning itself must always require individual effort and initiative.
We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications.
Farewell address (1961)
Our time of national political debate is almost ended. The clamor of these days will soon subside. And your day of thoughtful decision swiftly nears.
Address at the Philadelphia Convention Hall (1956)
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.
The Chance for Peace (1953)
Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force!
You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you.
I was against it on two counts. First, the Japanese were ready to surrender, and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing. Second, I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon.
Conceiving the defense of freedom, like freedom itself, to be one and indivisible, we hold all continents and peoples in equal regard and honor. We reject any insinuation that one race or another, one people or another, is in any sense inferior or expendable.