50 quotes
We want an America in which every child has educational opportunity, an America in which every citizen has equal job opportunity, equal rights to the use of all public facilities, the right to live in a decent neighborhood, in a decent home.
Address before the annual convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (1957)
If the peoples of great nations can work, sacrifice, fight, and die together because they share common fears and common hatreds in war, why can we not find a way to tap the great spiritual reservoir that lies deep within each of us and get people and nations working, sacrificing, and building together in peacetime because they share common hopes and common aspirations.
Address before the Indian Council on World Affairs (1956)
Why do we have these machines? Is economic effort an end, or is it a means to an end? Obviously it must be a means to an end. And the end must be the enrichment of human life, and the expansion of frontiers for human growth, not for just the few, but for the many.
Address before the National Council for Social Studies of the National Education Association (1956)
I ask this simple question. I ask it of you and I ask it of my fellow Americans everywhere. Why is it that we have the courage to mobilize the power of America to meet the challenge of war, but we fail to have the same courage to mobilize America to meet the challenge of peace?
Address before the National Council for Social Studies of the National Education Association (1956)
We have a saying in the union: "If a fellow looks like a duck and quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, the possibility is that he is a duck." That is the way with a Communist. If the guy does everything that the party does, the prospects are very good that he is a party member or fellow traveler.
You cannot make peace and freedom secure in the world as long as hundreds of millions of people are denied the necessities of life, so long as millions and millions of people are committed to belong to the have-not nations, and they and their children are denied the right to achieve economic and social justice.
Address accepting the Presidency of the CIO (1952)
You've got to judge the worth of the government not by what it does to help the few who have too much to get more, but what governments does to help the many to get enough.
Television interview with Mike Wallace (1960)
Well, you see, I have nothing against Goldwater. I think he has the finest eighteenth century mind in the U.S. Senate.
Television interview with Mike Wallace (1960)
When we get to the place in the development of our society where the tools of abundance can take care of the material needs of the outer man with less and less human effort, the real emphasis then has to be shifted to enabling the inner man to grow.
Television interview with Mike Wallace (1960)
I'm proud of the role the American labor movement has played historically in fighting to make education possible for everyone's child. We share the belief that every child is made in the image of God and that every child ought to have the right to an educational opportunity that will enable that child to grow intellectually and spiritually and culturally—not limited by antiquated classrooms, overcrowded classes, or underpaid teachers—but limited only by the capacity which God gave that child to grow.
Address before the National Council for Social Studies of the National Education Association (1956)