Quotes
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Speech Delivered Before the New York Democratic State Committee
The Democratic Party must make a major effort to involve itself with the social and economic problems of the States on the local as well as state-wide level.
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Address at the Dinner Honoring Congressman James C. Corman at the Sportsmen’s Lodge, Los Angeles, California
Education is the key to the future for every one of our children. In a world such as this, it does not matter what material goods we leave our children.
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Speech delivered at Sioux City, Iowa
Education is the key to preserving individual capacity to act, to provide for oneself without dependence on government . . . And education . . . is the key to understanding the world about us, the world of new nations and nuclear weapons, affluence and starvation, war and peace.
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Speech delivered at Des Moines, Iowa
In this mobile society, with most Americans moving across state lines at least once in their lifetime, the education of a child in Iowa contributes to the whole nation— and a stunted education elsewhere can force Iowa to spend more on welfare and police and housing. Education is a national resource; it should be paid…
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Address at the Sixth Annual Westside Community Conference, Columbia University, New York City
Education is not only important to understanding the world and each other
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Address at Kentucky’s Centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, Freedom Hall, Louisville, Kentucky
It is one thing to open the schools to all children regardless of race. It is another to train the teachers, to build the classrooms, and to attempt to eliminate the effects of past educational deficiencies. It is still another to find ways to feed the incentive to learn and keep children in school.
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Speech at the University of Alabama
Education is the key to jobs—to income—to human dignity itself . . . In the last analysis the quality of education is a question of commitment—of whether people like us are willing to go into the classrooms as teachers or parents, as volunteers or just as concerned citizens, to ensure that every child learns to…
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Speech at the Opening of Exhibit on the Emancipation Proclamation at The National Archives in Washington, D.C.
We have had a great deal of talk in this country in the past one hundred years about equality. Deeds, not talk, are what is needed. It is only relatively recently that we as a nation have again gathered our strength, our will, and our determination to act boldly and vigorously to lift from all…
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Address at the Joint Defense Appeal of the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, Chicago, Illinois
I have been drawn to the Civil War, as have many Americans, because it was a climactic time in our history; a time of incredible courage and bravery; a time when the American people faced a strange and bitter crisis and emerged united and resolved to continue the historic struggle of free men to achieve…
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Excerpt from Voice of America Broadcast
My grandfather came to this country many years ago. He was brought up in Boston and when he went out to look for a job there were signs on many stores that no Irish were wanted. Now after some 40 or 50 years, an Irish Catholic is President of the United States
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Speech at the Dedication of the John F. Kennedy Interfaith Chapel at West Georgia College in Carrollton, Georgia
For an American man, woman, or child to be turned away from a public place for no reason other than the color of his skin is an intolerable insult, an insult that is in no way eased by the bland explanation that it has been allowed to go on for a hundred years or more.…
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Address at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund Banquet, New York
Reliance on government is dependence—and what the people of our ghettoes need is not greater dependence, but full independence; not the charity and favor of their fellow citizens, but equal claims of right and equal power to enforce those claims.
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