Quotes
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Address at the University of Chicago China Conference, Chicago, Illinois
It is the shaping impulse of America that neither fate nor nature nor the irresistible tides of history, but the work of our own hands, matched to reason and principle, which can determine destiny. There is pride in that, even arrogance, but there is also experience and truth. In any event, it is the only…
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Address at the Day of Affirmation at the University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
I come here because of my deep interest and affection for a land settled by the Dutch in the mid-seventeenth century, then taken over by the British, and at last independent; a land in which the native inhabitants were at first subdued
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Address at the Testimonial Dinner for Congressman John Dow, Sterling Forest, New York
In many ways Wall Street is closer to London than it is to Harlem, a few miles Uptown; Scarsdale is often closer to Paris than to Selma, Alabama; and Americans in Appalachia are in many ways closer to the Favelas of Rio De Janeiro than they are to the society in which you and I…
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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
My faith is that Americans are not an inert people. My conviction is that we are rising as a people to confront the hard challenges of our age—and that we know that the hardest challenges are often those within ourselves
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Address at the Irish Institute of New York
There are already more Irishmen in this State of New York than in all the Republic of Ireland; if the tradition is to live, it will be by the memory of our minds and the work of our own hearts. I want that tradition
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Speech in Washington, D.C.
We have not been getting the truth about America to the world, particularly to the young intellectuals in the foreign nations, and particularly in those countries which are just growing, which have just come onto the world scene. Meanwhile, Communism, armed not with truth but with intensive, attractive propaganda, has been turning them against us.
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Speech
Over the years, an understanding of what America really stands for is going to count far more than missiles, aircraft carriers and supersonic bombers. The big changes of the future will result from this understanding or lack of it.
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Address at the Sixth Annual Westside Community Conference, Columbia University, New York City
Ever since the onset of the Cold War, we have been urged to “develop” a concise, exacting American manifesto— a platform which would compete with the simple, rousing calls of the Communists.
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Speech at the Ceremonies Celebrating the 175th Anniversary of the Ratification of the Constitution, Independence Hall, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
The signers of the Constitution, for all their foresight, couldn’t have dreamed of the America we live in today. The remarkable thing is that their work is as alive and as meaningful for us as it was for them—and as it will be for our grandchildren.
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Statement at the New York—New Jersey Metropolitan Area Air Pollution Control Conference
The time for studies is past. The time to apply what we already know is here. Economic progress may reduce cost rates. But we all pay for air pollution now, every day.
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Statement
The right of agricultural workers around the country to organize into unions and bargain collectively has now been recognized in the fields of one grower in California
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Address at the American Medical Center Judy Holliday Memorial Dinner, at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, New York City
Old age is something that happens to everybody, and if we are wise enough and unselfish enough and effective enough, then we can make those years a time in which to live, not just linger.
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