Quotes
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Speech at the Dedication of the John F. Kennedy Interfaith Chapel at West Georgia College in Carrollton, Georgia
Opportunity denied or opportunity delayed—often one and the same—is not a question of color. One-tenth of our population is Negro. But a much larger portion of our total population, closer to one-fifth, is poor.
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Speech delivered at Sioux City, Des Moines, Marion and Dubuque, Iowa
When we think of the challenges of a changing world, we have to think and plan, not for the benefit of special groups, but for the needs of the whole American people; not just for the presently poor, but for those who may fall into difficulty if we do not act now.
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Remarks Delivered Introducing Bill for Industrial Investment in Urban Poverty Areas, US Senate
The greatest failure in our existing anti-poverty efforts is the failure to involve and rely on the private enterprise system which is the basic strength of the nation. We have created for the poor a separate economy, almost a separate nation: a second-rate system of welfare handouts, a screen of government agency is keeping the…
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Statement at the Federal Water Pollution Control Enforcement Conference for Moriches and Great South Bays Long Island, New York
As families move out of our cities into attractive towns and villages, they bring with them requirements that these small communities have not faced in the past.
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Address at the International Police Academy Commencement
Guns and bombs cannot build— cannot fill empty stomachs or educate children, cannot build homes or heal the sick. But these are the ends for which men establish and obey government; they will give their allegiance only to governments which meet these needs.
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Address at the American G.I. Forum, Chicago, Illinois
What none of us forget that we are living in a time of infinite possibilities. Both domestically and in international relations, America has never before in history had a greater chance to fulfill the dreams of men through the ages—dreams of individual freedom, national prosperity, and world peace.
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Speech before the Western New York Publishers Association, Painted Post, New York
Thomas Jefferson once said that he cared not who made a country’s laws, so long as he could write its newspapers.
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Address at the Day of Affirmation at the University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
Nations, like man, often march to the beat of different drummers, and the precise solutions of the United States can neither be dictated nor transplanted to others. What is important is that all nations must march toward increasing freedom; towards justice for all; toward a society strong and flexible enough to meet the demands of…
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Excerpt from Quote Magazine
Everywhere we look, we find irrefutable evidence that the Negroes in America have yet to be given full citizenship, and we find increasing evidence, too, that they are no longer willing to tolerate the burdens we have imposed on them.
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Address at the Annual Convention of the Theatre Owners of America, New York City
Those of us who are white can only dimly guess at what the pain of racial discrimination must be—what it must be like to be turned away from a public place, or made to use only a segregated portion of that place,
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Senate Speech
It is not given to us to right every wrong, to make perfect all the imperfections of the world. But neither is it given to us to sit content in our store houses—dieting while others starve, buying 8 million new cars a year while most of the world goes without shoes. We are simply not…
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Speech at University of Alabama
Negroes must be as free as other Americans —free to vote and to learn and to earn their way, and to share in the decisions of government would shape their lives. We know that to accomplish this end will mean great tension and difficulty and strife for all of u
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