Civil Rights
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Speech at the Dedication of the John F. Kennedy Interfaith Chapel at West Georgia College in Carrollton, Georgia
We are today in the midst of a great debate, whether or not this nation, the champion of freedom throughout the world, can now extend full freedom to twenty million of our own citizens who have yet to achieve it. Passage of the Civil Rights Act is not an end to the debate. It only…
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Law Day Address, University of Georgia Law School, Athens, Georgia
You may ask, will we enforce the civil rights statutes?
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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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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
Many voices, many views all have combined into an American consensus, and it has been a consensus of good sense. “In the multitude of counselors, there is safety,” says the Bible, and so it is with American democracy. Tolerance is an expression of trust in that consensus and each new enlargement of tolerance is an…
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Speech at the Ceremonies Celebrating the 175th Anniversary of the Ratification of the Constitution, Independence Hall, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
The Constitution of the United States, in a few thousand words, established a way of life that has built this Nation into greatness as the world’s leader and champion of freedom.
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Speech in Chicago
Time and time again the American people, facing danger and seemingly insurmountable odds, have mobilized the ingenuity, resourcefulness, strength and bravery to meet the situation and triumph. In this long and critical struggle, the American system of free enterprise must be our major weapon. We must continue to prove to the world that we can…
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Speech at the National Conference of Christians and Jews Dinner, Cleveland, Ohio
The great challenge to all Americans—indeed all free men and women— is to maintain loyalty to truth; to maintain loyalty to free institutions; to maintain loyalty to Freedom as a basic human value, and above all else to keep in our hearts and minds the tolerance and mutual trust that have been the genius of…
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Speech in South Africa
In the past five years the winds of change have blown as fiercely in the United States as anywhere in the world, and they will not—they cannot—abate.
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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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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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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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