“I’m the only president you’ve got.”

Art is a nation’s most precious heritage. For it is in our works of art that we reveal to ourselves and to others the inner vision which guides us as a nation. And where there is no vision, the people perish.

The land flourished because it was fed from so many sources–because it was nourished by so many cultures and traditions and peoples.

Evil acts of the past are never rectified by evil acts of the present.

As man draws nearer to the stars, why should he not also draw nearer to his neighbor?

Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men’s skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact.

A nation that fails to plan intelligently for the development and protection of its precious waters will be condemned to wither because of its shortsightedness. The hard lessons of history are clear, written on the deserted sands and ruins of once proud civilizations.

We can draw lessons from the past, but we cannot live in it.

It’s the price of leadership to do the thing you believe has to be done at the time it must be done.

John F. Kennedy was the victim of the hate that was a part of our country. It is a disease that occupies the minds of the few but brings danger to the many.

Our objective in South Vietnam has never been the annihilation of the enemy. It has been to bring about a recognition in Hanoi that its objective – taking over the South by force – could not be achieved.

You aren’t learning anything when you’re talking.

To sustain an environment suitable for man, we must fight on a thousand battlegrounds. Despite all of our wealth and knowledge, we cannot create a redwood forest, a wild river, or a gleaming seashore.

If government is to serve any purpose it is to do for others what they are unable to do for themselves.

The job, of course, will never be finished. For a nation, as for an individual, education is a perpetually unfinished journey, a continuing process of discovery.

In a thousand unseen ways we have drawn shape and strength from the land.

Never miss an opportunity to say a word of congratulation upon anyone’s achievement.

The Constitution is a radical document, it is the job of the government to rein in people’s rights.

Politics is not religion and we should govern on the basis of evidence, not theology.

You can’t say you love your country and hate your government.

That the policies – from energy to labor policies, trade policies, government policies relating to debt and deficits are all aligning in such a way that America, far from being one of the places people are running from, is a place people are going to come to and add jobs.

Sarah, there’s a government inside the government, and I don’t control it.

Together we will build an America where hope is a new job with a paycheck, not a faded word on an old bumper sticker.

The only true solution would be a convention under which all the governments would bind themselves to defend collectively any country that was attacked.

For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.