“Talk of imminent threat to our national security through the application of external force is pure nonsense. Our threat is from the insidious forces working from within which have already so drastically altered the character of our free institutions – those institutions we proudly called the American way of life.”

Optimism is denial, so face the facts and move on

History fails to record a single precedent in which nations subject to moral decay have not passed into political and economic decline. There has been either a spiritual awakening to overcome the moral lapse or a progressive deterioration leading to ultimate national disaster.

We have known the bitterness of defeat and the exultation of triumph, and from both we have learned there can be no turning back. We must go forward to preserve in peace what we won in war. A new era is upon us.

There is no security on this earth; there is only opportunity.

To master ourselves before we attempt to master others; to learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep; and to give the predominance of courage over timidity.

Whatever your years, there is in every being’s heart the love of wonder, the undaunted challenge of events, the unfailing childlike appetite for what next, and the joy and the game of life.

Give me ten thousand Filipino soldiers and I will conquer the world.

No plan ever survives its first encounter with the enemy.

Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years. People grow old only by deserting their ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up interest wrinkles the soul.

I have one criticism about the Negro troops who fought under my command in the Korean War. They didn’t send me enough of them.

We must offer the world leadership designed to advance the goal of universal progress and enduring peace.

I address you with neither rancor nor bitterness in the fading twilight of life, with but one purpose in mind: to serve my country. The issues are global and so interlocked that to consider the problems of one sector, oblivious to those of another, is but to court disaster for the whole.

If we will not devise some greater and more equitable system, Armageddon will be at our door.

The nations of the world will have to unite for the next war will be an interplanetary war. The nations of Earth must some day make a common front against attack by people from other planets.

Here are centered the hopes and aspirations and faith of the entire human race. I do not stand here as advocate for any partisan cause, for the issues are fundamental and reach quite beyond the realm of partisan consideration.

Worry, doubt, fear and despair are the enemies which slowly bring us down to the ground and turn us to dust before we die.

Those laws, being forged for universal application, are in perpetual conflict with personal interest, just as personal interest is always in contradiction with the general interest.

It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance, for our consideration and application of these things, and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.

The popularisation of scientific doctrines is producing as great an alteration in the mental state of society as the material applications of science are effecting in its outward life.

The real test of one’s belief in the doctrine of Habeas Corpus is not when one demands its application on behalf of one’s friends but of one’s enemies.

One tries to tell a truth, and one hopes that the truth has a general application rather than just a specific one.

Philosophy cannot be taught; it is the application of the sciences to truth.

There are very few things impossible in themselves; and we do not want means to conquer difficulties so much as application and resolution in the use of means.

Few things are impracticable in themselves; and it is for want of application, rather than of means, that men fail to succeed.