“They may excuse failure but they will not excuse abandonment.”

If a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is right and that is moral, then it is not a political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power.

We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it.

Wars are stupid and they can start stupidly.

I made two mistakes and both of them are sitting on the Supreme Court. [Referring to Earl Warren and William Brennan]

What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.

The search for a scapegoat is the easiest of all hunting expeditions.

I don’t like the idea of something where you have to depend upon the integrity of the man and not the integrity of the institution.

Never let yourself be persuaded that any one Great Man, any one leader, is necessary to the salvation of America. When America consists of one leader and 158 million followers, it will no longer be America.

Shot through the heart, and you’re to blame! you give love, a bad name.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

True delegation implies the courage and readiness to back up a subordinate to the full; it is not to be confused with the slovenly practice of merely ignoring an unpleasant situation in the hope that someone else will handle it.

It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

Pessimism never won any battle.

I think that people want peace so much that one of these days government had better get out of the way and let them have it.

There’s no tragedy in life like the death of a child. Things never get back to the way they were.

Only Americans can hurt America.

People, for reasons of their own, often fail to do things that would be good for them or good for society.

When I hear a guy lost a battle to cancer, that really did bother me, that that’s a term. It implies that he failed and that somebody else that defeated cancer is heroic and courageous.

You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone.

Spirituality helps develop good character. It is character that shines bright when words fail to do so.

You won’t believe what you can accomplish by attempting the impossible with the courage to repeatedly fail better.

Until one looks back on one’s own past one fails to realise what an extraordinary view of the world a child has.

Once you start a working on something, don’t be afraid of failure and don’t abandon it. People who work sincerely are the happiest.

But what if I fail of my purpose here? It is but to keep the nerves at strain, to dry one’s eyes and laugh at a fall, and baffled, get up and begin again.