“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.”

History teaches that, when powerful despots can gain something through aggression, they try, by the same methods, to gain more and more and more.

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.

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.

If you don’t become the ocean, you’ll be seasick every day.

The fundamental nature of jealousy and envy is a feeling of inadequacy. If you were really blissful, you should not be envious of anyone.

War is progress, peace is stagnation.

Only one man ever understood me, and he didn’t understand me.

There’s all the difference in the world between having something to say, and having to say something.

A person hears only what they understand.

World wide conversions; hospitals became temples where souls went to die.

When you flip the switch in that attic, it doesn’t matter whether its been dark for ten minutes, ten years or ten decades.