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

In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.

Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.

Freedom has been defined as the opportunity for self-discipline.

An atheist is a man who watches a Notre Dame – Southern Methodist University game and doesn’t care who wins.

A sense of humor is part of the art of leadership, of getting along with people, of getting things done.

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.

History will never accept difficulties as an excuse.

History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.

If you can cut the people off from their history, then they can be easily persuaded.

Don’t forget your history nor your destiny.

History, in general, only informs us what bad government is.

Well behaved women do not make history.

Study the past if you would define the future.

Let us save what remains: not by vaults and locks which fence them from the public eye and use in consigning them to the waste of time, but by such a multiplication of copies, as shall place them beyond the reach of accident.