“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.”

If you have a mother-in-law with only one eye and she has it in the center of her forehead, don’t keep her in the living room.

Education will not cure all the problems of society, but without it no cure for any problem is possible.

Of course, I may go into a strange bedroom every now and then that I don’t want you to write about, but otherwise you can write everything.

The poor suffer twice at the rioter’s hands. First, his destructive fury scars their neighborhood; second, the atmosphere of accommodation and consent is changed to one of hostility and resentment.

If we must disagree, let’s disagree without being disagreeable.

To hunger for use and to go unused is the worst hunger of all.

I will not seek, and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president.

Greater love hath no man than to attend the Episcopal Church with his wife.

You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered.

Let us close the springs of racial poison. Let us pray for wise and understanding hearts. Let us lay aside irrelevant differences and make our nation whole.

When the burdens of the presidency seem unusually heavy, I always remind myself it could be worse. I could be a mayor.

There are plenty of recommendations on how to get out of trouble cheaply and fast. Most of them come down to this: Deny your responsibility.

Life is never easy. There is work to be done and obligations to be met – obligations to truth, to justice, and to liberty.

If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: ‘President Can’t Swim.’

I do not find it easy to send the flower of our youth, our finest young men, into battle.

But, most of all, the Great Society is not a safe harbor, a resting place, a final objective, a finished work. It is a challenge constantly renewed, beckoning us toward a destiny where the meaning of our lives matches the marvelous products of our labor.

The negative is comparable to the composer’s score and the print to its performance. Each performance differs in subtle ways.

Music is a fair and glorious gift of God. I am strongly persuaded that after theology, there is no art which can be placed on the level with music.

There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept.

Art is both the taking and giving of beauty, the turning out to the light of the inner folds of the awareness of the spirit.

You don’t take a photograph, you make it.

Creativity is a continual surprise.

The artist and the photographer seek the mysteries and the adventure of experience in nature.

Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams?