“Nations around the world look to us for the leadership not merely by strength of arms but by strength of our convictions.”

But suppose God is black? What if we go to Heaven and we, all our lives, have treated the Negro as an inferior, and God is there, and we look up and He is not white? What then is our response?

All of us might wish at times that we lived in a more tranquil world, but we don’t. And if our times are difficult and perplexing, so are they challenging and filled with opportunity.

You knew that what is given or granted can be taken away, that what is begged can be refused; but that what is earned is kept.

GNP measures neither our courage, our wisdom neither our compassion. It measures everything except what makes life worthwhile

The future is not a gift: it is an achievement. Every generation helps make its own future. This is the essential challenge of the present.

Every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves.

What happens to the country, to the world, depends on what we do with what others have left us.

Men and women with freed minds may often be mistaken, but they are seldom fooled. They may be influenced, but they cannot be intimidated. They may be perplexed, but they will never be lost.

I think there is an obligation on the part of all of us to stay informed and aware.

The sharpest criticism often goes hand in hand with the deepest idealism and love of country.

We know that if one man’s rights are denied, the rights of all are endangered.

Send forth a tiny ripple of hope.

A life without criticism is not worth living.

If freedom makes social progress possible, so social progress strengthens and enlarges freedom. The two are inseparable partners in the great adventure of humanity.

There are people in every time and every land who want to stop history in its tracks. They fear the future, mistrust the present, and invoke the security of the comfortable past which, in fact, never existed.

Too often we honor swagger and bluster and the wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others.

The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets the people to do the greatest things.

Character matters; leadership descends from character.

In dark hours, true leaders rise.

I do not assume that woman is better than man. I do assume that she has a different way of looking at things.

Nobody in a leadership level in American politics is trying to inspire the American people. Everybody needs to be goosed. The vast majority of people are not self-starters.

No leader, however great, can long continue unless he wins battles. The battle decides all.

Leadership requires two things: a vision of the world that does not yet exist and the ability to communicate it.

Intelligent people need a fool to lead them.