One-fifth of the people are against everything all the time.
Every generation inherits a world it never made; and, as it does so, it automatically becomes the trustee of that world for those who come after. In due course, each generation makes its own accounting to its children.
When companies get together secretly to fix prices and attempt to eliminate competition, honest businessmen suffer. I think this is wrong.
The free way of life proposes ends, but it does not prescribe means.
Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.
I was the seventh of nine children. When you come from that far down you have to struggle to survive.
Now I can go back to being ruthless again.
It is not enough to understand, or to see clearly. The future will be shaped in the arena of human activity, by those willing to commit their minds and their bodies to the task.
Communism everywhere has paid the price of rigidity and dogmatism. Freedom has the strength of compassion and flexibility. It has, above all, the strength of intellectual honesty.
The ultimate relationship between justice and law will be an eternal subject for speculation and analysis. But it may be said that in a democratic society, law is the form which free men give to justice.
In my judgment, physical fitness is basic to all forms of excellence and to a strong, confident nation.
President Kennedy has named two Negroes to District Judgeships and appointed Thurgood Marshall to the United States Court of Appeals. When I came to the Department of Justice, there were only ten Negroes employed as lawyers; not a single Negro served as a United States Attorney - or ever had in the history of the country. That has been changed.
Yesterday, we fought wars which destroyed cities. Today, we are concerned with avoiding a war which will destroy the earth. We can adapt atomic energy to produce electricity and move ships, but can we control its use in anger?
Since the days of Greece and Rome, when the word 'citizen' was a title of honor, we have often seen more emphasis put on the rights of citizenship than on its responsibilities.
If freedom makes social progress possible, so social progress strengthens and enlarges freedom.
The fact that free men persist in the search for the truth is the essential difference between Communism and Democracy.
There has been far too much hypocrisy in the field of civil rights. It is easy enough to give rousing speeches or call for legislation which has no possibility of passage.
Ultimately, Communism must be defeated by progressive political programs which wipe out the poverty, misery, and discontent on which it thrives.
Tolerating organized crime promotes the cheap philosophy that everything is a racket. It promotes cynicism among adults. It contributes to the confusion of the young and to the increase of juvenile delinquency.
I like to be involved in politics. I like to be involved in government. I've been in politics all my life. I would like to remain in government. I don't think that's so sinister.
I do not run for the presidency merely to oppose any man, but to propose new policies. I run because I am convinced that this country is on a perilous course and because I have such strong feelings about what must be done, and I feel that I'm obliged to do all I can.
To the extent that laws are founded on morality and on logic, they can lead men's hearts and minds.
If any man claims the Negro should be content... let him say he would willingly change the color of his skin and go to live in the Negro section of a large city. Then and only then has he a right to such a claim.
American books reflect our common heritage with many other nations and their influence upon our culture. The influences are endless, linking us with the rest of the world. Thus, they are good ambassadors for us.
The poor man looks upon the law as an enemy, not as a friend. For him, the law is always taking something away.
Communism counts its opportunities in terms of decades - not of weeks. Its means of aggression consist not only of nuclear weapons and missiles with enormous boosters, and not only of spies, agents and terrorists, but of great masses of men and women, deluded by a common ideology which inspires them with a false hope.
In the cases that come before the Department of Justice involving a wide range of unlawful activities, we see repeated evidence of family and community failures.
We know that freedom has many dimensions. It is the right of the man who tills the land to own the land; the right of the workers to join together to seek better conditions of labor; the right of businessmen to use ingenuity and foresight to produce and distribute without arbitrary interference in a truly competitive economy.
Those who challenge the law in one or another of its aspects weaken the whole legal structure of society. For one man to disobey a law he does not like is to invite others to disobey another law which he may regard as indispensable to his own livelihood - or life.
If I get to be president, what can I do anyway? With Congress and the press, what chance do I have to make basic changes?
Even as my father grew up in Boston, Massachusetts, signs told him: 'No Irish Need Apply.'
We must continue to prove to the world that we can provide a rising standard of living for all men without loss of civil rights or human dignity to any man.
It is one thing to open the schools to all children regardless of race. It is another to train the teachers, to build the classrooms, and to attempt to eliminate the effects of past educational deficiencies. It is still another to find ways to feed the incentive to learn and keep children in school.