The principle of neutrality ... has increasingly become an obsolete conception, and, except under very special circumstances, it is an immoral and shortsighted conception.

If you are scared to go to the brink, you are lost.

The world will never have lasting peace so long as men reserve for war the finest human qualities. Peace, no less than war, requires idealism and self-sacrifice and a righteous and dynamic faith.

The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it is the same problem you had last year.

A man's accomplishments in life are the cumulative effect of his attention to detail.

The United States of America does not have friends; it has interests.

The Soviets sought not a place in the sun, but the sun itself. Their objective was the world. They would not tolerate compromise on goals, only on tactics.

Of all tasks of government the most basic is to protect its citizens against violence.

Our capacity to retaliate must be, and is, massive in order to deter all forms of aggression

A peaceful world is a world in which differences are tolerated, and are not eliminated by violence.

Somehow we find it hard to sell our values, namely that the rich should plunder the poor.

Wisdom. . .is knowing what you have to accept.

Just remember, when someone has an accent, it means that he knows one more language than you do.

To read is to voyage through time.

The nature of the presidency is that sometimes you don't choose which challenges come to your desk. You do decide how to respond.

Don't just think, do.

The greatest enemy will hide in the last place you would ever look.

I want my world to be fun.

It used to be you rose up through the ranks, and by the time you got a job as a boss, you had done the work of everybody beneath you.

All that makes earlier times seem simpler is our ignorance of their complexities.