I'm saving that rocker for the day when I feel as old as I really am.
Whatever America hopes to bring to pass in the world must first come to pass in the heart of America.
There is nothing wrong with America that faith, love of freedom, intelligence, and energy of her citizens cannot cure.
Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels -- men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.
I have only one yardstick by which I test every major problem -- and that yardstick is: Is it good for America?
Only Americans can hurt America.
An atheist is a man who watches a Notre Dame -- Southern Methodist University game and doesn't care who wins.
Things have never been more like the way they are today in history.
There are a number of things wrong with Washington. One of them is that everyone is too far from home.
What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight; it's the size of the fight in the dog.
Only strength can cooperate. Weakness can only beg.
The history of free men is never really written by chance but by choice; their choice!
Some people wanted champagne and caviar when they should have had beer and hot dogs.
May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.
Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil, and you're a thousand miles from the corn field.
History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.
Only our individual faith in freedom can keep us free.
Humility must always be the portion of any man who receives acclaim earned in the blood of his followers and the sacrifices of his friends.
An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.
The clearest way to show what the rule of law means to us in everyday life is to recall what has happened when there is no rule of law.
Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.
You do not lead by hitting people over the head -- that's assault, not leadership.
Pull the string, and it will follow wherever you wish. Push it, and it will go nowhere at all.
Don't join the book burners. Do not think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed.
Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it.
The best morale exist when you never hear the word mentioned. When you hear a lot of talk about it, it's usually lousy.
The free world must not prove itself worthy of its own past.
We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom.
Peace and justice are two sides of the same coin.
Though force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration and cooperation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace.
We have heard much of the phrase, peace and friendship. This phrase, in expressing the aspiration of America, is not complete. We should say instead, peace and friendship, in freedom. This, I think, is America's real message to the rest of the world.
I would rather try to persuade a man to go along, because once I have persuaded him, he will stick. If I scare him, he will stay just as long as he is scared, and then he is gone.
Pessimism never won any battle.
In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.
Plans are nothing; planning is everything.
Unlike presidential administrations, problems rarely have terminal dates.
Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage.
I have found out in later years that my family was very poor, but the glory of America is that we didn't know it. [On his childhood]
There is no victory at bargain basement prices.
A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.
The older I get the more wisdom I find in the ancient rule of taking first things first. A process which often reduces the most complex human problem to a manageable proportion.
Neither a wise nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.
When you are in any contest, you should work as if there were--to the very last minute--a chance to lose it. This is battle, this is politics, this is anything.
The spirit of man is more important than mere physical strength, and the spiritual fiber of a nation than its wealth
Our real problem, then, is not our strength today; it is rather the vital necessity of action today to ensure our strength tomorrow.
Things are more like they are now than they have ever been before.
The future of this republic is in the hands of the American voter.
The most terrible job in warfare is to be a second lieutenant leading a platoon when you are on the battlefield.
The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without.
I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.
Every gun that is fired, 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. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.