The heroes of the world community are not those who withdraw when difficulties ensue, not those who can envision neither the prospect of success nor the consequence of failure -- but those who stand the heat of battle, the fight for world peace through the United Nations.
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It was once said that the moral test of Government is how that Government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.
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Unfortunately, our affluent society has also been an effluent society.
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Fortunately, the time has long passed when people liked to regard the United States as some kind of melting pot, taking men and women from every part of the world and converting them into standardized, homogenized Americans. We are, I think, much more mature and wise today. Just as we welcome a world of diversity, so we glory in an America of diversity -- an America all the richer for the many different and distinctive strands of which it is woven.
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In real life, unlike in Shakespeare, the sweetness of the rose depends upon the name it bears. Things are not only what they are. They are, in very important respects, what they seem to be.
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National isolation breeds national neurosis.
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Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of the citizens to keep and bear arms. This is not to say that firearms should not be carefully used and that definite safety rules of precaution should not be taught and enforced. But the right of the citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government and one more safeguard against a tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible.
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The greatest healing therapy is friendship and love.
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People in places many of us never heard of, whose names we can't pronounce or even spell, are speaking up for themselves. They speak in languages we once classified as exotic but whose mastery is now essential for our diplomats and businessmen. But what they say is very much the same the world over. They want a decent standard of living. They want human dignity and a voice in their own futures. They want their children to grow up strong and healthy and free.
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The difference between heresy and prophecy is often one of sequence. Heresy often turns out to have been prophecy -- when properly aged.
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The great challenge which faces us is to assure that, in our society of big-ness, we do not strangle the voice of creativity, that the rules of the game do not come to overshadow its purpose, that the grand orchestration of society leaves ample room for the man who marches to the music of another drummer.
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You cannot go around and keep score. If you keep score on the good things and the bad things, you'll find out that you're a very miserable person. God gave man the ability to forget, which is one of the greatest attributes you have. Because if you remember everything that's happened to you, you generally remember that which is the most unfortunate.
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Men in earnest have no time to waste In patching fig-leaves for the naked truth.
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The hardest job for a politician today is to have the courage to be a moderate. It's easy to take an extreme position.
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The moral test of any society is how is treats its weakest: children, elderly, sick, needy and handicapped.
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American public opinion is like an ocean -- it cannot be stirred by a teaspoon.
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There is in every American, I think, something of the old Daniel Boone -- who, when he could see the smoke from another chimney, felt himself too crowded and moved further out into the wilderness.
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I have seen in the Halls of Congress more idealism, more humanness, more compassion, more profiles of courage than in any other institution that I have ever known.
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Behind every successful man stands a surprised mother-in-law.
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It is not what they take away from you that counts. It's what you do with what you have left.
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Behind every successful man is a proud wife and a surprised mother-in-law.
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The right to be heard does not autmatically include the right to be taken seriously.
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We are in danger of making our cities places where business goes on but where life, in its real sense, is lost.
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Profit and morality are a hard combination to beat.
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The greatest gift of life is friendship, and I have received it.
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Leadership in today's world requires far more than a large stock of gunboats and a hard fist at the conference table.
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There are those who say to you -- we are rushing this issue of civil rights. I say we are 172 years late.
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When the dignity of one person is denied, all of us are denied.
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Never give up on anybody.
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It is not enough to merely defend democracy. To defend it may be to lose it; to extend it is to strengthen it. Democracy is not property; it is an idea.
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