Like the old soldier of the ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty. Goodbye.

I stand on this rostrum with a sense of deep humility and great pride - humility in the weight of those great American architects of our history who have stood here before me; pride in the reflection that this home of legislative debate represents human liberty in the purest form yet devised.

It is my earnest hope, and indeed the hope of all mankind, that from this solemn occasion a better world shall emerge out of the blood and carnage of the past...

No army has ever done so much with so little.

Many will tell you with mockery and ridicule that the abolition of war can only be a dream . . . But we must go on or we will all go under. And the great criticism that can be made is that the world lacks a plan that will enable us to go on . . . We must have sufficient imagination and courage to translate the universal wish for peace - which is rapidly becoming a universal necessity - into actuality.

Americans never quit.

It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.