If Berlin fell, the US would lose Europe, and if Europe fell into the hands of the Soviet Union and thus added its great industrial plant to the USSR's already great industrial plant, the United States would be reduced to the character of a garrison state if it were to survive at all.

Leadership is the ability to get a person to do what you want him to do, when you want it done, in a way you want it done, because he wants to do it.

The seeker is never so popular as the sought. People want what they can't get.

There is one thing about being President -- nobody can tell you when to sit down.

Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history.

I have no use for those- regardless of their political party- who hold some foolish dream of spinning the clock back to days when unorganized labor was a huddled, almost helpless mass.

I feel like the fellow in jail who is watching his scaffold being built." (On construction of reviewing stands for inauguration of his successor John F Kennedy)