Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.

In our democracy officers of the government are the servants, and never the masters of the people.

You'll have to learn that public life takes a lot of sweat; but it doesn't need to worry you. You won't always be right, but you mustn't suffer from being wrong. That's what kills people like us.

Inside the polling booth every American man and woman stands as the equal of every other American man and woman. There they have no superiors. There they have no masters save their own minds and consciences.

We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics. Out of the collapse of a prosperity whose builders boasted their practicality has come the conviction that in the long run economic morality pays.

...We now realize as we have never before our interdependence on each other; that we cannot merely take, but we must be willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline, because without such discipline, no progress is made, no leadership becomes effective.

We know that equality of individual ability has never existed and never will, but we do insist that equality of opportunity still must be sought.