A President needs political understanding to run the government, but he may be elected without it.

I suppose that history will remember my term in office as the years when the Cold War began to overshadow our lives. I have hardly a day in office that has not been dominated by this all-embracing struggle. And always in the background there has been the atomic bomb. But when history says that my term of office saw the begining of the Cold War, it will also say that in those eight years we have set the course that can win it.

If there is one basic element in our Constitution, it is civilian control of the military.

I do not believe there is a problem in this country or the world today which could not be settled if approached through the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount.

I don't want this office, this responsibility, any longer, even if you want me. Find the strongest and most able and God bless you. Good-bye.

The Marine Corps is the Navy's police force and as long as I am President that is what it will remain. They have a propaganda machine that is almost equal to Stalin's.

Tact is the ability to step on a man's toes without messing up the shine on his shoes.