If you tell me that there are obstacles in the way of your ambition that make it impossible to pursue, then I know it's not a real ambition. There are always obstacles. The 'perversity of events,' as someone once called it, is always ready to lick us. Events are never right for achieving what we most want to achieve. If this were not so, there would be no real fun in being 17 -- or even in being alive.

To be free you must afford freedom to your neighbor, regardless of race, color, creed, or national origin, and that sometimes, for some, is very difficult.

I realized that public affairs were also my affairs.

You cannot barter security for freedom, or freedom for security.

Character isn't inherited. One builds it daily by the way one thinks and acts, thought by thought, action by action. If one lets fear or hate or anger take possession of the mind, they become self-forged chains.

There is no danger is letting people have their say. ... There is a danger when you try to stop them from saying it.

When a marriage works, nothing on earth can take its place