Fortunately, the time has long passed when people liked to regard the United States as some kind of melting pot, taking men and women from every part of the world and converting them into standardized, homogenized Americans. We are, I think, much more mature and wise today. Just as we welcome a world of diversity, so we glory in an America of diversity -- an America all the richer for the many different and distinctive strands of which it is woven.

The moral test of a society is how that society treats those who are in the dawn of life: the children; ... the elderly.

The right of citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible.

For the first time in the history of mankind, one generation literally has the power to destroy the past, the present and the future, the power to bring time to an end.

It is not what they take away from you that counts. It's what you do with what you have left.

National isolation breeds national neurosis.

A politician never forgets the precarious nature of elective life. We have never established a practice of tenure in public office.