Just be what you are and speak from your guts and heart - it's all a person has.

The essence of statesmanship is not a rigid adherence to the past, but a prudent and probing concern for the future.

My friends, to those who say that we are rushing this issue of civil rights, I say to them we are 172 years late. To those who say that this civil-rights program is an infringement on states’ rights, I say this: The time has arrived in America for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadow of states' rights and to walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights.

There is a lot of difference between failure and defeat. Failure is when you are defeated and neither learn nor contribute anything.

Leadership in today's world requires far more than a large stock of gunboats and a hard fist at the conference table.

If today there is a proper American "sphere of influence" it is this fragile sphere called earth upon which all men live and share a common fate--a sphere where our influence must be for peace and justice.

We will be remembered not for the power of our weapons but for the power of our compassion, our dedication to human welfare.