Maturity requires a final accommodation between our aspirations and our limitations.

Education is a slow moving but powerful force

In a democracy dissent is an act of faith. Like medicine, the test of its value is not in its taste, but in its effects.

I do not think it is "selling America short" when we ask a great deal of her; on the contrary, it is those who ask nothing, those who see no fault, who are really selling America short!

....Man's struggle to be rational about himself, about his relationship to his own society and to other peoples and nations involves a constant search for understanding among all peoples and all cultures-a search that can only be effective when learning is pursued on a worldwide basis.

Some new machinery with adequate powers must be created now if our fine phrases and noble sentiments are to have substance and meaning for our children.

The age of warrior kings and of warrior presidents has passed. The nuclear age calls for a different kind of leadership.... a leadership of intellect, judgment, tolerance and rationality, a leadership committed to human values, to world peace, and to the improvement of the human condition. The attributes upon which we must draw are the human attributes of compassion and common sense, of intellect and creative imagination, and of empathy and understanding between cultures.