There are three things in life which are real: God, human folly and laughter. Since the first two are beyond our comprehension, we must do what we can with the third.

In the years since man unlocked the power stored up within the atom, the world has made progress, halting, but effective, toward bringing that power under human control. The challenge may be our salvation. As we begin to master the destructive potentialities of modern science, we move toward a new era in which science can fulfill its creative promise and help bring into existence the happiest society the world has ever known.

Communism has never come to power in a country that was not disrupted by war or corruption, or both.

There has also been a change - a slippage - in our intellectual and moral strength. Seven lean years of drouth and famine have withered a field of ideas.

We are inclined to think that if we watch a football game or a baseball game, we have taken part in it.

And so it is that I carry with me from this State to that high and lonely office to which I now succeed more than fond memories and fast friendships. The enduring qualities of Massachusetts - the common threads woven by the Pilgrim and the Puritan, the fisherman and the farmer, the Yankee and the immigrant - will not be and could not be forgotten in the Nations Executive Mansion. They are an indelible part of my life, my convictions, my view of the past, my hopes for the future.

There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction.