I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered at the White House - with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.

There are no 'white' or 'coloured' signs on the foxholes or graveyards of battle.

I am flatly opposed to appointment of an ambassador to the Vatican. Whatever advantages it might have in Rome - and I'm not convinced of these - they would be more than offset by the divisive effect at home.

I am not so much concerned with the right of everyone to say anything he pleases as I am about our need as a self-governing people to hear everything relevant.

I ask that you offer to the political arena, and to the critical problems of our society which are decided therein, the benefit of the talents which society has helped to develop in you. I ask you to decide, as Goethe put it, whether you will be an anvilor a hammer. The question is whether you are to be a hammerwhether you are to give to the world in which you were reared and educated the broadest possible benefits of that education.

Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.

American history is not something dead and over. It is always alive,always growing, always unfinished.