... the Athenian lawmaker Solon decreed it a crime for any citizen to shrink from controversy.

There is nothing, I think, more unfortunate than to have soft, chubby, fat-looking children who go to watch their school play basketball every Saturday and regard that as their weeks exercise.

I was never accepted into certain parts of New England society because my grandfather was an Irish barkeep.

Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education. The human mind is our fundamental resource.

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 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.

I am sorry to say that there is too much point to the wisecrack that life is extinct on other planets because their scientists were more advanced than ours.