Civility is not a sign of weakness.

Without debate, without criticism no administration and no country can succeed and no republic can survive.

We have become more and more not a nation of athletes but a nation of spectators.

We are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence — on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day

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

Dont teach my boy poetry, an English mother recently wrote the Provost of Harrow. Dont teach my boy poetry; he is going to stand for Parliament. Well, perhaps she was rightbut if more politicians knew poetry, and more poets knew politics, I am convinced the world would be a little better place to live on this Commencement Day of 1956.

Our alliance is born, not of fear, but of hope. It is an alliance that advances what we are for, as well as opposes what we are against.