The human mind is our fundamental resource.

There is a connection, hard to explain logically but easy to feel, between achievement in public life and progress in the arts. The age of Pericles was also the age of Phidias. The age of Lorenzo de Medici was also the age of Leonardo da Vinci. The age of Elizabeth was also the age of Shakespeare. And the New Frontier for which I campaign in public life, can also be a New Frontier for American art.

Failure has no friends.

For one true measure of a nation is its success in fulfilling the promise of a better life for each of its members. Let this be the measure of our nation.

The pay is good and I can walk to work.

While we cannot guarantee that we shall one day be first, we can guarantee that any failure to make this effort will make us last.

When power corrupts, poetry cleanses