We dare not forget that we are the heirs of that first revolution.

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.

The great enemy of the truth is not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest but the myth persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.

Any system of government will work when everything is going well. It's the system that functions in the pinches that survive

There is a terrific disadvantage in not having the abrasive quality of the press applied to you daily. Even though we never like it, and even though we wish they didn't write it, and even though we disapprove, there isn't any doubt that we could not do the job at all in a free society without a very, very active press.

In a very real sense, it will not be one man going to the moon it will be an entire nation. For all of us must work to put him there.

Failure has no friends.