You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, "you are free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result.

I am a compromiser and maneuverer. I try to get something. That's the way our system works.

Better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in.

When I was a boy we didn't wake up with Vietnam and have Cyprus for lunch and the Congo for dinner.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

A President Roosevelt comes only once in a century. I believe God knew and does know of the need of the world at this moment. I don't believe President Roosevelt is an accident in time, or that it is an accident that he is President for a third time. I believe that Franklin D. Roosevelt truly is the voice of liberty in the world.

You aren't learning anything when you're talking.