Being president is like being a jackass in a hailstorm. There's nothing to do but to stand there and take it.

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.

Never make a speech at a country dance or a football game.

We have entered an age in which education is not just a luxury permitting some men an advantage over others. It has become a necessity without which a person is defenseless in this complex, industrialized society. We have truly entered the century of the educated man.

This is a moment that I deeply wish my parents could have lived to share. My father would have enjoyed what you have so generously said of me-and my mother would have believed it.

We have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society.

Just like the Alamo, somebody damn well needed to go to their aid. Well, by God, I'm going to Viet Nam's aid!