If government is to serve any purpose it is to do for others what they are unable to do for themselves.

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.

This is not Johnson's war. This is America's war. If I drop dead tomorrow, this war will still be with you.

The thing I would like to do most is to find somehow to bring peace to the world. It has eluded me.

You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered.

A President must call on many persons--some to man the ramparts and to watch the far away, distant posts; others to lead us in science, medicine, education and social progress here at home.

There is but one way for a president to deal with Congress, and that is continuously, incessantly, and without interruption. If it is really going to work, the relationship has got to be almost incestuous.