Nature has not been lavish in her endowments, but each person has his or her own potential in terms of achievement and service. The awareness of that potential is the discovery of purpose; the fulfillment of that potential is the discovery of strength.

Respect for the fragility and importance of an individual life is still the mark of an educated man.

The capacity for hope is the most significant fact of life. It provides human beings with a sense of destination and the energy to get started.

I've learned that next to the atomic bomb, the greatest danger is defeatism, despair, and inadequate awareness of what human beings possess. I feel that any problem that can be defined is capable of being resolved. Out of this has come my conviction that no person knows enough to be a pessimist.

To talk about the need for perfection in man is to talk about the need for another species. The essence of man is imperfection. Imperfection and blazing contradictions-between mixed good and evil, altruism and selfishness, cooperativeness and combativeness, optimism and fatalism, affirmation and negation.

Death is not the enemy; living in constant fear of it is.

What was most significant about the lunar voyage was not that men set foot on the moon but that they set eye on the earth.