Our future may lie beyond our vision, but it is not completely beyond our control. It is the shaping impulse of America that neither fate nor nature nor the irresistible tides of history, but the work of our own hands, matched to reason and principle, that will determine our destiny. There is pride in that, even arrogance, but there is also experience and truth. In any event, it is the only way we can live.

There are people in every time and every land who want to stop history in its tracks. They fear the future, mistrust the present, and invoke the security of the comfortable past which, in fact, never existed.

People say I am ruthless. I am not ruthless. And if I find the man who is calling me ruthless, I shall destroy him.

Men and women with freed minds may often be mistaken, but they are seldom fooled. They may be influenced, but they cannot be intimidated. They may be perplexed, but they will never be lost.

The Gross National Product measures everything except that which makes life worthwhile.

What happens to the country, to the world, depends on what we do with what others have left us.

But suppose God is black? What if we go to Heaven and we, all our lives, have treated the Negro as an inferior, and God is there, and we look up and He is not white? What then is our response?