Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things.

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black.

I'm tired of chasing people.

Victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed.

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.

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

You knew that what is given or granted can be taken away, that what is begged can be refused; but that what is earned is kept.