There is here a great melting pot in which we must compound a precious metal. That metal is the metal of nationality.

The beauty of a democracy is that you never can tell when a youngster is born what he is going to do with himself, and that no matter how humbly he is born, no matter where he is born, no matter what circumstances hamper him at the outset, he has got a chance to master the minds and lead the imaginations of the whole country.

They do not need our praise. They do not need that our admiration should sustain them. There is no immortality that is safer than theirs. We come not for their sakes but for our own, in order that we may drink at the same springs of inspiration from which they themselves drank.

We are expected to put the utmost energy, of every power that we have, into the service of our fellow men, never sparing ourselves, not condescending to think of what is going to happen to ourselves, but ready, if need be, to go to the utter length of self-sacrifice.

Your real statesman is first of all, and chief of all, a great human being, with an eye for all the great fields on which men likehimself struggle, with unflagging, pathetic hope, toward better things.... He is a guide, a counselor, a mentor, a servant, a friend of mankind.

It must be a peace without victory

Uncompromising thought is the luxury of the closeted recluse.