I would rather try to persuade a man to go along, because once I have persuaded him, he will stick. If I scare him, he will stay just as long as he is scared, and then he is gone.
I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.
I feel impelled to speak today in a language that in a sense is new-one which I, who have spent so much of my life in the military profession, would have preferred never to use. That new language is the language of atomic warfare.
Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.
The world moves, and ideas that were once good are not always good.
From behind the Iron Curtain, there are signs that tyranny is in trouble and reminders that its structure is as brittle as its surface is hard.
Only our individual faith in freedom can keep us free.
In most communities it is illegal to cry 'fire' in a crowded assembly. Should it not be considered serious international misconduct to manufacture a general war scare in an effort to achieve local political aims?
The spirit of man is more important than mere physical strength, and the spiritual fiber of a nation than its wealth.
Don't join the book burners. Do not think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed.
Whatever America hopes to bring to pass in the world must first come to pass in the heart of America.
If the United Nations once admits that international disputes can be settled by using force, then we will have destroyed the foundation of the organization and our best hope of establishing a world order.
When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war.
The older I get the more wisdom I find in the ancient rule of taking first things first. A process which often reduces the most complex human problem to a manageable proportion.
Few women, I fear, have had such reason as I have to think the long sad years of youth were worth living for the sake of middle age.
The most terrible job in warfare is to be a second lieutenant leading a platoon when you are on the battlefield.
You have a row of dominoes set up; you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is that it will go over very quickly.
The purpose is clear. It is safety with solvency. The country is entitled to both.
Some years ago I became president of Columbia University and learned within 24 hours to be ready to speak at the drop of a hat, and I learned something more, the trustees were expected to be ready to speak at the passing of the hat.
Our real problem, then, is not our strength today; it is rather the vital necessity of action today to ensure our strength tomorrow.
