“Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.”
“What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight; it's the size of the fight in the dog.”
“An atheist is a man who watches a Notre Dame -- Southern Methodist University game and doesn't care who wins.”
“I have only one yardstick by which I test every major problem -- and that yardstick is: Is it good for America?”
“The most terrible job in warfare is to be a second lieutenant leading a platoon when you are on the battlefield.”
“The spirit of man is more important than mere physical strength, and the spiritual fiber of a nation than its wealth”
“There is nothing wrong with America that faith, love of freedom, intelligence, and energy of her citizens cannot cure.”
“Neither a wise nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.”
“The best morale exist when you never hear the word mentioned. When you hear a lot of talk about it, it's usually lousy.”
“The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without.”
“Don't join the book burners. Do not think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed.”
“Our real problem, then, is not our strength today; it is rather the vital necessity of action today to ensure our strength tomorrow.”
“I have found out in later years that my family was very poor, but the glory of America is that we didn't know it. [On his childhood]”
“The clearest way to show what the rule of law means to us in everyday life is to recall what has happened when there is no rule of law.”
“Though force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration and cooperation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace.”
“When you are in any contest, you should work as if there were--to the very last minute--a chance to lose it. This is battle, this is politics, this is anything.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage.”
“We have heard much of the phrase, ''peace and friendship.'' This phrase, in expressing the aspiration of America, is not complete. We should say instead, ''peace and friendship, in freedom.'' This, I think, is America's real message to the rest of the world.”
“Every gun that is fired, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”