Don't join the book burners. Don't think you're going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book...
Never waste a minute thinking about people you don't like.
Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.
Extremes to the right and to the left of any political dispute are always wrong.
In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.
A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.
If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom.
The search for a scapegoat is the easiest of all hunting expeditions.
You do not lead by hitting people over the head -- that's assault, not leadership.
What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight- it's the size of the fight in the dog.
The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army, or in an office.
Never let yourself be persuaded that any one Great Man, any one leader, is necessary to the salvation of America. When America consists of one leader and 158 million followers, it will no longer be America.
A sense of humor is part of the art of leadership, of getting along with people, of getting things done.
Never question another man's motive. His wisdom, yes, but not his motives.
No man is worth your tears, but once you find one that is, he won't make you cry.
Get it all on record now - get the films - get the witnesses -because somewhere down the road of history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened.
Only Americans can hurt America.
May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.
Never send a battalion to take a hill if a regiment is available.
We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it.
Leadership consists of nothing but taking responsibility for everything that goes wrong and giving your subordinates credit for everything that goes well.
Pessimism never won any battle.
An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.
I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity. a
Pull the string and it will follow wherever you wish. Push it, and it will go nowhere at all.
The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without.
The history of free men is never written by chance but by choice - their choice.
The world could be fixed of its problems if every child understood the necessity of their existence.
Always try to associate yourself with and learn as much as you can from those who know more than you do, who do better than you, who see more clearly than you.
Every gun that is made, 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.
I despise people who go to the gutter on either the right or the left and hurl rocks at those in the center.
Freedom has its life in the hearts, the actions, the spirit of men and so it must be daily earned and refreshed - else like a flower cut from its life-giving roots, it will wither and die.
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.
An atheist is a man who watches a Notre Dame - Southern Methodist University game and doesn't care who wins.
Preventive war was an invention of Hitler. I would not even listen to anyone seriously that came and talked about such a thing.
We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom.
Peace and justice are two sides of the same coin.
Don't join the book burners. Do not think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed.
Humility must always be the portion of any man who receives acclaim earned in blood of his followers and sacrifices of his friends.
What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.
I think that people want peace so much that one of these days government had better get out of the way and let them have it.
How far have we come in man's long pilgrimage from darkness toward light? Are we nearing the light—a day of freedom and of peace for all mankind? Or are the shadows of another night closing in upon us?
War is mankind's most tragic and stupid folly; to seek or advise its deliberate provocation is a black crime against all men.
Those who take the extreme positions in American political and economic life are always wrong.
The world is more like it is now then it ever has before.
Worry is a word that I don't allow myself to use.
The time has passed for dilly-dallying. We must demand satisfactory performance.
The problem is not merely man against man or nation against nation. It is man against war.
Statesmanship is developed in the hard knocks of general experience, private and public.
We must achieve both security and solvency. In fact, the foundation of military strength is economic strength,
Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.
I made two mistakes and both of them are sitting on the Supreme Court. [Referring to Earl Warren and William Brennan]
