Speech

The only limits that really matter are the ones you put on yourself, and in those crucial moments when you know what you need to do but others advise against it — know yourself, trust your whole self, and don't blink.

A people is defined and unified not by blood but by shared memory.

Though you win a Nobel Prize in physics and literature, in a sense it is more important that you keep physics and literature alive, to be passed on to the generations that follow you.

They are not powerless, the dead.

When a door is hard to open, and if nothing else works, sometimes you just have to rear back and kick it open.

Competence has no gender. Brains have no sex nor color.

You don't have to be the biggest — just the best.

The positions I am about to describe are not only exalted and high paying; they also require little or no work, experience, training or knowledge. Thus they are exceptionally well suited to graduating seniors.

Why write your own material when others have done it for you? Don't worry about being caught. If you have to apologize, just say, 'An error was made.' Nobody cares.

There's a great country out there. Take it.

There is not a page of American history, of which we are proud, that was authored by a chronic complainer or prophet of despair. We are doers.

We have a responsibility not to be prisoners of history, but to shape history; a responsibility to fill the role of pathfinder.