Speech

The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war. We do not want a war. We do not now expect a war. This generation of Americans has already had enough — more than enough — of war and hate and oppression.

The great challenge facing every individual graduating today is to remain awake through great periods of social change.

If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, like Shakespeare wrote poetry, like Beethoven composed music; sweep streets so well that all the host of Heaven and Earth will have to pause and say, 'Here lived a great street sweeper, who swept his job well.'

All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.

Through our scientific genius we have made of this world a neighborhood; now through our moral and spiritual genius we must make of it a brotherhood.

Those who discovered and pioneered this land had to have rare qualities of courage and imagination, nor did these qualities stop there. Even the modern-day immigrants have been possessed of courage beyond that of their neighbors — the courage to tear up centuries-old roots and leave their homelands, to come to this land where even the language was strange.

Remember that every government service, every offer of government-financed security, is paid for in the loss of personal freedom.

This democracy of ours which sometimes we've treated so lightly, is more than ever a comfortable cloak, so let us not tear it asunder, for no man knows once it is destroyed where or when he will find its protective warmth again.

Throughout the world, mutual suspicions flourish in ignorance and misunderstanding. They can be dispelled only with knowledge and wisdom.

Hand and head and heart were made to work together. They must work together. They should be educated together.

The divisions between us are artificial and transient. Our common humanity is God-made and enduring.

It's all baloney to talk about this younger generation winning the peace. We won't come to power for 20 years. The same generation that got us into this mess has got to get us out of it. What really matters is not what new thoughts we kids are thinking but what new thoughts you older guys are thinking.