“If you have something, then everyone will want a piece of it. So you have to draw the line somewhere. If everyone is family, no one is family. Your father, he never understood this, I think.”

“You can have everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.”

“Something is happening in Memphis; something is happening in our world. And you know, if I were standing at the beginning of time, with the possibility of taking a kind of general and panoramic view of the whole of human history up to now, and the Almighty said to me, "Martin Luther King, which age would you like to live in?" I would take my mental flight by Egypt and I would watch God's children in their magnificent trek from the dark dungeons of Egypt through, or rather across the Red Sea, through the wilderness on toward the promised land. And in spite of its magnificence, I wouldn't stop there. I would move on by Greece and take my mind to Mount Olympus. And I would see Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Euripides and Aristophanes assembled around the Parthenon. And I would watch them around the Parthenon as they discussed the great and eternal issues of reality. But I wouldn't stop there. I would go on, even to the great heyday of the Roman Empire. And I would see developments around there, through various emperors and leaders. But I wouldn't stop there. I would even come up to the day of the Renaissance, and get a quick picture of all that the Renaissance did for the cultural and aesthetic life of man. But I wouldn't stop there. I would even go by the way that the man for whom I am named had his habitat. And I would watch Martin Luther as he tacked his ninety-five theses on the door at the church of Wittenberg. But I wouldn't stop there. I would come on up even to 1863, and watch a vacillating President by the name of Abraham Lincoln finally come to the conclusion that he had to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. But I wouldn't stop there. I would even come up to the early thirties, and see a man grappling with the problems of the bankruptcy of his nation. And come with an eloquent cry that we have nothing to fear but "fear itself." But I wouldn't stop there.”

“The truth is, almost everything we do is done poorly when we first start doing it – that’s how we learn.”

“Still, I strongly resisted the idea of offering up my past in a book, a past that left me feeling exposed, even slightly ashamed.”

“Men are paid, not merely for what they know, but more particularly for what they do with that which they know.”

“Thirst was made for water; inquiry for truth”

“John Callen: “La habilidad más buscada, desde director general hasta el menor puesto, es la habilidad de comunicarse con la gente. La persona que pueda hacerlo en los negocios siempre será solicitada”

“The issue here is not gonna be a list of accomplishments. As you said yourself, Steve, you know, I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president — with the possible exceptions of Johnson, F.D.R., and Lincoln.”

“Today our concern must be with the future. For the world is changing. The old era is ending. The old ways will not do.”

“Dear Jesus, more than anything else, I want to get to know you intimately.”

“I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers.”

“Prayer in action is love, love in action is service.”

“Antes de que el éxito aparezca en la vida de cualquier hombre, es seguro que éste se topará con muchas derrotas temporales, y quizá con algún fracaso.”

“We shall all of us die, so why should I grudge a little trouble?”