On the day of his 100 birthday here are some of the best words of wisdom from the 35th president of the United States.

  • My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.
  • As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.
  • Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.
  • Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.
  • As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.
  • Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future.
  • The goal of education is the advancement of knowledge and the dissemination of truth.
  • If we cannot now end our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.
  • Physical fitness is not only one of the most important keys to a healthy body, it is the basis of dynamic and creative intellectual activity.
  • Things do not happen. Things are made to happen
  • Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.
  • Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind.
  • Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.
  • Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.
  • Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
  • Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
  • Those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly.
  • A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on.
  • Too often we… enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.
  • There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction.
  • In a time of domestic crisis, men of goodwill and generosity should be able to unite regardless of party or politics.
  • Peace is a daily, a weekly, a monthly process, gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers, quietly building new structures.
  • Man is still the most extraordinary computer of all.
  • I look forward to a great future for America – a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose.
  • The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.
  • The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all.
  • The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission.
  • In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility – I welcome it.
  • Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.
  • For time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.
  • Tolerance implies no lack of commitment to one’s own beliefs. Rather it condemns the oppression or persecution of others.
  • A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.
  • It is an unfortunate fact that we can secure peace only by preparing for war.
  • The best road to progress is freedom’s road.
  • Politics is like football; if you see daylight, go through the hole.
  • We must use time as a tool, not as a couch.
  • A man does what he must – in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures – and that is the basis of all human morality.
  • All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin. And therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words ‘Ich bin ein Berliner!’
  • The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were.
  • The human mind is our fundamental resource.
  • Once you say you’re going to settle for second, that’s what happens to you in life.
  • The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.
  • Our growing softness, our increasing lack of physical fitness, is a menace to our security.
  • I’m an idealist without illusions.
  • Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.
  • We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world or to make it the last.
  • We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world or to make it the last.
  • A nation which has forgotten the quality of courage which in the past has been brought to public life is not as likely to insist upon or regard that quality in its chosen leaders today – and in fact we have forgotten.
  • The basic problems facing the world today are not susceptible to a military solution.
  • Mothers all want their sons to grow up to be president, but they don’t want them to become politicians in the process.
  • A child miseducated is a child lost.
  • The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty, and all forms of human life.
  • We cannot expect that all nations will adopt like systems, for conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.
  • We would like to live as we once lived, but history will not permit it.
  • The United States has to move very fast to even stand still.
  • Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education. The human mind is our fundamental resource.
  • No one has been barred on account of his race from fighting or dying for America, there are no white or colored signs on the foxholes or graveyards of battle.
  • War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.
  • If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.
  • My brother Bob doesn’t want to be in government – he promised Dad he’d go straight.
  • Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.
  • If anyone is crazy enough to want to kill a president of the United States, he can do it. All he must be prepared to do is give his life for the president’s.
  • I am sorry to say that there is too much point to the wisecrack that life is extinct on other planets because their scientists were more advanced than ours.
  • I don’t think the intelligence reports are all that hot. Some days I get more out of the New York Times.
  • Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.
  • We believe that if men have the talent to invent new machines that put men out of work, they have the talent to put those men back to work.
  • I believe in a president whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.