United States Presidential Candidates 1964

"America works for peace. We work for freedom. We work for a world in which men can have peace and can also have freedom and can worship their God, not a godless state. So in this work I am sure that all Americans and all free men everywhere whatever their faith, welcome and are grateful for the leadership being offered so forcefully by His Holiness Pope Paul."

"And I now have a little announcement that I would like to make. The President has today asked Stan Musial to serve his country as Special Consultant to the President to head the President's physical fitness program in the United States of America. And Stan has already accepted. There are few men in America who serve as hero to a nation and serve that duty with such great dignity. Stanley Frank Musial is one of the great baseball players of this century. The record book is thickly crowded with his achievements. But the record books are only part of the Musial story, for Stan is more than a great player. He is the young man's hero who never lets him down. To every little boy who dreams of the big leagues, to every rookie eyeing that pitcher for the first time, to every young athlete who strives for triumph, "Start the Man" is the authentic champion. He has brought to his profession the simple disciplines of honesty and honor, of pride and of character."

"We are citizens of the richest and most fortunate nation in the history of the world. One hundred and eighty years ago we were a small country struggling for survival on the margin of a hostile land. Today we have established a civilization of free men which spans an entire continent. With the growth of our country has come opportunity for our people--opportunity to educate our children, to use our energies in productive work, to increase our leisure-opportunity for almost every American to hope that through work and talent he could create a better life for himself and his family. The path forward has not been an easy one. But we have never lost sight of our goal: an America in which every citizen shares all the opportunities of his society, in which every man has a chance to advance his welfare to the limit of his capacities. We have come a long way toward this goal. We still have a long way to go. The distance which remains is the measure of the great unfinished work of our society. To finish that work I have called for a national war on poverty. Our objective: total victory."

"There are millions of Americans--one fifth of our people--who have not shared in the abundance which has been granted to most of us, and on whom the gates of opportunity have been closed. What does this poverty mean to those who endure it ? It means a daily struggle to secure the necessities for even a meager existence. It means that the abundance, the comforts, the opportunities they see all around them are beyond their grasp. Worst of all, it means hopelessness for the young. The young man or woman who grows up without a decent education, in a broken home, in a hostile and squalid environment, in ill health or in the face of racial injustice-that young man or woman is often trapped in a life of poverty. He does not have the skills demanded by a complex society. He does not know how to acquire those skills. He faces a mounting sense of despair which drains initiative and ambition and energy. Our tax cut will create millions of new jobs--new exits from poverty. But we must also strike down all the barriers which keep many from using those exits. The war on poverty is not a struggle simply to support people, to make them dependent on the generosity of others. It is a struggle to give people a chance. It is an effort to allow them to develop and use their capacities, as we have been allowed to develop and use ours, so that they can share, as others share, in the promise of this nation. We do this, first of all, because it is right that we should."

"From the establishment of public education and land grant colleges through agricultural extension and encouragement to industry, we have pursued the goal of a nation with full and increasing opportunities for all its citizens. The war on poverty is a further step in that pursuit. We do it also because helping some will increase the prosperity of all. Our fight against poverty will be an investment in the most valuable of our resources--the skills and strength of our people. And in the future, as in the past, this investment will return its cost many fold to our entire economy. If we can raise the annual earnings of 10 million among the poor by only $1,000 we will have added 14 billion dollars a year to our national output. In addition we can make important reductions in public assistance payments which now cost us 4 billion dollars a year, and in the large costs of fighting crime and delinquency, disease and hunger. This is only part of the story."

"Our history has proved that each time we broaden the base of abundance, giving more people the chance to produce and consume, we create new industry, higher production, increased earnings and better income for all. Giving new opportunity to those who have little will enrich the lives of all the rest. Because it is right, because it is wise, and because, for the first time in our history, it is possible to couquer poverty, I submit, for the consideration of the Congress and the country, the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964. The Act does not merely expand old programs or improve what is already being done. It charts a new course. It strikes at the causes, not just the consequences of poverty. It can be a milestone in our one-hundred eighty year search for a better life for our people. This Act provides five basic opportunities. It will give almost half a million underprivileged young Americans the opportunity to develop skills, continue education, and find useful work. It will give every American community the opportunity to develop a comprehensive plan to fight its own poverty--and help them to carry out their plans. It will give dedicated Americans the opportunity to enlist as volunteers in the war against poverty. It will give many workers and farmers the opportunity to break through particular barriers which bar their escape from poverty. It will give the entire nation the opportunity for a concerted attack on poverty through the establishment, under my direction, of the Office of Economic Opportunity, a national headquarters for the war against poverty."

"This is how we propose to create these opportunities. First we will give high priority to helping young Americans who lack skills, who have not completed their education or who cannot complete it because they are too poor. The years of high school and college age are the most critical stage of a young person's life. If they are not helped then, many will be condemned to a life of poverty which they, in turn, will pass on to their children. I therefore recommend the creation of a Job Corps, a Work-Training Program, and a Work Study Program. A new national Job Corps will build toward an enlistment of 100,000 young men. They will be drawn from those whose background, health and education make them least fit for useful work. Those who volunteer will enter more than 100 Camps and Centers around the country. Half of these young men will work, in the first year, on special conservation projects to give them education, useful work experience and to enrich the natural resources of the country. Half of these young men will receive, in the first year, a blend of training, basic education and work experience in Job Training Centers. These are not simply camps for the underprivileged. They are new educational institutions, comparable in innovation to the land grant colleges. Those who enter them will emerge better qualified to play a productive role in American society."

"A new national Work-Training Program operated by the Department of Labor will provide work and training for 200,000 American men and women between the ages of 16 and 21. This will be developed through state and local governments and non-profit agencies. Hundreds of thousands of young Americans badly need the experience, the income, and the sense of purpose which useful full or part-time work can bring. For them such work may mean the difference between finishing school or dropping out. Vital community activities from hospitals and playgrounds to libraries and settlement houses are suffering because there are not enough people to staff them. We are simply bringing these needs together. A new national Work-Study Program operated by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare will provide federal funds for part-time jobs for 140,000 young Americans who do not go to college because they cannot afford it. There is no more senseless waste than the waste of the brainpower and skill of those who are kept from college by economic circumstance. Under this program they will, in a great American tradition, be able to work their way through school. They and the country will be richer for it."

"Second, through a new Community Action program we intend to strike at poverty at its source--in the streets of our cities and on the farms of our countryside among the very young and the impoverished old. This program asks men and women throughout the country to prepare long-range plans for the attack on poverty in their own local communities. These are not plans prepared in Washington and imposed upon hundreds of different situations. They are based on the fact that local citizens best understand their own problems, and know best how to deal with those problems. These plans will be local plans striking at the many untilled needs which underlie poverty in each community, not just one or two. Their components and emphasis will differ as needs differ. These plans will be local plans calling upon all the resources available to the community-federal and state, local and private, human and material. And when these plans are approved by the Office of Economic Opportunity, the federal government will finance up to 9070 of the additional cost for the first two years. The most enduring strength of our nation is the huge reservoir of talent, initiative and leadership which exists at every level of our society. Through the Community Action Program we call upon this, our greatest strength, to overcome our greatest weakness."

"Third, I ask for the authority to recruit and train skilled volunteers for the war against poverty. Thousands of Americans have volunteered to serve the needs of other lands. Thousands more want the chance to serve the needs of their own land. They should have that chance. Among older people who have retired, as well as among the young, among women as well as men, there are many Americans who are ready to enlist in our war against poverty. They have skills and dedication. They are badly needed. If the State requests them, if the community needs and will use them, we will recruit and train them and give them the chance to serve."

"Fourth, we intend to create new opportunities for certain hard-hit groups to break out of the pattern of poverty. Through a new program of loans and guarantees we can provide incentives to those who will employ the unemployed. Through programs of work and retraining for unemployed fathers and mothers we can help them support their families in dignity while preparing themselves for new work. Through funds to purchase needed land, organize cooperatives, and create new and adequate family farms we can help those whose life on the land has been a struggle without hope."

"Fifth, I do not intend that the war against poverty become a series of uncoordinated and unrelated efforts--that it perish for lack of leadership and direction. Therefore this bill creates, in the Executive Office of the President, a new Office of Economic Opportunity. Its Director will be my personal Chief of Staff for the War against poverty. I intend to appoint Sargent Shriver to this post. He will be directly responsible for these new programs. He will work with and through existing agencies of the government. This program--the Economic Opportunity Act--is the foundation of our war against poverty. But it does not stand alone. For the past three years this government has advanced a number of new proposals which strike at important areas of need and distress. I ask the Congress to extend those which are already in action, and to establish those which have already been proposed."

"There are programs to help badly distressed areas such as the Area Redevelopment Act, and the legislation now being prepared to help Appalachia. There are programs to help those without training find a place in today's complex society--such as the Manpower Development Training Act and the Vocational Education Act for youth. There are programs to protect those who are specially vulnerable to the ravages of poverty--hospital insurance for the elderly, protection for migrant farm workers, a food stamp program for the needy, coverage for millions not now protected by a minimum wage, new and expanded unemployment benefits for men out of work, a Housing and Community Development bill for those seeking decent homes. Finally there are programs which help the entire country, such as aid to education which, by raising the quality of schooling available to every American child, will give a new chance for knowledge to the children of the poor."

"I ask immediate action on all these programs. What you are being asked to consider is not a simple or an easy program. But poverty is not a simple or an easy enemy. It cannot be driven from the land by a single attack on a single front. Were this so we would have conquered poverty long ago. Nor can it be conquered by government alone. For decades American labor and American business, private institutions and private individuals have been engaged in strengthening our economy and offering new opportunity to those in need. We need their help, their support, and their full participation. Through this program we offer new incentives and new opportunities for cooperation, so that all the energy of our nation, not merely the efforts of government, can be brought to bear on our common enemy. Today, for the first time in our history, we have the power to strike away the barriers to full participation in our society. Having the power, we have the duty. The Congress is charged by the Constitution to "provide . . . for the general welfare of the United States." Our present abundance is a measure of its success in fulfilling that duty. Now Congress is being asked to extend that welfare to all our people. The President of the United States is President of all the people in every section of the country. But this office also holds a special responsibility to the distressed and disinherited, the hungry and the hopeless of this abundant nation. It is in pursuit of that special responsibility that I submit this Message to you today."

"The new program I propose is within our means. Its cost of 970 million dollars is 1 percent of our national budget--and every dollar I am requesting for this program is already included in the budget I sent to Congress in January. But we cannot measure its importance by its cost. For it charts an entirely new course of hope for our people. We are fully aware that this program will not eliminate all the poverty in America in a few months or a few years. Poverty is deeply rooted and its causes are many. But this program will show the way to new opportunities for millions of our fellow citizens. It will provide a lever with which we can begin to open the door to our prosperity for those who have been kept outside. It will also give us the chance to test our weapons, to try our energy and ideas and imagination for the many battles yet to come. As conditions change, and as experience illuminates our difficulties, we will be prepared to modify our strategy. And this program is much more than a beginning. Rather it is a commitment. It is a total commitment by this President, and this Congress, and this nation, to pursue victory over the most ancient of mankind's enemies."

"On many historic occasions the President has requested from Congress the authority to move against forces which were endangering the well-being of our country. This is such an occasion. On similar occasions in the past we have often been called upon to wage war against foreign enemies which threatened our freedom. Today we are asked to declare war on a domestic enemy which threatens the strength of our nation and the welfare of our people. If we now move forward against this enemy--if we can bring to the challenges of peace the same determination and strength which has brought us victory in war--then this day and this Congress will have won a secure and honorable place in the history of the nation, and the enduring gratitude of generations of Americans yet to come."

"We have the highest employment in our history as we meet here today. The vast majority of Americans are doing very well. In the midst of such prosperity it is too easy for people to lose sight of the problems which have not been solved, the difficulties which have not been mastered, and I assume that is one of the reasons for your coming here, and one of the reasons for your wanting to meet with the leaders of Government. Well, what about these serious problems? They do exist--problems of unemployment, of underutilization of plant equipment, of great discrimination against minorities, of discrimination against the aged and the handicapped, against the women, of inadequate medical care, of the inability of our educational system to equip all of our citizens to contribute to their fullest capacity."

"But these are the problems which America faces. They are problems which can only be solved by an informed citizenship. This requirement calls all of us to give them attention. This recurrent sounding of the call to battle is one of the most valuable contributions that can be made by the labor press in the United States."

"You are a part of the conscience of our society. You are always goading. You are never satisfied with the job that is partially done. You are always working and calling for the further advancement of working people, and you speak from a point of view. You speak on behalf of values. I think you generally speak out of a deep commitment to justice at the working place, to self-government in economic life, to an improvement in our society through a continuing improvement in the lot and opportunity of individual working persons and their families. So your strength and your great influence flows from the belief of American labor that a just society can best be built within the framework of democratic institutions and through the free processes of a free country."

"From this long tradition has grown the modern labor movement and its voice and the labor movement's voice--your voice, the labor press. I think all Americans are grateful for that voice. It has spoken so often and so eloquently on behalf of programs to make a greater and a better society, to improve the welfare of all Americans. It has spoken for free labor, free from the influence of those who would corrupt this great mainstream of American life, free from those who would turn the hopes of workingmen into an instrument of attack."

"You have helped to fight many battles on many fronts. I remember one that you fought and just to show you how much progress has been made, when I came here I was one of the few Congressmen the first year I was in Washington from my section of the country--only three of us from the South signed a petition to call a caucus to discharge a committee on the wage and hour bill. The other two, Maury Maverick and W. D. MacFarlane, both got defeated at the next election on account of their signing that petition. They were revolutionists and they were rebels and they kicked over the dinner pail and they caused a lot of trouble. And we actually, though finally with President Franklin Roosevelt's great support and by a fireside chat, we passed that bill that gave working people a minimum wage of 25 cents an hour. That was in 1938."

"Franklin Roosevelt talked about the one-third that were ill clad and ill fed and ill housed. After working 30 years with your help and your crusades and your radical editorials and all of those things, we have it down to one-fifth, but we still have got 20 percent, 1 out of every 5, that are in the poverty group. Twenty years ago, 5 percent over a 10-year period, coming out from 1942 to 1952, and from 1952 to 1962 it was 3 percent, and now it is 1 percent that is coming out--1 percent a year. From 1937 to 1947 it was 5 percent, 1947 to 1953 it was 3 percent, 1953 to 1963 it is 1 percent. Now it is getting a lot more difficult in this IBM age for those people that have no training, that live on the other side of the tracks--it is getting a lot more difficult for them to get out and cross the tracks and get out of that poverty classification. You have to help them by this poverty program that will provide them with training. Forty-nine percent--1 out of every 2 boys we draft has to be sent home because he is physically or mentally unqualified. That is the kind of folks you are raising. If I had to do that with my calves, I would go broke every year. If I out of every 2 of my calves was born and I had to have rejects, I couldn't make it. So we begin this poverty war from a position of unmatched prosperity, with national abundance. We have just concluded the most productive and prosperous quarter on record. I had the figures here a minute ago. I wanted to give them to you."

"When I came to Washington in 1932, corporation profits were nonexistent. They had a loss that year of $3,400 million. In 1942, 10 years later, we got it up to $9½ billion. In 1952, 10 years later, we got it up to $17.2 billion. In 1962 we got it up to $24.6 billion. In 1963 we got it up to $27.1 billion, and the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers tells me we are not only not going to lose $3,400 million this year, as we did 32 years ago when I came here, but our profits this year are going to be $31 billion after taxes--these high taxes. Labor has gotten about $52 billion more in wages than they got in 1961 Their wages have increased $51 billion or $52 billion in 3 years. Corporation profits have increased from a $3.4 billion loss in 1932 to $31 billion after taxes. Now, those groups--the capitalists who make the investments, the managers who manage it, and the workers who produce it-have got to be concerned about these taxeaters. There is an increasing proof that we can at long last break this unemployment stalemate that has marked our economic life month in and month out for several years."

"But the growing prosperity of this country, while real to millions of you people--and I assume that none of you are in the poverty group who would be here today--in the mainstream of our economic life is only a mirage, just something that you can wish and hope for to millions of others like those good people I visited in eastern Kentucky last Friday, or the woman that's trying to raise a family on her own, or the family that is headed by a man over 65 with low income and little hope of getting more, or the unskilled worker who hasn't been able to find a job in many months and sinks every day lower into debt and despondency, or the members of the Negro family in the city slum who lack the education to get even the first foot on the ladder, or the 11 million children being raised in families with incomes under $3,000 a year. To them the American dream is just a dream and it is nothing more. So I want to ask your help to awaken the hopes of these people. When I came out of Kentucky and Pennsylvania with unemployed steelworkers and auto workers in South Bend, Ind., and coal workers in West Virginia and eastern Kentucky, the thing that impressed me more than anything else was not just the dire poverty that I saw where a man had an income of less than $400 last year, with 8 children to raise, but the faith and hope that man had in the ultimate outcome of his whole situation in this country."

"So you are going to have to be the crusaders that lead the parade and you are going to have to be the ones that get us at least a few Republican votes on our poverty bill that is pending up here. We don't want a Democratic bill; we don't want a Republican bill. We want an American bill, for all Americans who are in this lower group, so we can help train those people that are being rejected, so we can help prepare those people who head families that are not equipped to do anything, and I would like to have your help in awakening the conscience and the concern of all Americans who can be aroused to go to work for their fellowman. I want your help to enlist an army of Americans of every party and every region in this war. Let this be said: That the real war to end all wars must be the war to eliminate poverty. Let this be known as a generation of Americans who made it their personal duty to give every American an equal and fair chance."

"What greater legacy could you leave your children than to say, and have some little plaque on your living room wall, that somebody acknowledged that your grandchild could look up and say that his grandpa helped make it possible for every American to have an equal and fair chance, for that is what being an American means to me-equality, fair shake at all times."

"So I am happy to have you here in this home that you let me occupy. I saw Dick Nixon Saturday night. I met him coming back from Viet-Nam. I told him I wondered if he ran into Barry Goldwater and Nelson Rockefeller on their way out to Viet-Nam. Now, we have got a lot to do in Viet-Nam. Of course, Nixon was out there, as I understand it, working on Pepsi-Cola, I believe it was. But we have got work to do here, too, and one of the big jobs we have got to do is we have got to pass a civil rights bill. That will give Americans equal opportunity."

"Lincoln freed the slaves of their chains 100 years ago. He signed the Emancipation Proclamation 100 years ago this year, and he freed them of their chains, but he didn't free them of their color and the bigotry that goes against color in this country. Until education is unaware of race, until employment is blind to color, emancipation will be a proclamation, but it will not be a fact, and we have got to pass a medical care bill for the aged, and we are within one vote of doing it."

"Thomas Hardy once said that "War makes rattling good history; but Peace is poor reading." You people, I think, have changed that. In 3 years the aspirations and accomplishments of the Peace Corps have made the pursuit of peace "rattling good history." I know that 'personally from my own journeys abroad. But I also know it because visitors who come here to the White House every day from other countries never fail to tell me of the good work that you and your companions have done and are doing throughout the world."

"The Peace Corps is just beginning to make its mark on the world. Your past success gives only a faint glimmer of the enormous possibilities of the future. One of the brightest hopes is the spread of the Peace Corps idea to other countries. I am very proud that when I was Vice President that I was able to participate slightly in getting that movement started. Twenty-three nations have said that they want to start their own version of the Peace Corps. What finer compliment could be paid you and the decision by these countries to do that! Sarge Shriver has just returned from West Germany where he helped to develop that country's program. And Japan announced this week that by 1965 it will have volunteers serving throughout Asia. You have set into motion what may become the largest peaceful volunteer movement the world has ever seen."

"Our war on poverty, an unconditional declaration of war against one of the last bitter enemies of a great society, can be traced, I think, in large part to the courage and the compassion and the commitment of the Peace Corps volunteers. Because, by fighting hunger, illiteracy, and poverty abroad, you have shown us that we can and we should and we must fight them at home. So I expect returning Peace Corps volunteers to play a major role in this war on poverty. We need your experience. We need your sense of duty. We need your imagination if we are to win this war. And win it we must."

"I also expect volunteers who complete 2 years abroad to enter the Federal service and to bring to every level of our Government the same devotion that they brought to the Peace Corps. The day will come when a former volunteer sits where I sit, although I hope he will have to wait a few years anyway. Because we need in Government what you have demonstrated in the Peace Corps, I will send a letter next week to the heads of every department and agency of this Government. I will urge those departments and agency heads to expedite the hiring of former Peace Corps volunteers. And I will ask them to report on their success to me by September 1st."

"For, if the Peace Corps' 6 percent savings were Government-wide, if each department and agency were to make the same savings that you have made, the total savings in our Government budget would be roughly $6 billion. But this is not your proudest accomplishment, important as it is. Far more significant is what the Peace Corps has meant to the life and the vitality of a free society in which the ultimate responsibility rests upon the individual. By your decision to serve and by the deeds of your service, you have shown that the ideals which gave this Nation birth and brought her to greatness are still burning. for that, all of us, each of us everywhere in this country, are deeply in your debt. I am so pleased that you could come here and visit. I hope you enjoy the Rose Garden."

"I have come today from the turmoil of your Capital to the tranquility of your campus to speak about the future of your country. The purpose of protecting the life of our Nation and preserving the liberty of our citizens is to pursue the happiness of our people. Our success in that pursuit is the test of our success as a Nation. For a century we labored to settle and to subdue a continent. For half a century we called upon unbounded invention and untiring industry to create an order of plenty for all of our people. The challenge of the next half century is whether we have the wisdom to use that wealth to enrich and elevate our national life, and to advance the quality of our American civilization."

"Your imagination, your initiative, and your indignation will determine whether we build a society where progress is the servant of our needs, or a society where old values and new visions are buried under unbridled growth. For in your time we have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society. The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice, to which we are totally committed in our time. But that is just the beginning."

"The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talents. It is a place where leisure is a welcome chance to build and reflect, not a feared cause of boredom and restlessness. It is a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community. It is a place where man can renew contact with nature. It is a place which honors creation for its own sake and for what it adds to the understanding of the race. It is a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goals than the quantity of their goods. But most of all, the Great Society is not a safe harbor, a resting place, a final objective, a finished work. It is a challenge constantly renewed, beckoning us toward a destiny where the meaning of our lives matches the marvelous products of our labor."

"Many of you will live to see the day, perhaps 50 years from now, when there will be 400 million Americans four-fifths of them in urban areas. In the remainder of this century urban population will double, city land will double, and we will have to build homes, highways, and facilities equal to all those built since this country was first settled. So in the next 40 years we must rebuild the entire urban United States. Aristotle said: "Men come together in cities in order to live, but they remain together in order to live the good life." It is harder and harder to live the good life in American cities today. The catalog of ills is long: there is the decay of the centers and the despoiling of the suburbs. There is not enough housing for our people or transportation for our traffic. Open land is vanishing and old landmarks are violated. Worst of all expansion is eroding the precious and time honored values of community with neighbors and communion with nature. The loss of these values breeds loneliness and boredom and indifference."

"Our society will never be great until our cities are great. Today the frontier of imagination and innovation is inside those cities and not beyond their borders. New experiments are already going on. It will be the task of your generation to make the American city a place where future generations will come, not only to live but to live the good life. I understand that if I stayed here tonight I would see that Michigan students are really doing their best to live the good life. This is the place where the Peace Corps was started. It is inspiring to see how all of you, while you are in this country, are trying so hard to live at the level of the people."

"A second place where we begin to build the Great Society is in our countryside. We have always prided ourselves on being not only America the strong and America the free, but America the beautiful. Today that beauty is in danger. The water we drink, the food we eat, the very air that we breathe, are threatened with pollution. Our parks are overcrowded, our seashores overburdened. Green fields and dense forests are disappearing. A few years ago we were greatly concerned about the "Ugly American." Today we must act to prevent an ugly America. For once the battle is lost, once our natural splendor is destroyed, it can never be recaptured. And once man can no longer walk with beauty or wonder at nature his spirit will wither and his sustenance be wasted."

"A third place to build the Great Society is in the classrooms of America. There your children's lives will be shaped. Our society will not be great until every young mind is set free to scan the farthest reaches of thought and imagination. We are still far from that goal. Today, 8 million adult Americans, more than the entire population of Michigan, have not finished 5 years of school. Nearly 20 million have not finished 8 years of school. Nearly 54 million--more than one-quarter of all America--have not even finished high school. Each year more than 100,000 high school graduates, with proved ability, do not enter college because they cannot afford it. And if we cannot educate today's youth, what will we do in 1970 when elementary school enrollment will be 5 million greater than 1960? And high school enrollment will rise by 5 million. College enrollment will increase by more than 3 million. In many places, classrooms are overcrowded and curricula are outdated. Most of our qualified teachers are underpaid, and many of our paid teachers are unqualified. So we must give every child a place to sit and a teacher to learn from. Poverty must not be a bar to learning, and learning must offer an escape from poverty. But more classrooms and more teachers are not enough. We must seek an educational system which grows in excellence as it grows in size. This means better training for our teachers. It means preparing youth to enjoy their hours of leisure as well as their hours of labor. It means exploring new techniques of teaching, to find new ways to stimulate the love of learning and the capacity for creation."

"These are three of the central issues of the Great Society. While our Government has many programs directed at those issues, I do not pretend that we have the full answer to those problems. But I do promise this: We are going to assemble the best thought and the broadest knowledge from all over the world to find those answers for America. I intend to establish working groups to prepare a series of White House conferences and meetings-on the cities, on natural beauty, on the quality of education, and on other emerging challenges. And from these meetings and from this inspiration and from these studies we will begin to set our course toward the Great Society."

"The solution to these problems does not rest on a massive program in Washington, nor can it rely solely on the strained resources of local authority. They require us to create new concepts of cooperation, a creative federalism, between the National Capital and the leaders of local communities. Woodrow Wilson once wrote: "Every man sent out from his university should be a man of his Nation as well as a man of his time." Within your lifetime powerful forces, already loosed, will take us toward a way of life beyond the realm of our experience, almost beyond the bounds of our imagination."

"For better or for worse, your generation has been appointed by history to deal with those problems and to lead America toward a new age. You have the chance never before afforded to any people in any age. You can help build a society where the demands of morality, and the needs of the spirit, can be realized in the life of the Nation. So, will you join in the battle to give every citizen the full equality which God enjoins and the law requires, whatever his belief, or race, or the color of his skin? Will you join in the battle to give every citizen an escape from the crushing weight of poverty? Will you join in the battle to make it possible for all nations to live in enduring peace--as neighbors and not as mortal enemies? Will you join in the battle to build the Great Society, to prove that our material progress is only the foundation on which we will build a richer life of mind and spirit?"

"Johnson: What do you think about this Vietnam thing? I’d like to hear you talk a little bit."

"Johnson: Well, they’d impeach a president, though, that would run out, wouldn’t they?"

"In 1790 the nation which had fought a revolution against taxation without representation discovered that some of its citizens weren't much happier about taxation with representation. And so, in what was probably the country's first economy drive, the Coast Guard was founded at a cost of $10,000 for 10 cutters. In tribute to your traditions, and in anticipation of your achievements, as Commander in Chief I hereby grant a general amnesty, and do excuse all Coast Guard cadets from any penalties which you may now carry with you. The official mission of the Coast Guard, which hangs in each room of this Academy, places you "in the service of (your) country and humanity." That mission, your mission, is also the mission of your Nation."

"For today we Americans share responsibility not only for our own security but for the security of all free nations, not only for our own society but for an entire civilization, not only for our own liberty but for the hopes of all humanity. In pursuit of such responsibilities national security requires more than national strength. It requires, first of all, a nation dedicated to justice and to the improvement of life for its own people. It requires a nation determined to help others eliminate the despair and the human degradation on which the enemies of freedom feed. It requires a nation devoted, through speech and deed, to showing those who may grow weary of will, or fearful of the future, that the cause of human dignity is on the march, its shadow is lengthening, and victory is moving nearer. But our hope for success in the aims of peace rests also on the strength of our arms."

"As Winston Churchill once said: "Civilization will not last, freedom will not survive, peace will not be kept, unless mankind unites together to defend them and show themselves possessed of a power before which barbaric forces will stand in awe." We, as well as our adversaries, must stand in awe before the power our craft has created and our wisdom must labor to control. In every area of national strength America today is stronger than it has ever been before. It is stronger than any adversary or combination of adversaries. It is stronger than the combined might of all the nations in the history of the world. And I confidently predict that strength will continue to grow more rapidly than the might of all others."

"The first area of this increasing strength is our ability to deter atomic destruction. In the past 3 years we have increased our nuclear power on alert 2½ times, and our nuclear superiority will continue to grow until we reach agreement on arms control. We have now more than 1,000 fully armed ICBM's and Polaris missiles ready for retaliation. The Soviet Union has far fewer, and none ready to be launched beneath the seas. We have more than 1,100 strategic bombers, many of which are equipped with air-to-surface and decoy missiles to help them reach almost any target. The Soviet Union, we estimate, could with difficulty send less than one-third of this number over targets in the United States. Against such force the combined destructive power of every battle ever fought by man is like a firecracker thrown against the sun."

"The second area of increasing strength is our ability to fight less than all-out war. In the past 3 years we have raised the number of combat ready divisions 45 percent. They can he moved swiftly around the world by an airlift capacity which has increased 75 percent. Supporting tactical aircraft have been increased over 30 percent and the number of tactical nuclear warheads in Europe has been raised 60 percent. We, and our NATO allies, now have 5 million men under arms. In addition, we are now ready to mobilize large reserves in the event of conflict. Six divisions, with all supporting units, can be moved into action in a few weeks. And we are continuing to build our forces. In a few years our airlift capacity will be five times what it was in 1961. Advanced weapons and equipment are flowing to our armies. Our fleet is being modernized through a decade-long shipbuilding program. And new tactical aircraft are being built."