Oh, that lovely title, ex-president.

Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.

When I was a small boy growing up in Kansas, a friend of mine and I went fishing and as we sat there in the warmth of a summer afternoon on a riverbank we talked about what we wanted to do when we grew up. I told him that I wanted to be a real major-league baseball player, a genuine professional like Honus Wagner. My friend said that he’d like to be President of the United States. Neither of us got our wish.

There’s no tragedy in life like the death of a child. Things never get back to the way they were.

I feel like the fellow in jail who is watching his scaffold being built. (On construction of reviewing stands for inauguration of his successor John F Kennedy)

Unlike presidential administrations, problems rarely have terminal dates.

No one should ever sit in this office over 70 years old, and that I know.

Some years ago I became president of Columbia University and learned within 24 hours to be ready to speak at the drop of a hat, and I learned something more, the trustees were expected to be ready to speak at the passing of the hat.

I have found out in later years that we were very poor, but the glory of America is that we didn’t know it then.

Humility must always be the portion of any man who receives acclaim earned in the blood of his followers and the sacrifices of his friends.

The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army, or in an office.

Things have never been more like the way they are today in history.

There is nothing wrong with America that the faith, love of freedom, intelligence and energy of her citizens cannot cure.

When you appeal to force, there’s one thing you must never do - lose.

Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.

That was and still is the great disaster of my life-that lovely, lovely little boy.

Our pleasures were simple-they included survival.

Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can complel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.