Many of the ugly pages of American history have been obscured and forgotten. A society is always eager to cover misdeeds with a cloak of forgetfulness, but no society can fully repress an ugly past when the ravages persist into the present.

A new society cannot be created by reproducing the repugnant past, however refined or enticingly repackaged.

I oppose the war in Vietnam because I love America. I speak out against it not in anger but with anxiety and sorrow in my heart, and above all with a passionate desire to see our beloved country stand as a moral example of the world.

Our American heritage is threatened as much by our own indifference as it is by the most unscrupulous office or by the most powerful foreign threat.

Society is impossible without inequality, inequality intolerable without a code of morality, and a code of morality unacceptable without religion.

My profoundest conviction is that the American people will say, as one man: No matter what the exertions or sacrifices, we shall maintain that necessary strength! But we could make no more tragic mistake than merely to concentrate on military strength. For if we did only this, the future would hold nothing for the world but an Age of Terror.