We say to American industry, if you can afford to pay pension plans to people who don't need them, then by the eternal gods you are going to have to … - Walter Reuther

I happen to believe that this is the crux of where we're going in terms of the future of the American economy. I think that the basic problem is to find a way to work out the competing equities among the three groups—the worker, the stockholder, and the consumer—so that we share the abundance in a way that would create the dynamics of growth and expansion.

This is our goal—a world of peace, freedom, and social justice for all people everywhere.

These are the sober facts. This is where we are. We stand there in that delicate, precarious balance on the rim of hell, and on the other side is this brave new world that lies ready to be realized. This is one of the great tragedies of the world—and you history teachers perhaps know it better than I—that we find chapter after chapter of the history books filled with the stories of man's inhumanity to man and of the great wars. In those great wars of the world's history, many nations achieved their highest expression of collective action—they worked, they marched, they sacrificed, and they died because they were driven forward by the negative motivations of war and because of their common fears and common hatreds. I believe that the great challenge of the leadership of the world is to find a way to tap the great spiritual reservoir, the great spiritual power that lies deep within the human breast, and find a way to get people working, marching, building, and sacrificing because of positive peacetime motivations and because they have common hopes, common aspirations, and common faith.