Remarks in Texline, Texas

I want to say good-bye to all the good people of Texas. Also I want to say that I appreciate to the limit the kindness with which I have been treated in Texas. It has been to me the greatest pleasure to go through this great State. Two years ago I went to the Pacific Slope. I have been North, South, East and West in this great country of ours, and while there are slight differences between the people in one place and those in another, the fundamental thing that strikes me wherever I go is that down at the bottom the average American is a pretty decent fellow.

I believe that about all that is necessary is to get one American to know another to have them get on well in government. There is not any remarkable genius or remarkable brilliancy needed; what is needed in governing ourselves is the exercise of just exactly the same qualities that make a man a decent neighbor, a decent husband, a decent father. If that is the type we have in our representatives, we are going to have success. We cannot afford to barter such qualities as honesty, as courage, as common sense for any amount of brilliancy or genius. We need in public life, as we need in private life, the same qualities that have been needed since history began.