The seas are not our only recourse and that we aim to make it feasible to mine, desalt, and put to productive use the brackish groundwater which underlies more than 2 million square miles of the United States.

We must act together to solve the immediate crisis that is facing us.

All Americans are really heirs of travelers who originally came here from far across the seas to cast their lot in this great country of ours.

We want Americans to travel.

It is my own studied and considered judgment, however, that this bill that you are witnessing being signed this morning will be the most historic of all of them: not for what it provides but rather for what it promises, not for what it…

Three of our cities, ships at sea, the oil fields of other lands already depend upon desalting plants.

I thank you and I appreciate what you have done, and what you are willing to do.

I need all the help I can get in that field.

Your President feels that we should encourage our own citizens and the citizens of other nations to get better acquainted with what we have here in America.

Ours is really an open land, an open society with no walls around it, nothing to hide within it, and we want the world and we want Americans themselves to see the U.S.A.

There is always a certain amount of cynicism among members of the executive branch and, I guess, sometimes among even members of the press about the productiveness of the Congress.

As rapidly as we develop economic desalting plants, we be prepared to share our technology with other countries where desalting offers the best answer to their local water problems.

I may or may not be the most optimistic person in America about the progress we can make on desalting the seas, but I am, and I intend to remain, the most determined man that we shall make the great breakthroughs before the calendar turns…

We think America is a beautiful land.

No man and no woman ever grows too old or too successful to forget the memory of a childhood home that was without lights, and that was without water, and that was without covering on the floor.

I pledge to you that we shall do all that must be done to fulfill our commitment.

It is a landmark bill because of its new ideas.

This measure votes 'no' on 'America the Ugly'--and it votes 'yes' on preserving, for our posterity, 'America the Beautiful.'