“What makes journalist so fascinating, and biography so interesting [is] the struggle to answer that single question: 'What's he like?”
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John F. Kennedy
“There is, in addition to a courage with which men die; a courage by which men must live.”
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John F. Kennedy
“We must find time to stop and thank the people who make a difference in our lives.”
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John F. Kennedy
“Mankind must put an end to war - or war will put an end to mankind.
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John F. Kennedy
“probably the greatest concentration of talent and genius in this house except for perhaps those times when Thomas Jefferson ate alone.”
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John F. Kennedy
“We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people."
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John F. Kennedy
“The very word 'secrecy' is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings”
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John F. Kennedy
“If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.
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John F. Kennedy
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
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John F. Kennedy
“Once you say you're going to settle for second, that's what happens to you in life, I find.
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John F. Kennedy
“The supreme reality of our time is the vulnerability of our planet. ”
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John F. Kennedy
“Geography has made us neighbors. History has made us friends. Economics has made us partners. And necessity has made us allies. Those whom nature hath so joined together, let no man put asunder.”
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John F. Kennedy
“And is not peace, in the last analysis, basically a matter of human rights -- the right to live out our lives without fear of devastation – the right to breathe air as nature provided it -- the right of future generations to a healthy existence?"
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John F. Kennedy
“Of course, it would be much easier if we could all continue to think in traditional political patterns—of liberalism and conservatism, as Republicans and Democrats, from the viewpoint of North and South, management and labor, business and consumer or some equally narrow framework. It would be more comfortable to continue to move and vote in platoons, joining whomever of our colleagues are equally enslaved by some current fashion, raging prejudice or popular movement. But today this nation cannot tolerate the luxury of such lazy political habits. Only the strength and progress and peaceful change that come from independent judgment and individual ideas—and even from the unorthodox and the eccentric—can enable us to surpass that foreign ideology that fears free thought more than it fears hydrogen bombs. We shall need compromises in the days ahead, to be sure. But these will be, or should be, compromises of issues, not of principles. We can compromise our political positions, but not ourselves.”
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John F. Kennedy
“Science contributes to our culture in many ways, as a creative intellectual activity in its own right, as the light which has served to illuminate man's place in the universe, and as the source of understanding of man's own nature.”
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John F. Kennedy