“I look forward to a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose”
―
John F. Kennedy
“We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world or to make it the last.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“We must face the fact that the United States is neither omnipotent nor omniscient, that we cannot impose our will upon the other 94 percent of mankind, that we cannot right every wrong or reverse every adversity, and that therefore there cannot be an American solution to every world problem.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“probably the greatest concentration of talent and genius in this house except for perhaps those times when Thomas Jefferson ate alone.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.
―
John F. Kennedy
“If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“Now the trumpet summons us again—not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle, though embattled we are—but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, "rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation"—a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself.
―
John F. Kennedy
“We, in this country, in this generation, are - by destiny rather than by choice - the watchmen on the walls of world freedom.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“And finally, at age seventy, having distinguished himself as a brilliant Secretary of State, an independent President and an eloquent member of Congress, he was to record somberly that his “whole life has been a succession of disappointments. I can scarcely recollect a single instance of success in anything that I ever undertook.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“The ancient Greek definition of happiness was the full use of your powers along lines of excellence.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans, born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage, and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world. Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”
―
John F. Kennedy
