“The cost of freedom is always high, but people have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past, let us accept our own responsibility for the future.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“I was born an American, I live like an American, I will die an American.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“There is nothing in the record of the past two years when both Houses of Congress have been controlled by the Republican Party which can lead any person to believe that those promises will be fulfilled in the future. They follow the Hitler line - no matter how big the lie; repeat it often enough and the masses will regard it as truth.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“What makes journalist so fascinating, and biography so interesting [is] the struggle to answer that single question: 'What's he like?”
―
John F. Kennedy
“Just because we cannot see clearly the end of the road, that is no reason for not setting out on the essential journey.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“Described Washington as a community of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“Great crisis produce great men and great deeds of courage.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“People often tell me I could be a great man. I'd rather be a good man.”
―
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.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future.”
―
John F. Kennedy
