“If this nation is to be wise as well as strong, if we are to achieve our destiny, then we need more new ideas for more wise men reading more good books in more public libraries. These libraries should be open to all—except the censor. We must know all the facts and hear all the alternatives and listen to all the criticisms. Let us welcome controversial books and controversial authors. For the Bill of Rights is the guardian of our security as well as our liberty.
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John F. Kennedy
“They follow the Hitler line - no matter how big the lie; repeat it often enough and the masses will regard it as the truth.”
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John F. Kennedy
“My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”
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John F. Kennedy
“There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation many never come again. But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texa...s? We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”
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John F. Kennedy
“Today our concern must be with the future. For the world is changing. The old era is ending. The old ways will not do.”
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John F. Kennedy
“Great crisis produce great men and great deeds of courage.”
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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.”
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John F. Kennedy
“Every dollar released from taxation, that is spent or invested, will create a new job and a new salary.”
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John F. Kennedy
“If more politicians knew poetry, and more poets knew politics, I am convinced the world would be a little better place in which to live.”
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John F. Kennedy
“The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived and dishonest--but the myth--persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.
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John F. Kennedy
“The rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened.”
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John F. Kennedy
“Children are the world's most valuable resource and its best hope for the future.”
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John F. Kennedy
“A man does what he must — in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers, and pressures — and that is the basis of all human morality.”
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John F. Kennedy
“A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on. Ideas have endurance without death.”
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John F. Kennedy
“I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute; where no Catholic prelate would tell the President -- should he be Catholic -- how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference, and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him, or the people who might elect him.”
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John F. Kennedy
