“People often tell me I could be a great man. I'd rather be a good man.”
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John F. Kennedy
“The greater our knowledge increases the greater our ignorance unfolds.”
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John F. Kennedy
“I'm shadowboxing in a match the shadow is always going to win. (as a young man battling his deceased brother's heroic legacy)”
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John F. Kennedy
“Unconditional war can no longer lead to unconditional victory. It can no longer serve to settle disputes. It can no longer be of concern to great powers alone. For a nuclear disaster, spread by winds and waters and fear, could well engulf the great and the small, the rich and the poor, the committed and the uncommitted alike. Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind.”
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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.”
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John F. Kennedy
“Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.
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John F. Kennedy
“I mean, they are just as susceptible to pressure and in many ways more susceptible to pressure because they are desperately anxious, this is their tremendous chance to break through the rather narrow lives they may lead.”
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John F. Kennedy
“The future promise of any nation can be directly measured by the present prospects of its youth.”
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John F. Kennedy
“Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.”
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John F. Kennedy
“[Public] libraries should be open to all—except the censor.
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John F. Kennedy
“Never before has man had such capacity to control his own environment,...We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history or the world - or make it the last.”
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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
“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
“A boy spends his time finding a girl to sleep with. A real man spends his time looking for the one worth waking up to.”
―
John F. Kennedy
