“I don't think the intelligence reports are all that hot. Some days I get more out of the New York Times.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“People often tell me I could be a great man. I'd rather be a good man.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“No American is ever made better off by pulling a fellow American down, and all of us are made better off whenever any one of us is made better off.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“Freedom is being allowed to think your own thoughts and live your own life.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“If an American, because his skin is dark, cannot eat lunch in a restaurant open to the public, if he cannot send his children to the best public school available, if he cannot vote for the public officials who represent him, if, in short, he cannot enjoy the full and free life which all of us want, then who among us would be content to have the color of his skin changed and stand in his place? Who among us would then be content with the counsels of patience and delay?”
―
John F. Kennedy
“To those peoples in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required - not because the Communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right. If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“Perhaps the twentieth-century Senator is not called upon to risk his entire future on one basic issue in the manner of Edmund Ross or Thomas Hart Benton. Perhaps our modern acts of political courage do not arouse the public in the manner that crushed the career of Sam Houston and John Quincy Adams. Still, when we realize that a newspaper that chooses to denounce a Senator today can reach many thousand times as many voters as could be reached by all of Daniel Webster’s famous and articulate detractors put together, these stories of twentieth-century political courage have a drama, an excitement—and an inspiration—all their own.”
―
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.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“Tolerance implies no lack of commitment to one's own beliefs. Rather
it condemns the oppression or persecution of others.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“... we will do this not because it is easy, but because it is hard ...”
―
John F. Kennedy
“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“The future promise of any nation can be directly measured by the present prospects of its youth.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“Once you say you're going to settle for second, that's what happens to you in life, I find.
―
John F. Kennedy
“Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belaboring those problems which divide us.”
―
John F. Kennedy
