“My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”
―
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
“Those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside”
―
John F. Kennedy
“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
“There are costs and risks to a program of action, but they are far less than the long range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“The most powerful single force in the world today is neither Communism nor Capitalism, neither the H-bomb nor the guided missile -- it is man's eternal desire to be free and independent.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“There is inherited wealth in this country and also inherited poverty.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“I believe that this Nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“Art is the great democrat, calling forth creative genius from every sector of society, disregarding race or religion or wealth or color”
―
John F. Kennedy
“People often tell me I could be a great man. I'd rather be a good man.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“Liberty without Learning is always in peril and Learning without Liberty is always in vain.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“A nation reveals itself not only by the men it produces but also by the men it honors, the men it remembers.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“Not every child has an equal talent or an equal ability or equal motivation, but they should have the equal right to develop their talent and their ability and their motivation, to make something of themselves.”
―
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.
I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish - where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source - where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials - and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.
―
John F. Kennedy
“Terror is not a new weapon. Throughout history it has been used by those who could not prevail, either by persuasion or example. But inevitably they fail, either because men are not afraid to die for a life worth living, or because the terrorists themselves came to realize that free men cannot be frightened by threats, and that aggression would meet its own response. And it is in the light of that history that every nation today should know, be he friend or foe, that the United States has both the will and the weapons to join free men in standing up to their responsibilities.”
―
John F. Kennedy