“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
“Too often we hold fast to the clichés of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.
―
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.”
―
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.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“I love her deeply and have done everything for her. I’ve no feeling of letting her down because I’ve put her foremost in everything.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“Liberty without Learning is always in peril and Learning without Liberty is always in vain.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on. Ideas have endurance without death.”
―
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.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.
―
John F. Kennedy
“Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“The supreme reality of our time is the vulnerability of our planet. ”
―
John F. Kennedy
“People often tell me I could be a great man. I'd rather be a good man.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“There is, in addition to a courage with which men die; a courage by which men must live.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people."
―
John F. Kennedy