“The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were.”
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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.”
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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.
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John F. Kennedy
“The greater our knowledge increases the more our ignorance unfolds.”
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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”
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John F. Kennedy
“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.
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John F. Kennedy
“The life of the arts, far from being an interruption, a distraction, in the life of the nation, is close to the center of a nation's purpose - and is a test to the quality of a nation's civilization.”
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John F. Kennedy
“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”
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John F. Kennedy
“We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth.”
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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.”
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John F. Kennedy
“All of us do not have equal talent, but all of us should have an equal opportunity to develop those talents.”
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John F. Kennedy
“Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free
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John F. Kennedy
“We cannot negotiate with people who say what's mine is mine and what's yours is negotiable."
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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.”
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John F. Kennedy