“The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war. We do not want a war. We do not now expect a war. This generation of Americans has already had enough—more than enough—of war and hate and oppression. We shall be prepared if others wish it. We shall be alert to try to stop it. But we shall do our part to build a world of peace where the weak are safe and the strong are just. We are not helpless before that task or hopeless of its success.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“In a time of turbulence and change, it is more true than ever that knowledge is power.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“Change is the law of life, and those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“Without debate, without criticism no administration and no country can succeed and no republic can survive.”
―
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
“A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on. Ideas have endurance without death.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“The greater our knowledge increases the more our ignorance unfolds.”
―
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
“My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”
―
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
“The supreme reality of our time is the vulnerability of our planet. ”
―
John F. Kennedy
“All of us have in our veins the exact same percentage of salt in our blood that exists in the ocean, and, therefore, we have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea - whether it is to sail or to watch it - we are going back from whence we came.”
―
John F. Kennedy
