“I am not the Catholic candidate for President. I am the Democratic Party's candidate for President, who happens also to be a Catholic.”
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John F. Kennedy
“If more politicians knew poetry, and more poets knew politics, I am convinced the world would be a little better place in which to live.”
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John F. Kennedy
“The greater our knowledge increases the more our ignorance unfolds.”
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John F. Kennedy
“To be courageous, these stories make clear, requires no exceptional qualifications, no magic formula, no special combination of time, place and circumstance. It is an opportunity that sooner or later is presented to us all. Politics merely furnishes one arena which imposes special tests of courage. In whatever arena of life one may meet the challenge of courage, whatever may be the sacrifices he faces if he follow his conscience - the loss of his friends, his fortune, his contentment, even the esteem of his fellow men - each man must decide for himself the course he will follow. The stories of past courage can define that ingredient - they can teach, they can offer hope, they provide inspiration. But they cannot supply courage itself. For this each man must look into his own soul.”
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John F. Kennedy
“People often tell me I could be a great man. I'd rather be a good man.”
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John F. Kennedy
“... we will do this not because it is easy, but because it is hard ...”
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John F. Kennedy
“Without debate, without criticism no administration and no country can succeed and no republic can survive.”
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John F. Kennedy
“But wherever we are, we must all, in our daily lives, live up to the age-old faith that peace and freedom walk together. In too many of our cities today, the peace is not secure because freedom is incomplete."
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John F. Kennedy
“Our progress as a nation can be not swifter than our progress in education.”
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John F. Kennedy
“I don't think the intelligence reports are all that hot. Some days I get more out of the New York Times.”
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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.”
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John F. Kennedy
“Children are the world's most valuable resource and its best hope for the future.”
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John F. Kennedy
“Ask not what your Joe Montaperto can do for you - but rather - what you can do for your Joe Montaperto.”
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John F. Kennedy
“I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House-- with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”
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John F. Kennedy