“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.
―
John F. Kennedy
“The very word 'secrecy' is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings”
―
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
“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
“The new and terrible dangers which man has created can only be controlled by man.”
―
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
“War and hunger and ignorance and despair know no religious barriers.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“The future promise of any nation can be directly measured by the present prospects of its youth.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“All of us do not have equal talent, but all of us should have an equal opportunity to develop those talents.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch - we are going back from whence we came.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“We should not let our fears hold us back from pursuing our hopes.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“When written in Chinese, the word "crisis" is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“We, in this country, in this generation, are - by destiny rather than by choice - the watchmen on the walls of world freedom.”
―
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.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“Above all, we are coming to understand that the arts incarnate the creativity of a free people. When the creative impulse cannot flourish, when it cannot freely select its methods and objects, when it is deprived of spontaneity, then society severs the root of art.”
―
John F. Kennedy
