“I'm shadowboxing in a match the shadow is always going to win. (as a young man battling his deceased brother's heroic legacy)”
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John F. Kennedy
“What makes journalist so fascinating, and biography so interesting [is] the struggle to answer that single question: 'What's he like?”
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John F. Kennedy
“Never before has man had such capacity to control his own environment,...We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history or the world - or make it the last.”
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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.”
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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...Our way of life is under attack. Those who make themselves our enemy are advancing around the globe...no war ever posed a greater threat to our security. If you are awaiting a finding of "clear and present danger," then I can only say that the danger has never been more clear and its presence has never been more imminent...For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence–on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations. Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed.”
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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
“Those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside”
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John F. Kennedy
“Time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life.”
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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.”
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John F. Kennedy
“probably the greatest concentration of talent and genius in this house except for perhaps those times when Thomas Jefferson ate alone.”
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John F. Kennedy
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
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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.”
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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
“My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”
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John F. Kennedy
